Consuming Fire

Consuming Fire

by Catherine Fearns

2 out of 5

Synopsis
What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen.

Liverpool is in the grip of an intense heatwave, and strange things are happening.

A woman dies in an apparent case of Spontaneous Human Combustion; a truck explodes on the dock road; the charred corpses of pets litter the city; forest fires ravage the pinewoods…and there are birds everywhere, silent flocks drawing in ominously.

Detective Inspector Darren Swift thinks there are connections, and his investigation delves into the worlds of football, nightclubs and organised crime. But is he imagining things?

Dr. Helen Hope doesn’t think so. And she believes the key lies in a mysterious seventeenth-century occult book which has gone missing from Liverpool Library.

In the blistering sequel to Reprobation, DI Swift is forced to confront some inconvenient ghosts from his past, as a terrifying shadow lies over his city’s reality….



Review
When impossible deaths happen in Liverpool, it is up to DI Darren, and ex-nun Helen to uncover who or what is responsible.

I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is the second book following Darren and Helen, but it works well as a stand-alone, in the sense that you can come in without previous knowledge (like me).

Darren is a Detective Inspector in his home town of Liverpool, he's engaged to a fireman, with their wedding looming; which puts increasing pressure on Darren to reconnect with his homophobic family.
When a perfectly normal woman bursts into flames and dies, Darren is put onto the case. When he starts getting more questions than answers, he turns to an old ally, Helen. 

Helen's history as a nun, and her keenness for academia, makes her the perfect researcher. Especially when it becomes obvious that it is involving the occult, demons and angels and forbidden books coated in skin...

The chapters alternate between several characters, and are also interspersed with the writings of a Victorian scholar.
I found the scholar's introduction to the story fascinating, as he goes to investigate rumours with just the right amount of arrogance and selfishness. That he succumbs to temptation, and dutifully notes his decline.
Later in the book, his sections are merely the translation of the unholy book he found, which tells the story of a fallen angel that becomes a fire demon. This has a bearing on the main story, and it does have a sense of being true to this ancient text; but it was very dry, like trying to read a bible. I ended up skimming a lot of this sections.

The main story was OK, I wanted to say that it is shared between several narrators, but it frequently shifts into third-person omniscient, which I personally find jarring.
This, along with the way information was piled on, made it hard for me to connect.

The plot was decent, it was original and creative, with enough twists and red herrings thrown in.
But I was disappointed by the ending - it has a powerful emotional punch, which I wasn't expecting; but it didn't feel like it had any resolution to the mystery.
I mean, we the readers know who is behind it, we know vaguely why, but it felt like it stopped before officially wrapping it all up. Yes, it leaves it open for the rest of the series, but it left me feeling dissatisfied, and failed to finish this "stand-alone" story.

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