Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Nov 17, 2010

Ceridwen rated it:

Weird. Firstreads let me win a book again! I haven't read anything Rushdie's written in the last 20 years - holy crap, has it been 20 years? - but I used to think he was awesome.

----

This book arrived this afternoon, and it's not even a proper book: it's got crooked tape for a binding, it smells like laser printer ink, there are printing artifacts all over the place, and I can see the hesitation lines where someone cut around the edges. I don't even know if it's possible f More...

81 comments like (29 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2012

Sky rated it:

Luka and the Fire of Life is a delightful fairy tale from celebrated author Salman Rushdie written for his son Milan and one can see hints throughout of the relationship and love shared by the `storyteller' father and his son. It is a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories which Rushdie wrote years ago for his older son.

Luka lives in an imaginary town which seems to be somewhere in Southwest Asia. He lives with his mother, brother Haroun and his father the great Storyteller Rashi More...

0 comments like

Jun 30, 2011

Marika rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 19, 2011

Neeraja rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2011

Steven rated it:

Luka and the Fire of Life was disappointing. Clearly Rushdie loves words. It is full of puns. Clearly he knows his myths and theology. There are all kinds of god and minor deities across many societies and races.

So Luka is off on a quest to save his father. As I read I ws reminded of The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, and even the Percy Jackson series. The quest is loosely structured around a gaming paradigm.

Doesn't all of that sound like it should be great fun? It is fo More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 16, 2011

Lesli rated it:

I think I enjoyed this book. I wanted to read it but every time I did I fell asleep after 20 pages. I think that has more do with my life than the book. I enjoyed this book much more than the Haroun and the Stories of the Sea. At the very end of the book, I realized one of the reasons I probably enjoyed the book. Its about "a child who defies Time's power just by being born, and make us all young again". In that young Luka and I have something in common, since I'm a child born to More...

0 comments like

Feb 14, 2011

Cornerofmadness rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Feb 02, 2011

Shauna rated it:

I have a bad habit of buying books based on their covers. This book had such a beautiful cover that I didn't wait for it to come out in paperback—I glanced at the flap copy, saw that the book had a fantasy plot, and bought it.

When I started to read the book, I discovered it was a kids' book. I don't generally care for YA or children's literature, but this book turned out to be an exception. This book is like the Harry Potter series in that it has many silly creatures and a strong kid More...

0 comments like

Jan 02, 2011

Tracey rated it:

Devoured this short novel in a day - we follow Luka, the younger son of Rashid Kalifa (and younger brother of Haroun) as he attempts to save his storytelling father from a mysterious sleeping sickness by entering the Magic World.

Rushdie explains this story was written for his younger son, much as Haroun and the Sea of Stories was written for his older son; I've read the latter and I think I actually enjoyed this one a bit more, as Rushdie has expanded the Magic World and made the ques More...

0 comments like

Dec 06, 2010

Cheryl rated it:

This novel is kind of the sequel to "Haroun and the Sea of Stories". Once again Rashid (the father) finds himself in trouble and his son must journey to a magical land in order to save him. However, the son this time is Haroun's younger brother Luka. First off, those driven nuts by the rhyming in "Haroun" (you know who you are) will be pleased to find it is absent from this book. However, it is replaced with something I found even more annoying. The quest is set in the c More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 25, 2011

Anthony rated it:

This is definitely not my favorite Rushdie book. It continues the story of Rashid Kahlifa's boys and their adventures from Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This one follows Luka, Haroun's younger brother, and Luka's pet bear and dog through a video-game-like magical world on a quest to revive his father with the Fire of Life.

To me, it felt like 2 things: first that Salman Rushdie enjoyed his experience writing his first children's story with Haround and the Sea of Stories and decided it More...

0 comments like

Jan 05, 2011

sica rated it:

Akhir tahun lalu, buku terbaru Salman Rushdie terbit juga. Judulnya Luka and The Fire of Life. Ceritanya cocok buat dikisahkan kembali kepada anak-anak. Karena memang Rusdhie sengaja menulis kisah ini untuk anaknya, Milan(13 tahun)

Kalau ada yang pernah membaca Haroun and the Sea of Stories (terbit 1990), nah buku terbaru Rusdhie ini memang sekuel kisah itu. Luka sendiri adalah adik Haroun, berbeda usia 18 tahun.Kini Luka, 12 tahun, harus menjalani petualangannya sendiri.

“Y More...

2 comments like

Jan 20, 2012

Arun rated it:

Fantasy is about escapism. To escape from the prosaic clutches of reality and dive into the depths of lands never to be seen with naked eyes & meet fantastic creatures, which fantasy lover never wanted this ? But this being said it is extremely easy for a work of fantasy to become an outrightly laughable piece of junk. This is exactly what happened to me with this book.

I haven't had too much acquaintance with Rushdie having read only one of his works which also happened to be a child More...

4 comments like

Jan 15, 2012

Arjun rated it:

This was a lot of fun. Short, sweet, and a lot of fun.

It is refreshing that Rushdie can transition between writing lengthy and complicated symbolic tomes depicting Pakistan and India in chaos and then write about a fantasy - perhaps a virtual - world. The world and story that Rushdie depicts has a fantastical element to it, but the first thing you might realize is how akin this story is to a video game plot. It is a sophisticated and deep project that a video game student might creat More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2010

George rated it:

A follow-up to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Luka and the Fire of Life doesn't require you to have read the earlier book. Luka, Haroun's younger brother, is the second son of the famed storyteller Rashid Khalifa. As Khalifa lies on his apparent death bed, Luka must journey into a fantastical world to retrieve the Fire of Life, the only thing that can save him. There are talking animals, gods from various mythologies, an allegorical town full of very sensitive rats, and flying carpets. For those More...

0 comments like

Mar 15, 2011

Kerri rated it:

Twenty to fifty pages into this book, I was in love with it. By the end, I was so over it. What started out as charming and clever just gott a little ]too charming, too clever and too referential. It began to feel like a brainstorming session — by a very sharp, witty and creative brainstormer, sure — but, man, you have to reign it in at some point. As a lover of myth and fairy tales I should have loved it — the story arc is perfect, so smooth and symmetrical with all the proper elements of a More...

0 comments like

Sep 03, 2011

Nicki rated it:

Let me say first off that I am not usually a fan of Rushdie's writing. I found Midnight's Children dull and for a while I put off reading anything else of his. Finally I picked up Satanic Verses. I enjoyed this one more, but was still not completely convinced. When I saw this book come up on NetGalley, I figured I'd give him one last chance.

I think it must be a case of third-time-lucky, as I really enjoyed this book. The story is deceptively simple on the surface, like a fairytale ad More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2010

Vanessa rated it:

Okay. So. I was all ready to trash this book after, well, most of it. It is too cute by half. A dog named bear! A bear named dog! Like, shut up! I don't know. I really was finding it more silly and self-regarding than profound. And really, I think that is probably the right conclusion, ultimately. Especially as it enrages me when Rushdie reheats his old books to write a worse version of them. Like, why does he do this? I suppose this is why I am not a fiction writer. It seems like a tough gig. B More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 19, 2010

Vandita rated it:

sad to say but Luka isn't even half as magical as Haroun and the Sea of Stories. If you havent read the greatest book in the universe (i.e Haroun), you need to, before you read Luka. There are spoilers (atleast I think so. I dont even read back covers).
Well, there are just so many things about it which i didn't like. It lives up to the saying - sequels just don't match up. The problem is it tries to recreate something and fails. It would have been far better if Rushdie had just created a co More...

0 comments like

Dec 20, 2011

Mary Beth rated it:

This is a deliciously written book with a story you can sink into and drift along on. It is rich with mythological figures and tales, as well as many original characters directly from the author's imagination. Luka and the Fire of Life is whimsical and dreamy, even recalling Alice in Wonderland at certain points. I loved it when a little "white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking worriedly at a clock" popped up on the bank of the River of Time, for instance.
There are l More...

0 comments like

Jun 23, 2011

Bhargavi rated it:

A nice cosy read and a welcome change from the books I've been reading lately.YA is normally not the genre I pick up,but for some strange reason the cover of the book screamed out to me(who can resist an illustration of a boy, a dog and a bear on a magical carpet?).Plus, I really wanted to see what YA from Rushdie would read like.

Written for the 12th birthday of his second son, the book is an adorable story of Luka going off on an adventure to save his father; a fable really. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 09, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

Luka and the Fire of Life is Rushdie lite, to be sure, but that didn't detract from many critics' enjoyment of the novel. A classic fairy tale and quest story, with Alice-in-Wonderland-like twists and turns thrown in, the novel delighted many readers with its witty wordplay, its conglomeration of myths and story-worlds, and its charming characters. But this being Rushdie, little is conventional, and he uses the logic of video games to tell his tale -- Luka must collect enough lives to survive di More...

0 comments like

Aug 11, 2011

Dani rated it:

For a book that was so short (218 pages) it felt like it took me forever to read this story. I didn't feel like I really got into it until around page 120. It didn't really seem all that inventive or original to me. A few places I ran across something that was really funny and made me laugh, and there were a few times I thought a paragraph was worded nicely, but for the most part the writing in this piece reminded me of sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman.

I used to really like fantastica More...

0 comments like

Jul 11, 2011

Sheather rated it:

Not nearly as good as Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I love and highly recommend. This one seems less personal, because we spend less time getting to know the father who again needs saving, and it seems over-packed with deities from various world folklores, as though Rushdie is showing off his knowledge. That sort of thing always gets boring, and none of them are DEVELOPED as characters even though they ARE characters. I found the video-game format of the adventure both trite and sort of i More...

0 comments like

Nov 19, 2011

Robyn rated it:

Since I started my account with Good Reads, I've apparently become much more picky. (I sadly looked at how much I thoroughly enjoyed past books that were written no where near as well as Luka and the Fire of Life.) Alas, I was incredibly disappointed in this book. Perhaps because Salmnan Rushdie is such a celebrated writer, or because so many referred to this book as one of the best of the year, or even because I am interested in writing stories for children myself. I had such high hopes for thi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 22, 2010

Cassandra rated it:

Luka and the Fire of Life is a modern day fairy tale, complete with evil monsters ( such as the Aalim) and beautiful, powerful women ( specifically, the Insultana of Ott). Rushdie does a masterful job of blending together the modern world and the traditional fairy tale, a feat that is mirrored in the character of Rashid, Luka's father and a professional storyteller, in his creation of the World of Magic. It is in this world, and not the real one where his father is dying, that Luka's adventure t More...

0 comments like

Feb 02, 2011

Frederick rated it:

No one is, at turns, as consistently funny and sweet, or as silly and profound as Salman Rushdie. And nothing could be more entertaining than this tale of a young boy who must travel into the Heart of Magic, with his dog named Bear and his bear named Dog, in order to steal the Fire of Life and save his father from a retaliatory curse inflicted by a vengeful circus master who just may be a Titan. While this is supposedly a children’s book, Rushdie’s ruminations on the nature of time, discarded More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 15, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

This book, (which takes place around 24 years after Rushdie's first book for young adult readers, "Haroun and the Sea of Stories,") is hysterical, playful, and so much fun to read! It is also, as is every book by Salman Rushdie, incredibly intelligent and filled with wordplay, puns, and inside jokes. Rushdie wrote this particular book for his son. In it, 12-year old Luka must travel through the World of Magic to steal the Fire of Life in order to revive his dying father. What diffe More...

0 comments like

Oct 09, 2011

Linda rated it:

This book was difficult to get into at first, but I guess that was mostly because I was not in the 'right' mood for fantasy/children's fiction/ Harry Potter-like stories. I was reading it for my book club meeting. Indeed, the book club is certainly fulfilling one of its roles, which is to have the members read and discover books and authors they may never have picked out themselves.

It got interesting at some point, when I began to see an underlying theme about life in general. Or what More...

0 comments like

Nov 28, 2010

Catherine rated it:

Rushdie is one of my favorite writers, and when he is at the top of his game, he is extraordinary. When he's doing all right, the books are still worth reading. Luka and the Fire of Life is one of the latter -- there were bits that were so delightful that I had to read them aloud to my husband, but the book isn't as good as its predecessor, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Maybe it's that Rushdie isn't necessarily the one to handle the video game metaphor -- it felt dated and unoriginal, someth More...

0 comments like

reviews