An inoffensive piece of fluff, I was entertained, but not blown away. I wouldn't turn down any others in the series, but wouldn't actively search them out either.

One thing surprised me - the cover makes this look like a steamy romance. It's really more of a romantic thriller. There's only one, pretty tame, sex scene. I'm not complaining, just mentioning that the cover is a little misleading. ( )

Plot: 4Setting: 5Writing: 5Originality: 5Characters: 5Passion: 4Overall: 28/30 = 93%Cover/Title Bonus: 5Dorchester Pub sent this wonderful book to me to review a few weeks ago.Summary (author’s website): Long ago, shape-shifters were plentiful, soaring through the sky as crows, racing across African veldts as cheetahs, raging furious as dragons atop the Himalayas. Like gods, they reigned supreme. But even gods have laws, and those laws, when broken, destroy. Zoufalství. Epätoivo. Asa. Three words in three very different languages, and yet Soria understands. Like all members of Dirk & Steele, she has a gift, and hers is communication. When she is chosen to learn the dead language of a shape-shifter resurrected after thousands of years of icy sleep, she discovers a warrior consumed with fury. Strong as a lion, quick as a serpent—Karr is his name, and in his day he was king. But he is a son of strife, a creature of tragedy. As fire consumed all he loved, so death was to be his atonement. Now, against his will, he has awoken. Zoufalství. Epätoivo. Asa. In English, the word is despair. But Soria knows the words for love. Read an excerpt on her website as well!Plot:Soria, a young woman with a missing arm is forced to return to a day job she’s not fond of doing but she’d rather live so she cooperates. She has a talent for being able to speak any language. No matter what. How cool is that!?Karr is a mystical shape shifting creature that is awoken from a tomb he was buried alive in many, many years ago. He is captured and imprisoned until someone able to speak his language is found.Soria is able to speak to Karr and she finds a way to form a bond with the enormous, dangerous creature he houses inside. Together they escape and are on the runs for their lives.Setting:Briefly the setting is in the US but it quickly switches to Russia, in Mongolia I remember. There’s a ton of desert walking and flying. A sandstorm scene was pretty intense.Writing:Marjorie knows her stuff! Since the main character was a linguist and I did read that Marjorie too studied languages there was a ton of references to those foreign languages. The entire book flowed very well. There was a large portion of this book dedicated to action scenes. The detail shown to the shifters was awesome. And writing the main character as having only one arm? Amazingly done. Finding out the back story to why Soria lost her arm doesn’t happen until a little past half way through the book, which worked well but had me constantly wondering what the hell happened to her arm! It was a major distraction and I wish the reader would have found out about that a bit sooner.Originality:This wasn’t my first shape shifter book by a long shot but it was a very awesome one. It was my first book that had a disabled main character but that didn’t stop her from being amazingly strong and actually even more so because she had an extra obstacle to overcome.The shape shifters in this book were different than others I’ve read though. Karr is a half breed so he’s able to mix and match the shapes that his parents were: dragon and lion, making a pretty intense and beautiful creature.Characters:Soria is amazing. I had my doubts in the beginning when I first learned that she was missing an arm. But she doesn’t let it stop her from kicking ass. She’s mentally strong and that is exactly what she needs to get through this difficult time in her life. Her story behind the lose of her arm is horrific. Her ability to speak to Karr was awesome!Karr is just wow. The fact that no one but Soria can understand his language forces him to ally with her. It was the best decision he makes. They make an awesome team together. Karr is strong, intelligent, and an intense warrior.Passion:The attraction between Soria and Karr builds over the course of the book. It is not the reason for the book but rather a subplot and it happens very naturally. I was almost yelling at the author/book because it wasn’t a major topic or rather the characters chose to ignore it just a wee bit too much for my liking. And there’s only one cool scene with them together sexually. It fit for their situation but it could have been so much better. Too sad.Overall:I enjoyed this book immensely. Mostly because I saw the attraction between the two main characters and wanted to see them together. Plus, their adventure was very cool. Karr was such a sweet and protective alpha male and Soria was strong but not bitchy or overbearing. They were a perfect couple.Also, this was my first Dirk & Steele novel. I didn’t feel lost or anything so I’m not sure how the series works. I’m guessing they just cover one Dirk & Steele agent at a time.Cover/Title:The cover is AWESOME! The only thing I don’t like is the guy. He’s not strong jawed enough to be Karr. His face is just too round and fleshy. The lion, sand, and the side mountain houses fit perfectly with the subject of the book.The title? I don’t get it. The FIre King? I don’t remember reading that Karr was a king in his original life. However, after reading the summary on Marjorie’s website he apparently was a king. Interesting. ( )

The Fire King is part of theDirk & Steele romance series from American author Marjorie Liu. This was my first venture into this series, but I have to admit at the start of this review that romantic novels are not my thing. For a littl bit of background, Dirk & Steele are a detective agency who employ 'gifted' or 'supernatural' people.

Soria is a 'universal translator' who is recovering from a horrific incident where she lost one of her arms. She is sent by her former boss and lover to China/Mongolia where an amazing discovery has been made in a recently unearthed tomb. Little do they know that this discovery will reawaken an ancient feud.

The discovery in the tomb turns out to be Karr, a tall, handsome man who is surprisingly alive, despite having been buried in the dark for over 3,000 years. Karr is a chimera, one of the forbidden offspring when two different shapeshifters breed. In Karr's case, he is half-lion and half-dragon, but now he has reawoken in a completely different world, where his kind are very few. He has to battle his basic urges and present a human face.

Ultimately, this is a romantic novel, but somehow it failed to engage me. I found the characters a bit dull, and even all the action and mythology failed to bring much excitement to the proceedings. It's definitely a book for a niche market, but judging by other positive reviews online, it does appear that Liu has her market. ( )

Soria is a universal translator - if she hears a native speaker, she absorbs their tongue and can speak it fluently. But she's tired, damaged, and retired from the saving business. Retired, that is, until she's collected by some quasi-allies and delivered to her former lover and boss. He has a job for her - sound out a captive who speaks a language over three thousand years dead, and find out if he's sane and safe.

When Soria meets Karr something clicks. He may be centuries old, but she trusts him, even if Dirk and Steele are less than sure. But Karr is something far from normal, even for a company made up of magic workers, psychics, and shapeshifters, and what he is may mean both their deaths.

Not Liu's best. This felt like a poorly fleshed out short story. While both Karr and Soria are intriguing characters, rather than getting their due, Liu seems to be using the book as a vehicle to introduce more fantastical creatures and a few new twists in the ongoing Dirk & Steele vs. the evil plotline. While familiar faces reappear, nothing really moves forward. ( )

I received Marjorie M. Liu’s The Fire King, her ninth Dirk & Steele novel, as an Advanced Reader’s copy. In general, I am not a romance reader, with the exception of paranormal romance, and even so, there are only two authors I like and whose series I follow. That number has now grown to three.

The Fire King pairs Karr, a three thousand year old shape-shifter with a twist and Soria, a maimed human with an innate gift for languages. What they have in common is a painful past. Karr also has a threatened future but to even achieve it, he must first discover the secrets of his past. Since Soria answered a friend’s request to try to communicate with Karr, her future becomes linked to his.

At each step of the journey into Karr’s past, the two are forced to throw off very different doubts and suspicions to learn to trust each other if they are to survive the several different groups – shape-shifters aligned with humans, a couple of mercenaries whose alliances are hard to decipher – who are after Karr.

I truly enjoyed this book for several reasons. First of all, Marjorie Liu’s characters are distinctive (with one exception – a supporting character who I so enjoyed, I chose to overlook her derivative nature). Their motivations, actions and responses are credible and described with a clarity that indicates that their author invested much effort in knowing the characters she writes – no cardboard cutouts here.

Also refreshing and unusual for the genre, is that her characters are not so ethereally physically beautiful that they come across as plastic. This extends from her main characters right through to her villains and supporting characters. I was able to see her characters vividly in my mind and this was very much due to the lucidity with which they were drawn.

The background history, along with the nature and origin of the conflict was also credible and well handled. The action was exciting and held my interest. The romantic interaction was developed naturally with the storyline, and there were no gratuitous physical encounters.

On the negative side, I only had an issue with a small action by the heroine that didn’t seem to be logically possible given her limitations.

Overall though, this was a wonderful example of the genre and should be a favorite of readers already acquainted with the series, as well as first time readers.

Of course I now plan to read all of Ms. Liu’s preceding novels, and am very glad that there are so many waiting to be read.