Burn

By Elissa Sussman

Burn is the thrilling companion to Elissa Sussman’s masterful and original fairy tale, Stray. This engaging and imaginative continuation of the original fairy tale begun in Stray will appeal to readers of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and fans of the musicals Wicked and Into the Woods.

After helping to rescue Princess Aislynn, Elanor has finally rejoined the rebel camp she calls home. Stolen from her parents at a young age and forced into service by the Wicked Queen, Elanor now wants nothing more than to see the queen removed from power. But Elanor has secrets, mistakes she’s spent years trying to forget, and the closer the rebels get to the throne, the harder it is for Elanor to keep her past hidden away. Booklist said of Stray, “Sussman delightfully mixes dystopian tension with retold fairy tales, and the result is something wholly original.” Includes a map.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9780062274618

Elissa Sussman

Elissa Sussman received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and in a previous life managed animators and organized spreadsheets at some of the best animation studios in the world, including Nickelodeon, Disney, DreamWorks, and Sony Imageworks. You can find her name in the credits of The Croods, Hotel Transylvania, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their rescue dog, Basil. Stray is her first novel.

Reviews for Burn

[acargile-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read Burn by Patrick Ness because it has a dragon in it. I really like stories about dragons, especially if they can talk and have personality and aren't evil. The novel takes place during the Cold War. Russia has arrested an American pilot accused of spying with his plane. Russia is also about to launch a satellite into space. The United States worries that this satellite will spy on us and Russia will have the upper hand. Oh, and dragons are common. They live in the Waste Lands and have a peace with mankind.Sarah Dewhurst lives in Frome Washington, in 1957, and is central to a prophecy. She will stop the world from burning. I should stop there and let you see what happens. Okay--let's see what you need to know. Sarah's mom is dead; her father is a bit distant but has good instincts and loves his daughter greatly; her boyfriend is Japanese, so he is discriminated and bullied because WWII has ended 12 years previously. Sarah is also discriminated against because she is half black. The farm isn't doing well, so her father has hired a dragon to clear the fields as a last ditch effort. Usually red dragons do this work, but a blue Russian dragon arrives, named Kazimir. That's the setup for the novel. He appears to want to protect Sarah while Sarah's dad gets threatening letters to kill the dragon. Who does one believe? Do prophecies come true? Can you change a prophecy?Let me give you a list of characters and you can imagine the conflicts: Deputy Kelby - power-hungry, mean Deputy who abuses everyone, especially those who are not white. Malcolm - the highly trained teenage assassin sent to kill Sarah for the Mitera Thea; Sarah's death will bring peace to the world. Nelson - innocent gay teenager told by his parents that he's an abomination; finds and loves Malcom; has really bad luck Jason - Sarah's boyfriend who defends Sarah at all costs Agent Woolf - an expert on dragons trying to find who killed officers of the law in Canada, following the assassin from Canada to the US; partnered with Agent Dernovich. Agent Dernovich - smart agent who desires to save everyone. Kazimir - the dragon who knows the prophecy; the guide for the humansI really liked the book--it's very different; it's not uplifting. The ending is realistic---in the sense of what would really happen if this story happened. It sugar-coats nothing. There's a distance to the writing where the characters don't have much depth--you won't get emotionally involved with them. You distantly watch these things happen to them, but you won't have tears in your eyes. They accept knowing that nothing can change what has happened. It's a story of people victimized by a prophecy with dragon magic unleashed in two worlds at the time when Russia and the US are prepared to destroy each other with nuclear weapons. You can't be too sentimental because the government has said that mutual destruction can come at any time. No time for tears or emotion. I assume it's a standalone. There's room for a book two, but I think it works best alone.

[salsabrarian · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is an Eisenhower America that has a tenuous relationship with dragons. Malcolm is on a quest to fulfill a prophecy and Sarah, a farmer's daughter, is unwittingly a part of the prophecy. Well, that's as far as I got before I dropped it.

[infjsarah · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of Patrick Ness but while I enjoyed this novel, it was not a favourite of mine. Still worth reading though.

[heatherlinc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It took time to get into this book but I did enjoy it in the end. The plot was interesting with lots going on - dragons, alternate worlds, racism, police corruption, the Cold War, murder and so on (the list is long). There were also a range of different characters and I particularly liked Sarah and Kazimir, the dragon.For me, the first half of the book was the best. I was totally invested in the story but the second-half wasn't as strong. However, the ending was great and left me happy with the resolution. Although "Burn" wasn't up to the standard to the "Chaos Walking" series, it did turn out to be quite an entertaining read.

[shannonrose4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ness has created another excellent weird and wonderful dragon filled adventure that leads not only to the end of the world, but back to what really matters; family, friends & unexpected love. The world created within these pages will keep you guessing through all the twists, turns & dragon fire!

[sjgirl-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The down to earth aspects of Burn tended to draw me in more than the fantasy. Sarah’s father hires a dragon to help on their farm, but there’s much more to it than she’s aware of, a prophecy that possibly involves Sarah and a war.Early on I did find a lot of the dragon stuff interesting, they talk, there are different kinds who live in different countries, they hire themselves out as workers, people fear them yet at the same time fantasize about which type they’d be, etc., all of that intrigued me. However to some degree, I felt like most of that ended up going nowhere. There are two dragons featured here but their involvement felt more standard than I’d expected after reading those inventive aspects of their lore mentioned towards the beginning of the book.My other issue with the fantasy parts of the book is how the prophecy is mentioned approximately a billion times yet no one who mentions it actually knows concrete details about the prophecy. Not only did it make it tough to get a handle on what was happening when even the characters themselves weren’t particularly sure of what was happening, but by making the prophecy so malleable it was too easy to insert plot twists. Several of the twists did take me by surprise, which is good, and there’s a character introduced via one of those twists who I adored almost immediately, it’s just that twists don’t feel as earned if there are no rules governing things. I guess I just admire a situation more when an author has to work their way out of a corner and turn a story in a particular direction. When there aren’t really any restrictions placed on the world of the story changing gears doesn’t seem like quite as impressive of a feat.Burn is told from several points of view, at times the change in POV occurs at a rapid pace so you do have to quickly adjust which can be tricky. As is often the case with so many points of view there were definitely some I preferred to others, like for instance, I really wish more of the story had come from Sarah’s point of view and I probably could have done without Detective Woolf.What had me most engaged with this one is the 1957 time period and how it related to Sarah being mixed race (black mom, white dad) and dating an American born Japanese boy and Malcolm being gay and falling in love with Nelson and their interactions with police. I tended to be more invested in those moments and in pretty much any family moment than I was in the more fantastical ones. Obviously I had mixed feelings about this one, but I would encourage other readers to give it a try for themselves since it certainly is something quite different, plus it does touch on timely subject matter (it’s disturbing/depressing how little has changed since 1957) and maybe the fantasy will fit your personal preferences better than they did mine.