Rating: 
Summary: Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries.
Review: Kate Elliot is a wonderful writer. She creats amazing characters and pulls them all into an intricate series of plots and subplots.In Child of Flame Kate Elliot carries the reader along with Alain and Liath as they discover who they are and their places in the world. Kate Elliot loves to lead readers through mysteries. Alain and Liath's heritage are mysteries that she gets closer to solving in this outstanding book. Even though you get frustrated with not knowing what is within these characters, it just spurs you on to want to find out and get to the end of the book as fast as possible. Liaths birth circumstances are very interesting and surprising and the emotion at the time is very intense. While Alain's mystery still isn't solved, Kate Elliot has come closer to revealing what he really is. While Alain and Liath are the main characters, there are still other well developed characters such as Sanglant and King Henry. Liath and Sanglant's daughter, Blessing, surprised me with her developing character and even if her growing up so fast seems strange, it excites me to see her take a part in the book. In Child of Flame Kate Elliot brings you to the world of the Aoi, who are not what I expected them to be. They are brought a little more into the action, even though they don't yet take an active part outside of their own little world, besides teaching Liath a little of her magic. They are a divided people, some wanting to make peace and others just wanting to destroy. Even though this book was close to 1000 pages, every page was worth reading and I don't think there are any wasted pages. Every page brings you closer to the mysteries that we all want to solve. I recommend this book to anybody, because it is one of those books that draw people in to really care about what happens in the story. I would also recommend reading the first books in the series first, so your caught up on all thats going on. I would read this book again and again, but i have other books scheduled to read so i'll get to it.
Rating:
Summary: Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries.
Review: Kate Elliot is a wonderful writer. She creats amazing characters and pulls them all into an intricate series of plots and subplots. In Child of Flame Kate Elliot carries the reader along with Alain and Liath as they discover who they are and their places in the world. Kate Elliot loves to lead readers through mysteries. Alain and Liath's heritage are mysteries that she gets closer to solving in this outstanding book. Even though you get frustrated with not knowing what is within these characters, it just spurs you on to want to find out and get to the end of the book as fast as possible. Liaths birth circumstances are very interesting and surprising and the emotion at the time is very intense. While Alain's mystery still isn't solved, Kate Elliot has come closer to revealing what he really is. While Alain and Liath are the main characters, there are still other well developed characters such as Sanglant and King Henry. Liath and Sanglant's daughter, Blessing, surprised me with her developing character and even if her growing up so fast seems strange, it excites me to see her take a part in the book. In Child of Flame Kate Elliot brings you to the world of the Aoi, who are not what I expected them to be. They are brought a little more into the action, even though they don't yet take an active part outside of their own little world, besides teaching Liath a little of her magic. They are a divided people, some wanting to make peace and others just wanting to destroy. Even though this book was close to 1000 pages, every page was worth reading and I don't think there are any wasted pages. Every page brings you closer to the mysteries that we all want to solve. I recommend this book to anybody, because it is one of those books that draw people in to really care about what happens in the story. I would also recommend reading the first books in the series first, so your caught up on all thats going on. I would read this book again and again, but i have other books scheduled to read so i'll get to it.
Rating:
Summary: A solid take on fantasy with a twist
Review: Kate Elliot's ability to intertwine several story lines makes this a good read. As with the other books in this series, she follows several interweaving story lines in different times to present a believable world. The only problems I have with this book are
1) One of the main characters in the book keeps doing stupid things. Certainly heroes (or heroines in this case) can be humanized, but I still prefer that they be intelligent, especially in classic fantasy. The choice between power and family is a great theme, however.
2) She stresses the lack of sophistication of medieval society. This is a somewhat biased vie. There where certainly uneducated folks, but at the same time it was not hard for many kings to field armies in the thousands. Certainly a good read, I liked it a lot more then the Jaran series.
Rating: 
Summary: Please help her stop!
Review: Kate Elliott is a darn good writer. I particularly liked her "Jaran" series, and I liked the first couple of books in this series pretty well. The trouble is that the series has developed like a carcinoma, and has multiplied _way_ out of control. Not only are there too many narrative threads to keep track of--there are too many threads to care about. The prose goes ever on and on. I've resigned myself to the truth that in today's world, everyone must write series. OK. Though I long for the days of the tightly written stand-alone novel, I can handle trilogies. I'll even put up with the occasional quadrology. But when the books spew forth in numbers greater than the fingers of one hand, and grow to the size (and weight) of cinder blocks, I want to cry out, "Stop! Please! Size isn't _everything_!" Since I hold you responsible for what is happening here, I'm going to address Kate's editor: please stop telling her to write as many words as possible, and get her to concentrate a bit on the quality of the prose and keeping the narrative manageable. OK? Please? Use the blue pencil and cross out some lines today. I can't read any more of this stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: When can I sit down and read the whole series?
Review: My only real complaint with this series is that I found it too early, and have to wait, and wait, and wait for each new book to come out. I have consistently found Ms. Elliott's books to be excellent reading. Her characters are varied and very believable. I love Liath, who even when she whines, or hasn't a clue, manages to get the job done (gives me hope for myself). A note on the female dominated society. While females are definately prominant here, the men seem to be holding their own pretty well. I will admit that in general men are stronger soldiers (I take exception to faster, most of the fastest movers I know are female - it usually varies roughly indirectly with size), and therefore most notable soldiers would be likely to be male. However, it there have been many societies, even some strongly male-dominated, where descent has been counted through the female line. The reason is simple - you can never be certain who a child's father is, but you can be very certain of who his or her mother is. In patriarchal society then, a man's heirs would be his sister's sons, rather than his wife's. Nothing strange therefore about a matriarchal lineage in a more egalitarian society.
Rating:
Summary: How can we wait until Crown of Stars?
Review: Once again I have several criticisms to make but can pass on only good recommendations in the end. Kate Elliott's talent sometimes tends to outrun her planning and I think it has been detrimental to this series that it has sprawled so widely beyond the bounds of the 2 trilogies it was originally intended as. Already we have 4 books, and at least two more to come, with the series structure already rendered obsolete by the sheer breadth of material that Elliott covers. This is not to say that there isn't internal consistency of structure because this novel is structured beautifully around Liath's ascent into the spheres. The travails which every other character goes through echo Liath's symbolic battling with Desire, False Obligation, Greed and the other motifs which are characterised by the Seven Stars by which the maleficus walks the spheres. My frustration could just be because she let so few revelations slip in this huge novel, as in THE BURNING STONE. When the action started hotting up with about 150 pages to go I couldn't suppress my irritation that more details weren't released. But still, I have to marvel at the way that Elliott managed to trick us into thinking certain things (i.e. about Liath's parentage and royal descent, about Alain's descent, about the ghosts of the elves that periodically encounter Liath, Hanna and Alain, the exile of the Aoi, even Liath's troubled realtionships with the men in her life!) which may not necessarily have been true and how so few clues manages to keep me thinking almost solely about this book two days after I finished it! If you are feeling a bit lost in this novel due to the range of new characters and settings introduced in this novel, hang in there because the tie-ins at the end make it all the worth the while. And beyond that, even though we sometimes meet new characters in this novel at the expense of any mention of other older characters e.g. Tallia, the new characters are endlessly endearing - I swear if you don't love Adica then you don't have a heart! I also wanted to say how amazing Kate Elliott is at painting an incredibly poignant picture of human desire - there were a number of chapters in this novel where I felt so achingly involved with the love/lust that the characters bore each other I felt I could reach out and touch them. It's like the scene in Elliott's JARAN (highly recommended!!) where Tess and Baktiaan are at the Temple and he begins singing her the song the Fedya wrote for her. Ican still *hear* his voice and *see* his face when they are riding up the Avenue. The chapters which I felt this most strongly in in CHILD OF FLAME were when Sanglant sees Liath in Gent, when Sanglant meets with Helmut Villam's daughter Waltharia and when Liath sees Hugh in Darre. Amazing scenes I had to read again for their power to capture the human heart and its expressions.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent So Far
Review: Once again Kate Elliott has impressed me with her excellent writing style. This book has captivated me so much and I am only halfway throuhg it. The story is so good that it is tough to put the book down. If you can deal with loosing a little sleep to get to the next chapter, this is most certainly a good book to buy.
Rating: 
Summary: Get to the point!
Review: The first three books were great, but this book dragged on and on. The biggest redeeming point is that the fifth book is the final one, so I know that she will bring the points together and finish up the series. The main plot points were necessary for the fifth book, but were really drawn out way to long. I almost wonder if the goal was to pad the book and make sure that books four and five are a similar length to the previous three books. But I still recommend the series and I'm sure I'll enjoy the final book.
Rating:
Summary: This is fantasy at its best
Review: The fourth book in Kate Elliott's ambitious Crown of Stars series is Child of Flame. Originally, Ms. Elliott had planned to do a trilogy, but as she herself admits, the plot quickly outgrew three books. In this book, Alain, the foundling who is seeking the truth of his heritage, is pulled into a struggle for power between his own kind and their worst enemy, the Cursed Ones. This struggle has existed for aeons. The other adventurers in the Crown of Stars books, Liath and Sanglant, and the exiled king, have their own business to mind, but this is Alain's book. The reader will feel every heartache and every pain as Alain searches for answers to questions he in some cases does not even know to ask. Kate Elliott's world of Crown of Stars owes a lot to her grounding in medieval history. Her stories are like a rich tapestry, meant to envelop the reader. Rickey R. Mallory
Rating:
Summary: Child of Flame leaves me burning for more
Review: This book is just as great as the other three. i've read them all, and when i saw the fourth on the shelf at the bookstore i had to have it. It didn't disappoint me, except that i don't know what i'm going to do with myself until the fifth volume comes out. I literally couldn't put it down, and that led to many sleepless nights! i won't tell you about the plot because it is pretty convoluded, and couldn't do it in less than 1000 words. Happy Reading!
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