Highfire - Eoin Colfer BLOG TOUR

High five to Highfire! The scales are tipped in its favour but I don’t want to drag on or sound like I’m winging it. I’m on fire. Puns and Dragons? Wasn’t there a game of that name? Oh no, that was Dungeons and Dragons. Enough.

Listen very carefully for I will say this only once. Artemis Fowl. There. That’s got it over and done with and we’ll say no more. Forget about it. This is an adult fantasy novel. Hmm. I’ll rephrase that for I don’t wish to mislead. A fantasy novel for adults. But if you’ve clocked the dragon thing and the fantasy thing then maybe you’ve a cute little image in your head of mists and mountains, fairy castles and enchantments, knights and dragons, portals to another land and ……..STOP! Think again. It’s no Game of Thrones either. Okay. I’ve told you what it isn’t, how about what it is!

It’s Honey Island in the Louisiana swamps. It’s minding the ‘gators and poppin’ the Pringles. It’s Flashdance T shirts and reality TV. It’s Vern the vodka drinker or Wyvern if we’re gonna get formal or even Lord Highfire. He is the last living Cajun dragon. And he totally rocks!

This is an experienced storyteller at work offering a crescendo of action and intrigue that should keep the reader riveted until the end. It’s funny, sometimes witty, sometimes almost farcical, it’s fantasy so anything can happen and it does. It boasts a cast of some memorable characters, heroes, Waxman, Squib, Elodie, Bodi and villains, Regency Hooke (how perfect a name is that for a dastard, yep, I did mean dastard) but all headed by the inimitable Vern. It has some underlying sentiments about a boy and his mom, rooting for your friends, getting an education as well as being a rollicking good read. 

I love, what I like to call ‘fringe fantasy’ where the setting is very much real world; Louisiana and the swamps, fishin’ off the bayou, with a generous helping of ‘normal’ human characters, plenty of fast paced action and ammunition fuelled pyrotechnics and then you get the anomaly - a dragon, the last of his kind. Whether there are any other fantasy elements I am not prepared to disclose. But trust me. It just works.

The dialogue is lively and tips its hat to the literate amongst us-

‘I’m like Boo fuckin’ Radley on crack…….’

‘Specially the book. Something happens to my Faulkners and that's the final nail in the coffin as far as this here is concerned.’

Laugh?! I nearly peed myself! And speaking of pee didya know that dragon’s piss is like aloe vera times a million? That's what Vern says. And if Vern says it then I'm not gonna argue!   Colfer’s wit meanders through the prose like the alligators in the swamp. It’s an enjoyable read without pretension. It’s escapism and entertainment. It’s like being in a literary theme park but there’s no queues for the rides, you just jump right in and hang right on for the ride of your life. 

Oh, thank, thank you, Quercus Books for this proof. And thank thank you, Milly Reid for giving me a place upon this blog tour. However I am  but one lowly blogger amongst many. Do check out what other bloggers have to say about HighFire.