I am re-reading one of my favorite books—Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks—in part because I love it, but also because I am constantly trying to find the best words to explain why. I am in the business of selling books, and I have learned that the books I love most deeply are also the most difficult to sell. I’m so focused on getting the book into readers' hands, I trip over myself trying to explain why I want them to read it. Simple, enticing pitches evade me. But I’ll keep trying because I found Fire Logic as entertaining as it was enlightening, because I think it has something important to say, because it was, simply, a really good read.

Here goes:

Fire Logic is the first in a fantasy series that takes place in a world not our own, though not dissimilar in its foundations. Its fantastical element is something akin to magic, though there are no wands, potions, or spells. Instead, there are elemental abilities (think Avatar the Last Airbender—in fact, if you liked that series I can nearly guarantee you’ll enjoy this one). Beyond the system of ‘magic,’ I suspect you will find the rest of the story’s elements—politics, war, friendship, faith, rebellion—recognizable.

Chapter One begins with the fall of a government to the hands of invaders. But the true story begins fifteen years later. With astonishing skill in pacing and world-building, Marks briefly, masterfully, reveals how the world has changed in the interim: how a land built on trust, camaraderie, and community was replaced by one of fear, suspicion, and closed doors. That change is the crux of the book. Marks focuses on five characters—Zanja, a diplomat and a survivor, Emil, a soldier and a scholar, Norina, a judge and an arbiter, Medric, a seer and a weapon, and Karis, a metalsmith and an addict—who recognize the ills of their current world and are determined to set things right, even if it means having to further demolish in order to rebuild.

I love this book because it's captivating and immersive. It is a worn sweater I never want to take off, full of smells and soft elbows. Because it is a story of friendship, resistance, and reckoning. Because it is simultaneously profound and funny. Because, despite its themes of war, revenge, and destruction, it manages to be full of hope. And I think it’s a book a lot of readers need right now.

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the book, one that spoke to me enough that I memorialized it in a cross-stitch: “All love is made of insane hope.”

Emma Nichols co-owns the Norwich Bookstore with her partner Sam Kaas. When not at the bookstore you’ll most likely find her reading books, baking bread, tinkering with spreadsheets, or pulling tarot cards.

Previous Enthusiasms:

• Jared Jenisch on Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines
• Allie Levy on Shea Ernshaw’s A History of Wild Places
• Rena Mosteirin on Hannes Bajohr’s Blanks.
• Peter Orner on Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma stories
• Carin Pratt on Sarah Winman’s Still Life.
• Sam Kaas on David Benioff’s City of Thieves.
• Kari Meutsch on Station Eleven, the book and the series
• Jared Jenisch on Nastassja Martin's In the Eye of the Wild
• Allie Levy on Louise Erdrich's The Sentence.
• Rena Mosteirin on Little Women
• Peter Orner on poet Ruth Stone