Continuing the story of the dream team tackling supernatural nightmares, 'Relight My Fire' takes the Stranger Times gang to a whole new level of weird. And thanks to its title, makes Take That and Lulu your daily internal soundtrack.Could it be Magic?
When a student falls from the sky at trainee ST journalist Stella's feet, it's just a coincidence. But mystical powers find this impossible to believe given her history - or lack of it - and the incident sets in motion the biggest and most dangerous investigation for the Stranger Times team yet. Before they know it, they're interviewing ex-superstar musicians, up all night staking out disturbed graves and asking mystical royalty about magical narcotics, all in pursuit of the answer to; What the heck is going on?!
Everything Changes
I found 'Relight My Fire' much harder work than the previous Stranger Times novels for two reasons. A lot of new characters are introduced, and their backstories need explaining to make sense of the plot, giving the narrative a bit of a stop-start feel. Although both plot and background are managed well by the author, this does lead to less focus on the Stranger Times team and the magazine itself, and I missed them. They're the reason I love this series of books, and, while I trusted that McDonnell and his editors wouldn't have included so much about the newbies without good reason, I often felt like I was waiting for the main act to arrive on stage.
Love Love
I also missed Cogs and Zeke, but immediately fell in love with Brian. I hope that McDonnell has good things in store for him!
Believe
This is going to sound an absolutely potty thing to say about a supernatural comedy horror novel, but here goes; 'Relight My Fire' got a bit silly towards the end. I'm not sure I can say much more than that without giving away spoilers, but the crux of it is that it's hard to suspend your disbelief in any genre once the climaxes get bigger, more explosive and harder to ignore. There's also an unwritten rule that supernatural stories always work better on the cusp of normality. They somehow become boring once the miraculous goes mainstream, whether that's Superman marrying Lois Lane or Buffy the Vampire Slayer getting acknowledged by her peers at high school graduation. No one wants to think that these characters are like us and still have to do the washing up or mow the lawn.
As for 'Relight My Fire', so many ordinary people would have taken part in or seen the hard-to-ignore events towards the end of the book I'm not sure there are enough magical neuralyzers in any imagination to return the weirdness back to the shadows. But then I'm not a writer and this isn't my world. It will be interesting to see how McDonnell solves this conundrum.
Overall
'Relight My Fire' felt like the homeopathic Stranger Times and the dilution failed to meet my need to spend time with the fantastic characters I'd grown to love over the previous books. On the one hand, I understand that creatives can move on for a lot of reasons - boredom, end of a character's story arc, wanting to do something different etc - but I was left with a pang of disappointment at the end of this book. I know there are more on the way, however, so am hoping that Stranger Times 5 will refocus on its brilliant core and Banecroft, Hannah, Reggie, Ox, Grace, Stella and Manny (and hopefully Coggs, Zeke, Jon Mor, and Brian) will be back for good.
Now, what next..?
'Relight My Fire' by CK McDonnel was published in paperback by Penguin in 2025. You can read my thoughts on 'The Stranger Times' in an earlier post. Apologies to Take That for playing with their song titles. Image copyright the blogger.
