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3.5 

Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

By Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson
Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Master storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, the team behind Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, collaborate again to create five captivating tales incorporating the element of fire.

In McKinley?s ?First Flight,? a boy and his pet foogit unexpectedly take a dangerous ride on a dragon, and her ?Hellhound? stars a mysterious dog as a key player in an eerie graveyard showdown. Dickinson introduces a young man who must defeat the creature threatening his clan in ?Fireworm,? a slave who saves his village with a fiery magic spell in ?Salamander Man,? and a girl whose new friend, the guardian of a mystical bird, is much older than he appears in ?Phoenix.?

With time periods ranging from prehistoric to present day, and settings as varied as a graveyard, a medieval marketplace and a dragon academy, these stories are sure to intrigue and delight the authors? longtime fans and newcomers alike.

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38 Reviews

3.5
“This is a companion booked to https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8085.Water_Tales_of_Elemental_Spirits - a book I loved to bits because it contains one of my favourite fantasy elements: mermaids. Fire isn't really my go-to fantasy element, but hey, I'm not one to turn down a new prospect. My favourite story in this collection would be Hellhound, a story of a horse farm and the spooky graveyard just beyond. I felt far more connected to the characters in this story, and it had a clear cut beginning, middle and end- something I felt got a bit muddled in other stories. Next up would be Phoenix- a Benjamin Button type story. The ending here got a little bit muddled, and, I feel, rushed. It's like they got a call from their editor, saying, 'aha, hey, guys, book needs to be under three hundred pages. Think ya' can do it?' and so they snipped out a vital part of the story. It didn't end badly- it just ended. Blah. Fireworm was also a nice story, and very mythological. I felt the writing in this one got a touch convoluted, though. Salamander Man and First Flight both tie for last place. Neither of them are awful- they're actually very nice- but it's more to do with length. Salamander Man was too short and First Flight was too long. Also, Salamander Man just didn't make any sense. I couldn't quite figure out what was meant to be happening. Anyway. I hope they release an Earth and Air series- that would be super neat!”
“This was a collection of five stories--three by Peter Dickinson, two by Robin McKinley. I mainly like the McKinley stories, but she and Dickinson are working through the elements together (they've already done water) and I try to read the Dickinson stories, too, to be polite and all. Robin McKinley's two stories were "Hellhound" and "First Flight." "Hellhound" I liked this one because it was very homey, but just a little creepy so that reading it in a dark house at night was kind of fun and kind of scary. It had a lot of the same feel as Sunshine--a heroine who knows what she wants to do and is good at it, a cozy, supportive family, the Supernatural. It was a little too short, but the best stories are. "First Flight" This one had a male protagonist and was about dragon-riding, which are two strikes against it from the start. It was also really long and had an extremely self-deprecating hero. It just didn't have many elements that really caught my imagination. I liked it because it had the McKinley feel, but it took me a long time to get through it.”

About Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown and a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword. Her other books include Sunshine; the New York Times bestseller Spindle's End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson.


In 1927, Peter Dickinson was born in Africa, within earshot of Victoria Falls. When he was seven, his family moved to England, where he graduated from Eton and later Cambridge. After working on the editorial staff of the humor magazine Punch for seventeen years, Peter finally started on his career as a writer, which he knew he was meant for since he was five years old.

His first book was published in 1968, and since then he has written almost fifty novels, for adults and young readers. His children's books have won great acclaim here as well as in Great Britain, where he has received both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

Peter lives in Hampshire, England, with his wife, Newbery Medalist Robin McKinley.

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