The Fire Eternal

What to make of a sequence of sentences such as the following? ‘The dark energy in this section of the universe is peaking. The Fain David is about to open the core. Modify the rift coordinates and send an Ix:risor back within the girl to your old brother, Vincent. The risor will ensure there are no interruptions.’ Readers of Chris d’Lacey’s The Fire Eternal will discover numerous passages such as this and may well want to sympathise with the novel’s teenage heroine when she demands at one point, ‘Can I have that in semi-human-speak, please?’ For those, however, willing to persevere beyond the language there will be the reward of a reasonably gripping, extremely topical and definitely complex story. Or, more precisely, two stories, linked by their protagonists’ varying concerns with a world on the brink of ecological self-destruction. An explorer and writer, David Rain, has apparently vanished in the Arctic and an investigative journalist becomes interested, bringing him into contact with the decidedly strange mixture of humanity (and non-humanity) that is Rain’s extended family, a mixture in which sentient clay dragons play an important role. Meanwhile, in the Arctic, various polar bears are having various adventures, not the least being their pursuit of ‘the fire eternal’ of the title: finding this may, or may not, solve everyone’s problems. The two narrative strands are woven together with some skill and occasional humour, though only the most dedicated young reader will stay with the mythological intricacies of the novel’s plot development.