An In-Progress review of "Firetale" by Dante E. Graves, down to the home stretch.

I think my reigning theory at this point is that Martha is actually an Angel sent to spy on the circus by God.  I mean, if the Devil can have human spies in churches, why can't God have a spy in the circus?  It would explain why she is able to calm people with simply her presence, and why she has no memory of who she is or how she came to be there.  It might also explain why she was in a town that the circus happened to pass through so soon before they arrived.  God set her up to be picked up by them.  That is my theory anyway.  I keep expecting to find out that God is trying to see if the demionis can be restrained.  It would explain why Martha is most attracted to the most dangerous - he's the one who needs a little god-like intervention.  But if she doesn't know what she is, if she doesn't know what she's capable of, I'm not sure what all she's supposed to be doing there.

We're allowed a glimpse at the human side of Lazarus, but that's about all we've seen in character development in the last couple of chapters.  Everyone is pretty much doing exactly what they're expected to do.  No one's made any major decisions.  Everything's just puttering along.  But we do get to find out that Lazarus fell in love with a human at one time, but decided to keep his distance from her for the sake of the circus.  Ahh, how predictable.

I'm not sure what to expect from the wrap-up for this story.  As it stands, Greg is injured and in need of medical attention while he is alone in the middle of the woods hiding from the Judge who is stalking the circus.  There are plenty of pages left to work it all out, but not quite enough to introduce anything more dire or captivating as far as obstacles for our protagonists to overcome.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it all turns out.