One of my newest book club friends has been a longstanding evangelist for the self-published novella The Fire-Moon by Isabel Pelech. With a little gap in my reading schedule, I finally found the time to give it a try.
The Fire-Moon is a short and easy read, coming in well under 100 pages, with a youthful lead and a prose style just on the older end of middle grade (be warned: there’s enough dark content that I’m not sure a traditional publisher would push it to that audience). The lead is the only child in her Egypt-inspired desert town, due to an unspoken past disaster that leaves her resented by nearly everyone—even her own family. But a surprise visit from a sorcerer-priest forces her to uncover those buried secrets and return to the business that everyone so desperately wishes to put behind them.
The Fire-Moon is divided into five chapters, with the first setting the scene and the next two digging into the backstory before bringing the danger into the present. And while the beginning and the end are perfectly competent, the true standout for me is the middle, where the lead must recount the harrowing journey that left her alive when her brothers and sisters were not. Even knowing the lead would survive, it’s a pulse-pounding journey, with expertly crafted tension that draws the reader immediately.
After that? Well, it becomes something more of a fantasy adventure. There’s a young lead, a mentor figure, a dangerous quest that puts both at risk of death but doesn’t stop them bantering back and forth throughout. The Fire-Moon plays the hits, and it does so well enough for someone hankering for the hits, or perhaps for a younger reader who hasn’t seen them all before. As an older reader who has, the finish is entertaining but doesn’t capture the magic of the preceding elements.
Overall, The Fire-Moon is a short fantasy adventure in an Egyptian setting, with a bit more darkness than one might expect from a tale that otherwise seems designed for younger audiences. The set-up is professional, the adventure is a bit tropey but well-worked, but it’s the pieces in between that steal the show, with a gripping uncovering of past disaster that truly puts the reader on the edge of their seat.
Recommended if you like: classic adventure fantasy with young protagonists.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Self-Published and Hidden Gem, and it includes Gods and Pantheons.
Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.