The Fires of Heaven
ISBN: 9781857232097
Description
The bonds and wards that hold the Great Lord of the Dark are slowly failing, but still his fragile prison holds. The Forsaken, immortal servants of the Shadow, weave their snares and tighten their grip upon the realms of men, sue in the knowledge that their master will soon break free. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, knows that he must strike at the Enemy, but his forces are divided by trachery and by ambition.
Reviewed on 12th July 2025
Book five of my Wheel of Time re-read, and I felt like things picked up pace here. Rand is on the move, Egwene and Mat with him. Nynaeve and Elayne are also on the move. Perrin doesn't appear at all after having a massive role in the previous novel.
It's a good all round piece giving lots for the characters to do, new people to meet, and lots of big events and changes that feel like they are upping the drama of the whole series.
The narrative felt like it flowed well, moving between points of view at a good frequency to avoid feeling choppy without giving over big chunks to any one at a time. I have memories of the Salidar plot and that being an area I particularly liked on my first reading 16 years ago, so it's nice to see that coming along.
My only issue was that the ending felt a bit rushed. This might have been because I wasn't able to spend time properly focussed, so was reading in small chunks, but might have been a deliberate attempt to up the pace for the drama.
Reviewed on 29th August 2009
In the fifth novel in this series Rand is forced to step up his plans to start invading the rest of the world, while the two groups of girls try to find their way to a safe haven.
This book doesn't have the extremely slow start of the previous episode, although there is a bit of an odd jump between the events of the two. This is particularly noticeable in the Nynave and Elayne storyline which seems to have skipped a rather important escape scene.
There were a lot of unexpected twists in this one, including learning some of the things which were kept secret from us in the previous novel... even though they were fairly obvious to see coming. I was disappointed that one of the characters was completely ignored in this book, especially after his major storyline in the last one, which I really enjoyed.
Overall this was another good book, but I probably wouldn't go as far as saying that it was as good as book four.