While gnomes are the Earth creatures in America, Chinese sorcerers have an affinity with dragons. What is interesting, however, is that while the standard elements seem to cross cultures easily enough, the creature associated with it change. Magic is accomplished mostly through calling on the magical creatures associated with one’s element. The magic system in this novel is fairly simple, relying on a standard 4 elemental arrangement, plus a 5 th element of spirit or light.

But what story has any merit without conflict?

Well, for one thing, she probably could have asked for her employer not to be a cursed beast-man mage with a cruel and power-hungry apprentice. Opulent living quarters close to a large and diverse city, good food, beautiful clothes, and her job mainly consists of reading books aloud to him from one room to another. Her home and possessions have been sold to cover her family’s debt, and she is in desperate need of a job to keep food in her stomach and a roof over her head, and mourns the fact that she’s unlikely to get to do anything that would play to her talents as a scholar of classical literature and foreign languages.īut wishes always get answered in Mercedes Lackey novels, and the mysterious Jason offers her employment that seems like nothing short of a dream come true. Thoughts: The unofficial beginning to the Elemental Masters series, The Fire Rose takes a step into the past, to the early 1900s in San Francisco, and centres around Rose, a recently orphaned female scholar trying to make her way in a man’s world. Jason’s enemy offers to restore Rosalind’s family fortune if she will betray Jason. 'She'll keep you up past your bedtime.Summary: (Taken from GoodReads) San Francisco, 1905: Rosalind, a medieval scholar, is hired by Jason, a powerful sorcerer. He has a terrible secret and is desperately searching for something that can reverse the effects of the misfired spell which created his predicament. What she does not realize is that his interest is anything but academic.

Instead, her duties are to read to him, through a speaking tube, from ancient manuscripts in obscure, nearly forgotten dialects.Ī requirement for the job was skill in translating medieval French, and she now understands the reason for that requirement, and assumes her unseen employer’s interest in the descriptions of medieval spells and sorcery is that of an eccentric antiquary. Beauty and the Beast in a contemporary urban fantasy setting.Īccepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children, no wife, and she is not to meet with him face to face.

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey