Fire and Heist
Sarah Beth Durst
Crown
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Being a wyvern isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just ask sixteen-year-old Sky Hawkins. Sure, there's a whole cult celebrity following for her kind, and her were-dragon ancestors flew the skies and changed the course of history when they revealed their existence, but these days the most her kind can manage is to breathe a little fire and smoke... and Sky can barely do that. She doesn't even get out of going to high school - which wasn't so terrible before her family was stripped of half their wealth and most of their status by the wyvern Council of Aspen, Colorado after her mother's last failed heist... after which she disappeared, tearing the heart out of the family. Now shunned, Sky's father won't let her or her brothers steal so much as a nickel from a piggy bank, let alone pull off the sort of thefts on which wyvern society prides itself; one more failed job could see them permanently cast out from their own kind. Then her former boyfriend comes to her with information: he knows what Sky's mother was trying to steal when she disappeared, a strange jewel from his family's vaults. If Sky can finish the heist her mom started, maybe she can have it all back: her family's wealth, the Hawkins honor, her friends, and most importantly her family. She just has to pull off a job that bested an expert thief like her mother, using nothing but a handful of amateurs and shaky intel... and all without alerting her father or overprotective brothers.
REVIEW: This is a fast-paced tale of modern-day dragons (if dragons in human form) and jewel thefts, if not an especially deep one. Sky sometimes feels a little immature for her age; at times, I couldn't help wondering if the tale had been aged up to young adult from an earlier, middle-grade-geared draft, as it went out of its way to avoid having serious harm come to anyone despite grave threats. The characters feel thin around the edges, too, though they do their jobs in the story competently enough, from Gabriela the fantasy-obsessed human to Maximus the somewhat shifty wizard, even Sky's trio of brothers who can be either major pains or major assets, depending on whether or not Sky can persuade them to her cause. Still, the story has some fun with itself, even as it telegraphs twists and messages and occasionally draws itself out overlong, and the heists themselves are nicely tense. It technically wraps up by the ending, if with (likely deliberate) series potential packed into the final chapters in a few unresolved threads and themes. All in all, Fire and Heist makes for a quick and entertaining read, establishing a world I wouldn't mind revisiting - just maybe not at hardcover price next time.
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