What do You think about People Of The Fire (1991)?
Where's the fire?Seriously, where is the fire?Oh wait, there it is. 20 pages from the end.The first 300 pages of this book do nothing. It's only in the last 150 pages that the story gets remotely interesting and begins to come together. Once I figured out where the writers were going, I enjoyed it, but were I not such a stickler for finishing books I would have abandoned it long ago.It starts off as a ripoff of the first book in the series - a boy with a special destiny and a complicated parentage (Little Dancer/Wolf Dreamer), a wise woman (White Calf/Broken Branch), and some antagonists intent on destroying him (Blood Bear/Heavy Beaver/whoever the other twin was in the first book). However, there is no clear female protagonist like Dancing Fox.Anyway, it's been thousands of years since Wolf Dreamer led the People through the ice tunnel. The People have hunted most of the wildlife to extinction and are getting hungry, and hungry people get cranky and raid each other's camps. Climate change isn't helping either as droughts set in. All that's left of Wolf Dreamer is a sort of magic purse called Wolf Bundle.No really, I'm serious.The book has some bloody stupid passages where the magic purse appears to be talking to Wolf Dreamer, who still seems to watch over his people and argue with the magic purse about the best way to lead the People to a more fertile land. And they hope the People will be better stewards of wildlife.Given that the writers are archaeologists, I expected this series to have more information about how these mesmerizing ancient peoples lived. Instead, we get a bunch of speculative garbage and mumbo-jumbo that makes these books more paranormal than historical. If there were less magic purse and more character development, we'd have a pretty good book.In fairness to the characters, they were at least a little more carefully constructed than in the previous book. It was easier to tell them apart and figure out who was who. The book does a decent job of showing Little Dancer's struggle to accept his role as Dreamer against his desire to stay with his family, something that "People of the Wolf" did not do very well.Speaking of characters, Two Smokes was awesome. My favorite moment in the book is when he figures out what to do with the tasty grass samples he carries around, and we see how Little Dancer will help lead the People in a more sustainable lifestyle.
—A B
The Gears are the best at what they do, which is writing about pre-history based on archeology, creating a plausible fictional story to help us to understand the facts and thus preserve our own Native American history. Kathleen and Michael have been my lamplight in becoming a Native American historical fiction writer. They alone are responsible for peeking my interest in our dim past and have provided a window to that time and place of which they write. If you desire to see the past of our unknown history of the Native tribes of North America, I advise you to make all of the Gear's books your first choice. You can do no better. Kitty Sutton
—Kitty Sutton
I enjoyed People of the Wolf more, but this was definitely a good sequel. I am not sure I enjoyed the end though. With Wolf Dreamer, we understood him giving up on his love - because he died, basically. For Fire Dancer, he could have went back home. The Epilogue made it worse,when you realize she lived the rest of her life alone, waiting on him. It was a rather sad ending, when you consider she was so important to the Power by teaching him Love. Did he forget the lesson already, just because he
—Ken
