Shannon Hale won rave reviews for her book, “The Goose Girl.” In “Enna Burning,” she takes Isi’s best friend Enna from the first book and gives her a plot of her own.
Enna’s brother Leifer comes home one day with a strange secret that he won’t share with anyone. His behavior is odd, his temper is out of control, and one night, he sets Enna on fire. Not with a match or a stick aflame, but with his will. Enna beats out the flames, and Leifer is terribly sorry for what happened, but his story comes out – he has learned the power of fire, and he can’t control it. He decides to try to use it for good and goes out onto the battlefield to fight for their native land of Bayern, being attacked by neighboring Tira, and ends up not only burning the enemy, but himself as well.
When Enna goes to collect his body, she finds a piece of vellum on him that describes how to call upon the gift of fire. She knows it’s dangerous, but in her newly bereaved state, she believes that if she can understand what happened to Leifer, she will be able to better accept his death. She reads the vellum until she’s practically memorized it, not sure if she really wants this gift for herself, but feeling like she must understand this strange compulsion her brother had.
She learns to pull heat from sources all around her and to focus it into a spark, sending it outward. Before long, she’s as talented at starting fires as her brother, but she also feels it as compulsively as he did. She tells herself she’ll never burn people with it, but it gets out of control and she doesn’t know what to do. Her friendship with Isi may help her, but when she tries to set Isi on fire, she worries that she’s destroyed her most precious relationship.
This book is quite a bit darker than “The Goose Girl,” and I found myself having a hard time identifying with Enna. I would have liked to see a little more positive characterization before we see her overtaken by the fire curse, so we know that we really want to cheer her on. That said, it was an interesting book with an unusual premise and I think you’d enjoy the read.
(This book was published in 2004 by Bloomsbury.)
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