Flesh and Fire

I'm embarrassed by how long I had this book, buried in a to-read stack, but the important thing is that I finally read it and I greatly enjoyed it once it got going. Gilman created a unique fantasy world based on wine magic. Yes, wine magic. Jerzy is a teenage boy, a slave toiling in a vineyard, but his master notices the magical inclination that Jerzy tries to hide. All Vinearts arise from slavery. Jerzy soon finds himself immersed in a totally different life as he is tutored in the ways of wine, as well as fighting and culture. He's pushed hard in his training as clues emerge about a threat against not only the Vinearts, but people across the disparate realms.

I can see how the pace of this book might turn off some readers; it's all show more about worldbuilding. Me, I'm a worldbuilding geek. I love the details that Gilman went into to describe the ways of Vinearts, and the whole structure of the overall world. It is fascinating! show less

In Flesh And Fire: Book One of the Vineart War, Laura Anne Gilman creates a fantasy story rich in characters and culture. Jerzy, a slave in the vineyards of a Master Vineart, finds himself suddenly taken as Master Malech's apprentice in the secrets arts of spellwine. In the Vin Lands, power is divided among three classes: the Vinearts, who make the spellwines but who are forbidden to hold political power; the lords, who purchase and use the spellwines to hold their lands; and the Washers, the religious institution that guards Sin-Washer's legacy and bears a definite resemblance to the Roman Catholic church. Usually an apprentice's training takes years of discipline, but Jerzy is forced to his limits early, as there are bigger events show more stirring in the world outside. Someone is sabotaging the scattered vineyards and kingdoms of the Vin Lands, and doing it with a magic that even the greatest Master Vineart has never seen.

I was fascinated by the religious mythology that details how the magic of grape and vine was established. There are echoes of Christian doctrines in the legend — not least in the deity's title, Sin-Washer. And yet there are influences from Greek mythology as well, in the multiplicity of deities and how they relate to mankind. Everyone in the story appears to believe wholeheartedly in the gods and the legend of Sin-Washer, though their interpretations of his legacy vary. Gilman has given herself a good structure on which to build the characters' beliefs and motivations in future books.

Gilman's strong world-building skills are in full evidence in the mythology and cultures she depicts. She renders this complex society, with all its accepted traditions and practices, both believable and interesting. Sometimes it reminded me a little of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, though Gilman's prose is not so elegant. There were a few phrases here and there that seemed out of place; for example, a highborn princess, speaking of sweet wine, states, "I am not a fan." It was just very modern and jarring. I also spotted a dangling modifier and some other small issues that could have been easily pruned away. They aren't big problems in themselves, but they did bother me occasionally.

I found the reader, Anne Flosnik, to be an acquired taste that I never fully acquired. She has a trick of lingering on the last syllable of a word at the end of a sentence or paragraph, which is certainly effective dramatically but that I found somewhat overdone. It works very well in the "action" scenes, but less so in the general narrative. However, I can understand how many listeners would enjoy her interpretation, and she has even won an award or two for her narrative work. I would advise anyone new to her reading to listen to some samples first (there are some clips of Flosnik's reading on Tantor Media's website). This audiobook, published by Tantor Media in 2009, is unabridged and runs 15 hours.

Despite its small flaws and my less-than-glowing opinion of Flosnik's reading, I enjoyed this story quite a bit. It's been awhile since an author has really grabbed my attention with an original and compelling fantasy world as Gilman has done with Flesh And Fire. I will be looking for the rest of the series as it is published, and recommend it to fantasy fans looking for something a little different.

Thank you to SFSite.com for the opportunity to review this audiobook. show less

This is a reasonably fun, light, enjoyable read about a world where magic comes from wine and grapes and the Vinearts are wealthy and powerful, but forbidden from involvement in politics. A young slave, Jerzy, is taken from the fields to become an apprentice Vineart, how very fantasy, except, we learn, that this is how all Vinearts are created, necessitating a rather brutal system of slavery to both work the vineyards and supply the Vinearts, a perfectly designed and deeply nasty cycle accepted unquestioningly by our hero, thus far, at any rate. With Jerzy we learn how the magic works, and then the plot slowly develops involving a form of magic that should not work by those rules. It's all a bit careful and painstaking, but towards the show more end Jerzy is sent forth from his sheltered existence into the wider world. As of the end of this first volume we're not much the wiser, but our hero has acquired some companions and is on the run while more dark deeds are afoot.

It's not in the first rank of fantasy writing, but it is clever enough, diverting, and I want to see both what happens next and whether the slavery cycle will be properly examined, let alone broken, though it's hard to see a hero as timid and unsure of himself as Jerzy doing much other than agonising about it for a while and moving on. Hopefully he will grow and change and cultivate some backbone. show less

Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power.

But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to show more him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within -- magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed.

This is an interesting coming of age story as a young slave Jerzy goes on a journey to try to figure out what is going wrong with his world. He feels -- and is -- unequipped for the challenge except for courage. He gathers some allies in this one who should be of help in the coming volumes. Gilman creates an interesting system of magic in an interesting fantasy world. We share Jerzy's bewilderment as we travel with him and try to learn the world and solve the problem. show less

(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com.au)

I firmly believe that nothing, nothing is more important in a book than the protagonist. A well written hero can carry the weakest of plots, elevate the plainest of supporting cast and make an otherwise average book into something special. Laura Anne Gilman’s ‘Flesh and Fire’ proves all to well that the reverse is definitely not true.

The concept of Flesh and Fire is really cool, and handled originally. A few select men, called Vinearts, can coax magic from grapes and craft potent spell wines. Once they used their exclusive magic to gain power, but now there are strict laws that stop Vinearts from being able to hold positions of power or influence.

Jerzy, a young slave, is found show more to have the abilities of vineart, and so is risen from his position to become an apprentice to the Vineart Master Malach.

There’s a lot to potentially like about this book. I’m not a fan of non-fiction, but having said that I really like it when a book teaches me things. When an author has clearly researched the topic of the book extensively and the knowledge just shines through. So it is with Flesh and Fire and wine making. I’m not saying that upon finishing the book you could go out and craft your own vintage, but I found the various minutiae of wine making that the book explores to be really interesting.

If only the protagonist, Jerzy, had been at least half as interesting. But sadly, he is not. There’s nothing to him. I mean, this kid has been a slave all of his life, until one day he gets yanked from the fields and becomes an apprentice to the man who owns him. A situation fraught with potential angst and conflict one would think. Jerzy never feels any kind of resentment towards Master Malach. His time as a slave was brutal and hard, and yet he never attempts to help his fellow slaves or even really thinks about them as being more as slaves. The explanation given for this is that the harshness of slavery is needed to make the abilities of a Vineart develop. Which I get, and should have made for some really fascinating dynamics between the once slave Vineart masters and the one slave apprentices. But it barely gets touched upon, and a large source of potential tension just goes to waste.

(And why are all the Vinearts men? The idea of a female Vineart is never broached, not even an offhand comment to explain why there are none. The silence on the matter bugged me more than a half ass excuse explaining it would have.)

I guess in a lot of ways Jerzy never stops being a placid slave. He does what he’s told and and he rarely moves the plot himself. The other characters act and react, think and plot and make decisions, Jerzy just lets the currents they create move him about. There’s only one scene I can think of where Jerzy uses his initiative and impacts the plot. That’s pretty unacceptable for a main character, in my opinion.

The secondary characters are much better done than Jerzy. The young trader Ao was a breath of fresh air, and I found his trader outlook to be really interesting. I also liked Mauhalt, a nobleman’s daughter who looks like she’s going to get a kick ass character arc normally reserved more male characters. (Which just bring me back to the question of female Vinearts, and the lack thereof).

Jerzy’s passivity might have been easier to take if not for the fact that this book feels like it’s all setup. Things don’t really get rolling until literally the last fifty pages or so, whereupon the book ends on a cliffhanger. I suspect the second book will be much better than the first. If nothing else the plot appears to have actually started, and in the final pages of the book I developed some slight hope that Jerzy was about to actually take charge.

Normally I wouldn’t even give the next book a try based on the serious flaws in this one, but Laura Anne Gilman is clearly a very capable writer and the series does have potential. If she turns Jerzy’s character around then his actions in the first boom will become the first part of an impressive character arc, and the ridiculously slow build of the plot would be forgivable. It still kinda sucks that you have to slog through a vaguely boring first volume to get to the good stuff. show less

Quick Word: The world building was well done, and imaginative, if a little limiting in scope. I salute Ms. Gilman for her obvious extensive research in the wine/grape industry. Yet the characters, far all that there were few of them, never made an impression on me. And while the plot spanned over nearly four hundred pages, despite being fairly written it lacked in, well… something happening. I hungered for Jerzy (or anyone) to do or think something passionately, something selfish, or anything that would delve into their souls. But they didn’t, and so while I finished not exactly unsatisfied, I had no real desire to find out what happens next.
Final Word: Unique premise, but ultimately the characters failed to carry across a point to show more the plot. show less

Magic shattered the Vin Lands. Now, centuries later, power and magic are ruthlessly governed, segregated and monitored - the Vinearts managed the vines and decant the magic of the grapes into spellwine, the Princes and mayors govern, and the priests of the Sin Washer's order enforce the rigid strictures that keep power, knowledge and magic safely restrained.

But something or someone is attacking the Vinearts and their demesnes with subtle, vicious, deadly weapons. The attacks have no apparent pattern, and only one Vineart senses the danger. Unfortunately, Master Malech's best hope is a slim one. One young former slave, now his apprentice. But Jerzy isn't exactly what one would call confidence inspiring....

I kept putting this down - and show more then picking it back up again. The story isn't action-packed, but it is strangely compelling. And three-quarters of the way through I was rewarded, as events finally start tumbling forward. Finally, the characters are in place and the adventure can begin - and the book ended! Now I have to go find the second installment. Sigh... show less