Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder

As a child, Yelena was kidnapped from the bosom of her family and taken to the country of Ixia. As a teenager, she killed a man and was about to be executed for it when she was rescued by a man named Valek, who promised her a slightly longer life as a food taster, testing the Commander of Ixia's food for poison. To keep her honest, he dosed her with a poison called "Butterfly Dust", for which she had to recieve the antidote every day or die.

During this time, she was discovered to have magical abilities, and since mages were not welcome in Ixia, she was returned to the country of Sitia and to the bosom of her family by the man she had fallen in love with... Valek. There, she entered the school of magic to study her talent, and to grow to know the family she had been so cruelly taken from at a young age.

Her magical talent was not like any other at the school, and when a number of young girls were murdered to increase one of the mage's powers, Yelena and her friends at the school fought him and defeated him. Her love Valek is completely immune to magic, but managed to help her as well, and the villain, a mage named Cahill, was brought to justice. In the course of the story, Yelena discovered she was a kind of mage called a Soulfinder. Not only can she put souls back in their bodies, but she can animate the soulless dead body if she wants to, which makes most of the mages of the school afraid of her. They fear she will raise an army of soulless dead and seize control of the school and the country.

In Fire Study, the Mages of the School gather in council to decide what to do about her. Roze, the first mage and leader of the school, hates and fears Yelena and what she can do, with good reason, as all other mages with Yelena's powers have gone on to become mass-murdering tyrants. Yelena insists she would never do that while privately fearing that someday she will. But when word is brought to her that Cahill has escaped, she leaves the school to track him down before he can kill anyone else. It seems he has taken refuge in the lands of a tribe called the Sunseeds and whose mages are known as Storytellers. Yelena has met and befriended a Storyteller named Moon Man, and with the help of another Sunseed man named Tauno and her brother, Leif, travel to the Sunseed lands.

The Sunseeds have recently been splintered when a faction of their tribe abandoned their traditional magic for Magic like that used by Cahill. Worse, these "Warpers" as they are called, use more than just blood for power: if they capture the soul of someone with magical power, they can add the magic owned by the soul they have stolen to their own, making them much more magically powerful. But when Yelena and the other Sunseeds enter the lands of the Warpers to fight them, they find they have already fled to other parts of Sitia.

Feeling honor-bound to stop the Sunseed Warpers, Yelena, Leif, Moon Man and Tauno track one band of Sunseeds through a subterranean passage and discover that the Warpers have contacted another powerful Warper whose powers are over fire, to keep her checked. The first time she encounters him, he nearly burns her to death, which makes her fear him intensely. But she must face her fear if she is ever to bring the Sunseeds and Cahill to justice.

In her absence from the school, however, Roze has mobilized the Mage Council into nearly declaring war on Ixia, and declaring Yelena to be a danger who must be returned to the council for imprisonment and judgement. With Sitia too hot to hold her, she and her friends must return to Ixia for help, and to prevent Sitia and Ixia from going to war.

Ixia, though, is having a mage problem of its own. Young mages, who usually cross the border into Sitia to escape Ixia's ban on mages, have been disappearing in transit. Can Yelena find the cause, and prevent the two countries from going to war while capturing Cahill and clearing her name and reputation with the mage council? Or has she taken on tasks too big even for her?

This was a very satisfying novel, and might be the end of the series about Yelena. Though lots of bad things happen to her family, friends and people, Yelena always manages to find a way to cope. In fact, her way of dealing with the warpers, the fire warper and others, was unique and something I would never have thought of, and thus it was wonderful to read. I like a good surprise in a novel every once in a while.

Yelena seems like an actual person when you are reading her thoughts. By which I mean she makes bad decisions occasionally, but you understand why she did at the time. And she is fairly heroic, facing up to her fears and never just breaking and running or refusing to deal with her problems. She's someone who transforms people's lives when she comes into contact with them, and that's always enjoyable to read. In short, she transcends from character to real person, and that's unusual to read in a story, but I usually enjoy it when it happens (because if the character is annoying, making him/her/it seem real won't make them any less annoying to read about) and here it is definitely enjoyable.

This series, (Poison Study, Magic Study and Fire Study) raises the bar for Fantasy Romances, and Fantasy in general, actually. I call it a Fantasy Romance, because the romance and Yelena's feelings for and relationship with Valek form a strong subplot in the story. But it isn't all sunshine, laughter and happiness: the fact that Valek serves as an assassin for the Commander of Sitia causes a fallout in their relationship, but they do come back, make up and go on with their relationship, and it isn't just a manufactured argument, either.

If you enjoy fantasy and romance together, this book is one you'll love. Even if you just like Fantasy, you will greatly enjoy this book. Fans of romance alone may find the fantasy elements too strong, as Yelena and Velek spend most of the book apart, but the final ending will leave you happy at their possible Happily Ever After. (Possible only because I am unsure if this is the final book in the series. Yes, I'd love to see more.)