If you like Lord of the Rings or The Legend of Zelda, you’d probably very much enjoy Prelude of Fire by Christine E. Schulze coming October 2024! It is the first book in a four-book series, The Gailean Quartet. If you haven’t heard about Prelude of Fire before, here’s a quick rundown of the book (no spoilers!).
A desperate mission. Sinister sorcery. Can she find the seven prism shards to stop the world from being destroyed?
Ashlai, a young Fyre mage who can harness powers of flame from the sun, yearns to know about her kin. Her adoptive elven father refuses to let her travel abroad with her brother, and she despairs of ever knowing who she really is. But when the new king’s vicious spell attacks her forest home, she flees toward that unknown past—and an uncertain destiny—guided only by the strange melody in her head and a piece of broken prism.
Determined to save the land from the enchanted drought burning everything in its path, Ashlai searches for six other magical fragments to overthrow the ruthless king. With the help of a shape-shifting thief, two squabbling bards, and a snarky water elf, she races toward a perilous confrontation…and a life-changing truth.
Can Ashlai fight fire with fire to defeat the devastating spell before it consumes the entire land? And can she survive the secrets she discovers without losing her new friends, her family, and even herself?
Prelude of Fire by C. E. Schulze
Ratings for Prelude of Fire
Story: 4/5
Worldview: 4/5
Story
If you like novels with adventure and friendship, you’d enjoy Prelude of Fire. Ashlai is young and impetuous, but she’s also determined to save her world from destruction. I loved the characters, and there were some genuinely funny moments. I was also very much surprised towards the end, and I loved the plot twists.
The characters do have gifts (magic) but the author made it clear that these were gifts from God, the highest authority. (It reminded me of how there’s magic in Narnia but Aslan ultimately reigns.) There are characters speaking magic words, but it seems that the words are made up, so they didn’t bother me.
I would also note that there are some violent scenes (stabbing, blood) and a somewhat gruesome character death (by drowning). I would have liked to have been warned of that beforehand. It was a real shock. Story drops to 4 out of 5 because the pace lagged while the core cast of characters was meeting up. I understand the purpose. It was almost inevitable. But it took me a while to get over the repetition of “new place, new character, danger.”
Worldview
Worldview is a 4 out of 5, but not for the magic. Like I said before, I wasn’t bothered by it because it was placed under God’s authority. If this was realistic fiction, it’d be a hard pass for me, but I give a bit more wiggle room in Christian fantasy as long as it’s allegorical.
I was not pleased, however, by having a character talk about their pagan worship of creation. A believer argued, but in the end, they both agreed to have a difference of opinion. That bothered me because, in a world meant to be allegorical in its magic system, it just created a platform for worshipping God’s creation. It would have been one thing if the pagan character was maintained as wrong throughout the novel, but that was not the case.
In any case, the characters that did believe in God did pray and call out for help, so I liked that as well.
Overall thoughts
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book and I would be interested in picking up the second in the series. If you’re interested in reading another Christian fantasy, I highly recommend the Empire of Ash and Song Series by D. E. Carlson.
I had the pleasure of receiving a free eARC of this book from the author and all opinions expressed in this review are my own. 🙂
