Firestarter
Genre: Sci-Fi
Original publication date: September 1980
Book description: The Department of Scientific Intelligence (aka "The Shop") never anticipated that two participants in their research program would marry and have a child. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called "Lot Six" while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.
Thoughts:
I allowed a few days between finishing the book and writing the review to try to get my ideas together but that is not working so let's just go right into it.
It starts off with action, Charlie and her father are on the run literally, they are walking away from a group of people who are after them. They try to lose them in the normal human traffic of the city. The men following them do not wish to make a scene. Their mission has to be subtle. The Shop is an organization that should not exist. The organization itself is not exactly at the peak of their life so they can't allow themselves to mess it up, the capture of the targets must be done without raising suspicion.
The people in charge do not think much of the little girl and her father, it's a protocol they are following, as they messed up and now can't allow the pair to disclose what the US government has done, they have to be contained but dangerous, no, they do not think they are any danger.
We follow several people a few of them who work with the Shop and Charlie and her father, so you have the opportunity of seeing the different sides of the story.
Charlie is a lovely girl, she is afraid of her own abilities and that fear makes it impossible for her to control it. The fire ability is not very well described as no one in the story really knows how it works, but it seems to be related to her emotions.
The power is not simply to burn, she has abilities that are hard to explain. She has premonitions, can make certain machines behave in specific ways, like getting the payphone to give her the coins back, capable of knowing the feelings of others, and yet she is not a mind reader, she has ideas of people's feelings and when they lie but she is still a child and her feelings can blind her abilities.
People the encounter do not know how to take their abilities, the compulsion ability, her father is able to make people do things, he can put thoughts directly into the mind of those around him, but the abilities have disadvantages. Not sure how they relate but pushing thoughts into others causes headaches, severe ones, but could they cause more damage? The scientist want to test if 1 they do have powers as most of them doubt that; two what consequences they have on their bodies and three, most important one really, if there is a way to make those abilities useful to the US government.
Charlie has fewer side effects, other than general tiredness. She is the main focus of the Shop her power is greater than other people affected by Lot Six, and they want to investigate her ability and get to know it.
Bad thing: People fear what they do not understand.
Most of the adults, be it government or normal people they catalog Charlie as a monster because her power is so flashy and destructive. She is no longer viewed as a person but as something else.
I really enjoyed my time reading this, from start to finish.
Beware the ending either convince you or not. In my case I was a bit upset right when I reached the end, I was so invested that I felt it was incomplete, but after a little time from it, I think it actually fits perfectly.
Totally recommend this book, it has action, great family dynamics, government agencies full-on with spies, assassins and cover-ups, slight touch in human experimentation, nothing too graphic but definitely has a bit of description, the typical betrayals and a small case of an open ending.
The end you know where it leads but the consequences of those actions are still up in the air, yet it fits so well with the story.
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