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    Firesong
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    Firesong
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    Firesong
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    Firesong

    Written by William Nicholson

    Narrated by William Nicholson

    4/5

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    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    The final part of the Wind on Fire trilogy, read by the author.

    Fire in the sky! Signs and wonders! The end days are coming!

    It is the time of cruelty. In the face of starvation, blizzards and the evil Morah, the Manth people have left the ruined Mastery to seek their homeland. Only Ira Hath can lead them there and she grows weak…

    Kestrel dreads reaching the homeland. She is afraid of what it will mean for her mother – and why does she feel so alone? Bowman eagerly awaits the summons from the Sirene and prepares to make the final sacrifice for his people, his family.

    And all the while, the wind is rising…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 6, 2012
    ISBN9780007508730
    Unavailable
    Firesong
    Author

    William Nicholson

    William Nicholson is a screenwriter, playwright, television writer, and novelist. In addition to his Academy Award–nominated screenplays for Shadowlands and Gladiator, he is the author of Motherland; several young adult and fantasy novels; and a sequence of contemporary adult novels set in England. He lives in Sussex, England.

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    Reviews for Firesong

    4/5

    190 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I started this book when I was much younger and didn't get to finish it. It plagued me until I asked for it as a birthday present. After that I read and re-read it and i've kept it close to my heart since. It is a fantasy novel that takes you on an amazing journey, never letting you go.
    • 4/5
      This was suggested by my YA daughter as a trilogy needed for our library. I was instantly engaged. I love the close relationship between the twins in this book. I also like that fact that there is such a strong female lead without it becoming a "girl" book.
    • 5/5
      Bought this in a charity book recently (Jan. 4th, 2010) coz I've been snowed in for almost the entire three weeks I've been on vacation and what a great book to start the year off. It's the perfect type to snuggle up with while sipping on a steaming cup of cocoa. It's remininiscent of The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, which is also a brilliant series about beings in the masses who try to take over the world. The characters are beautifully depicted and you really get a sense of the closeness of the Hath family and just what they have to endure to set things right in a world that's robotic and dull. It's full of surprises and completely unlike anything I've ever read so if you're looking for a new series that's fresh and different, I highly recommend this one.
    • 5/5
      The Wind Singer by William Nicholson I loved this book!!! My mom calls books such as this one "junk food books". In other words: they have no substance and are usually read only once by people. But as this is true for almost every book I read [even Harry Potter], I don't really care. I would recommend this book for science fiction and fantasy lovers that don't mind seeing people die in their minds [not one or more of my previous teachers]. It is also good summer reading for slower readers, because it is 486 pages long. However speed readers will finish it in 1-3 days.
    • 4/5
      Book 1 of the Wind On Fire trilogy. This is a good tale in its own right, focusing on themes of friendship and responsibility in a somewhat dystopian society.
    • 4/5
      Some wonderful ideas went into the backdrop of this story. I would say this book is too short and these ideas could have been developed much more - they are worth pause for thought. Otherwise a great story and some great characters.
    • 5/5
      Kestrel Hath and her Brother, Bowman, are twins in the city of Aramanth in a wonderfully imagined world full of magic and surprises. But their world is not the perfect place it once was, for the Wind Singer that overlooks their city has been broken for many years, and in the mean time the city has been overtaken by a rigidly enforced regime that ensures everyone is put to work in the place best suited to their skills and effort.From the age of 2, children are educated and examined repeatedly, and their scores are added to the scores of their parents who also undertake regular examinations. The scores then calculate their priveleges, where they may live and what colour clothing they may wear.But the Hath family think differently to other people, and they see that the system - rather than achieving a wonderful egalitarian society - actually binds them and imprisons them. And when Kestrel one day snaps in a school lesson, she awakes a chain of events that bring down the wrath of the chief examiner and set in motion something much larger and more dangerous than anyone would have believed possible.I first looked at this book when it was newly published. I picked it up to buy it, but it was on one of those "3 for 2" displays where you can get 3 books for the price of two. As I could not find 3 books I wanted I resented paying full price for it and put it back! (Waterstones take note - you would sell me more books just by discounting them a little instead!) It is a pity it took me so long to actually buy this book, becauise it is excellent. I was expecting a good fantasy story, but the story I read exceeded my expectations on two counts: 1) The characterisations were very well done, and often very amusing. The conversation Bowman had with an official as Kestrel climbed the Wind Singer had me laughing out loud. I instantly fell in love with the Hath family. Not that they were a perfect family, and you see their warts and all - particularly as the discover friendship in an unlikely place.2) The world that Aramanth sits in is a richly imagined but very fresh and non stereotyped world. I get very fed up with fantasy books that set themselves in a kind of medieval world, just because that is how Tolkien did it. But this is not one of those books. The world described here shows the ability of the author to imagine something bold and new and very engaging.The book is written with young adults as an intended audience, but adult readers should enjoy this too - and younger children may well love it too. As a rough guide, I would probably not give it to anyone much younger than 10, or older than 95 (although the latter only because the print might then be a little too small!)All in all this was a richly imagined book with good characters, some good humour and plenty of action as well as things to make the reader pause and consider afterwards - particularly on the nature of freedom.
    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed this one. Kestrel and Bowman live in a society where families are constantly tested and ranked according to their results. I liked that the Hath family were against the testing and stood up for their beliefs even during many scary situations. It was fast paced, interesting and fun to read. It got a bit weak for about thirty pages or so but picked back up again towards the end. The ending was nice and I'm interested as to what the sequel will bring.
    • 5/5
      Teen siblings and an outcast undertake a fearsome quest across hostile landscapes in the face of magical opponents to save their family from an over-regimented society. The richly described characters interact effectively although there is a tendency to caricature. The story is exciting and compelling with strong messages for mid-teens.
    • 5/5
      I typically don't read Young Reader books. But, when my son's 7th grade teacher recommended this to me, I took it on. Glad I did. "The Wind Singer" is an amazing story on par with J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit". It is an illustrative and adventurous story about Kestrel, her brother Bowman, and Mumpo who flee from an oppressive, performance-based society in order to find the voice to the Wind Singer machine built many generations ago by an unknown people. If found and brought back to Aramanth, this voice would restart the Wind Singer, ultimately resulting in happiness being restored, void of academic achievement and oppression. While encountering everything from an underground Mud People, desert warriors, overly-aged children, oversized flying predators, wolves, and a marching army; Kestrel and her team must hurry home with the voice in order to save her parents and the people of Aramanth.If you like fantasy along the lines of The Hobbit with a real-life message behind it, I highly recommend "The Wind Singer".
    • 4/5
      This had the misfortune of being reread during a long and stressful housemove. So it wasn't that I didn't enjoy the tale of how Kestrel and the Manth girls escape from the klin, or the effects of the passion flies, or the rich grey land of the fat captain, or Bo's discovery of his and his sister's part in all, but I never really got into the book this time through. I still find this series uncomfortably odd. This is a book about a supernatural apocalypse - the Manth people survive the Wind on Fire which burns the Morah out of the land. [Although it doesn't destroy all the people, as we find out from the epilogue.] Like Philip Pullman, I find books where human passions are dangerous and should be suppressed difficult (although on that point this book is finely balanced, for it is the passion fly that gets Sisi and Bowman together, and it is Bowman's place as the meeting point between the Morah and the Singers which is his strength). And 'following the prophecy, even when it is stupid' is held up as a virtue, and my sympathies are often on the other side. Not to mention the issues of what _is_ a homeland, when none of them have been there before? A place they supernaturally feel is familiar and have been led to? But their lives when they get there are remarkably mundane. Oh well, at least there was no-one there that needed driving out.Again, the supernatural is never explained, the singer people just exist, and do what they have to do. The relationships are odd too - mostly one character knows they want another to fall in love with them, and then hangs around for the rest of the series until it happens. Pinto marrying Mumpo is the happy ending at the end of the book, but there is something uncomfortable about this - we know Mumpo loved Pinto's older sister and is mostly transferring because he can't have Kes and Pinto reminds him of her, and we know Pinto has had a crush on Mumpo since she was about 7, and marries him on her 15 birthday. The ending 'That's all I ask, thought Mumpo, not to be alone. That's all I ask, thought Pinto, to love you till the day I die', doesn't seem to bode well for a happy well balanced relationship.Of course, my husband has just moved to Inverness for a bit, while we pursue our own careers. So I am bound to be bitter against the Manth wedding vow 'where you go, I will go, I will pass my days within the sound of your voice and none shall come between us'. Maybe sometimes it is as simple as we make it.
    • 4/5
      Marching towards a homeland that they can only sense through Ira Hath's psychic skills, the Manth people are tired, hungry and subject to attack from a buzzing insect that manipulates its victims in a strange way. This is the opening scene in 'Firesong', but events steadily get worse: this is the time of cruelty and civilization has disintegrated into violent factions struggling to maintain their own people and destroy others.This book recalls the first in the series, 'The Wind Singer', due to its epic journey and episodic structure. This gives the story structure and the flexibility to delve into the lives and situations of these other travelers. However, there are key differences between this story and the earlier one. Events and ideas that have surfaced in the previous books are finally explained fully (the Morah, the Singer people), although the explanations do test your ability to digest the surreal. The main characters, perhaps due to their age, are more interested in the possibility of romance and so loving relationships are given greater prominence, which makes the lives of the people seem more realistic and fully rounded.The plot is cleverly constructed around a series of mysteries and difficulties: how to rescue some members of the group; what is so strange about Captain Cannobius' feast; how to reach the desired Homeland at last. Each incident is built up then resolved in a manner that fits perfectly with the rest of the story.As in the previous two books, the characters are engaging because they are multi-faceted and respond in typically human ways to even the strangest situations. There is a sustained focus on Sisi, the escapee princess, and Creoth, the former Emperor, which means that there are few minor characters in the novel. By this stage, all names are familiar and this helps the reader to care about the survival of the characters as a group rather than simply as individuals.On the whole, this is a fun and engaging read, but you need to be someone who can accept a great deal of fantasy to truly enjoy it.