A chess set reputed to hold a powerful secret and a chess game in which the pawns are human are at the center of Katherine Neville’s historical thriller, “The Fire.” It’s a sequel to Neville’s 1988 best seller, “The Eight,” a novel that many describe as a worthy precursor to “The Da Vinci Code.”
In autumn 1993, Alexandra Solarin is poised to become the world’s youngest chess grandmaster. The 12-year-old had lost a game earlier that week to Vartan Azov, only a year her senior. They are meeting at the Zagorsk Monastery in Russia for the final game of the tournament. Alexandra is accompanied by her father, a grandmaster retired from the game.
On their way into the monastery, an old woman bumps into Alexandra, and places a ticket to a local art exhibit in her pocket. On the back is pasted an illustration of a firebird, and a warning.
Alexandra never plays her scheduled game. They arrive at the site, a room that includes a glass display case. Within that case is a statue Alexandra’s father had thought safely hidden: The Black Queen. Sensing danger, he takes his daughter and leaves the monastery, only to be gunned down upon exiting.
The Black Queen is part of a mysteriously powerful chess set. In the year 755, near Baghdad, lived a Sufi mathematician and scientist, al-Jabir ibn Hayyan. One of his works, “The Books of the Balance,” established him as the father of Islamic alchemy. In 765, Jabir was appointed the official court chemist under caliph al-Mansur. The ruler asked the alchemist to “create a chess service forged from uniquely created materials and compounds that could only be produced through the mysteries of alchemical science, and to fill this set with stones and symbols that would be meaningful to those acquainted with his art.”
Jabir complied, but went his ruler one better. He incorporated within the set ancient and secret wisdom he’d found in the Koran. But the service seemed to contain a mysterious power, and it was buried. It resurfaced during the French Revolution, and its pieces were scattered, to prevent its power from being abused.
“The Fire” alternates between the travels of The Black Queen, in the 1820s, and Alexandra’s unwilling entrance into what is known as The Game, in 2003.
In 1822, the Albanian guardian of The Black Queen is under attack by the Turks. He sends his favorite daughter from the castle with the treasure, with instructions that she is to carry it to Lord Byron in Italy. The daughter and her traveling companion never make it to Italy, much to the consternation of those expecting her arrival.
After her father’s assassination, Alexandra was forced to give up chess. Her mother had raised her in Mesa Verde, and she is now apprenticed to a famous Basque chef in Washington, D.C. She receives a mysterious summons from her mother, asking her to come to Colorado to celebrate her birthday. When she arrives, her mother is nowhere to be found, but it seems she has invited an unusual group to her party. And she has left behind a series of puzzles that hint at a battle between black and white, and the reassembly of the powerful missing chess set.
“The Fire” is inarguably fast-paced, breathlessly so, but there are a bundle of characters and complicated history in play. Neville’s research is fascinating, but at times it devolves into a recitation of facts that add little to her narrative. And Alexandra’s search for her missing mother, which takes place at breakneck speed, is blocked and facilitated by so many that it seems, at times, one needs a program to keep all the players straight.
“The Fire” attempts much and, at times, succeeds. It moves quickly and its premise — that a chess set holds such power that it cannot fall into the wrong hands — is an interesting one. And Neville’s ultimate explanation of how that power could and should be used is original. But the story is at times lost in the complexity of its wrappings.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
Fiction
The Fire, by Katherine Neville, $26
