Review: Fire Spirit

Fire Spirit by Graham Masterton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Review of FIRE SPIRIT by Graham Masterton

An acknowledged long-term master of the macabre delivers one of his absolute best in FIRE SPIRIT, an electrifying horror novel that will not just curl your hair, but ignite it. The world as you know it, the world of the living, is backdropped by Hell, which is a place of torment but not the destination only of the wicked. According to this storyline, Hell contains Nine Circles, which are populated by souls according to the nature of their demise. For example, the Ninth Circle contains burn deaths, the Eighth Circle drownings, and those are the two we are concerned with here.

Now a caution: if you are at all over-empathetic or don't like horror extremes, take a miss. FIRE SPIRIT is full-on gore, in detail, and contains multiple scenes of ugly, brutal violence, horrifying deaths, and abuse (adult and minor). If you've read Mr. Masterton before, you know that often he doesn't scruple with the violence and horror. I'd estimate that FIRE SPIRIT is every bit as extreme, perhaps more so, than MASTER OF LIES.

Barring that, this novel is so well written, the characters are so expanded (multiple characters--the secondary players are not just stage mannequins, but really developed), the metaphysics is so well explained, even to the very rational arson investigators, and the plot line is tautly developed. I was immediately caught up in the story and unable to set it aside. For fans of Graham Masterton and aficionados of well-played extreme horror, this is a win-win.

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