I discovered this book accidentally: one of my groups was voting for a BOTM, and Fire Country was among others on the list. I checked it out, and the blurb made this story seem both horrendous and morbidly fascinating. And just look at the very first paragraph of the book: 
 THE LAW 
 ***** 
 In its original form, as approved by the Greynote Council 
 Article 56 
 A Bearer shall, upon reaching the appropriate age of sixteen years old, be Called to a man, no younger than eighteen years old, to Bear children, immediately and every three years thereafter. 
 Sounds awful, right? I thought so too and decided to investigate 
 I haven't read many YA books written by male authors. In fact, I haven't read any at all. Since so many female authors fail to portray guys/love interests realistically in 1st person narration, I was really curious how a male author was going to tackle a teenage girl's point of view. Well, my compliments to David Estes for accomplishing that feat, because to me Siena felt very real. 
 As a main character, she is a welcome reprieve from all the super-special snowflakes and mary sues of the YA variety, who are usually drop-dead beautiful, have a destiny to save the world and a herd of gorgeous guys panting after them, ready to declare their eternal love. 
 Like I said, Siena is very real. She is no one special, just a girl, one of the many in her village who are about to turn 16 and become Bearers, i.e. get paired up with some random guy to produce a baby, and she is scared shitless. She is scrawny and is often ridiculed for it by her peers. She is not really good at anything except running and daydreaming in Learning, and not particularly social to have many friends. 
 One of her friends, Veeva, is already a Bearer with a child, and the things she says about the whole business scare poor Siena even more. Actually, Veeva is a fun character who brought certain lightness and humor to the story. 
 Then there is Circ, Siena's childhood friend, who, as she recently found out, she might also be in love with. 
 Circ is an awesome guy, and the romance is very cute. I'm usually not a fan of the friends-turned-lovers thing, but this time it just seemed so right, so natural and perfect. And there is no love triangle either! 
 As the story unfolds, Siena is gradually coming into her own. She doesn't become magically all-powerful, but rather slowly develops confidence and strength, both physically and spiritually, as, along with some other girls, she tries to fight the status quo and get more freedom. She makes mistakes too. 
 It is not easy for her to change: 
 "I take a deep breath. Okay. No more thoughts about being Runty, or Scrawny, or Skinny. By trying not to think them, I start thinking them more. I pound the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to dislodge the thoughts, but now they're all I can think. Skinny. Scrawny. Runty. Skinny. Scrawny. Runty. 
 Time's a-wasting, but how I can I safely climb back down when my mind's full of all this blaze? I gotta replace it with other thoughts, better thoughts." 
 But she manages: 
 "I skirt along the edge of the village, feeling reckess and dangerous and so out of control that I start to feel in control. More in control than I've felt in a long time." 
 Siena's POV is fun to read. She has a good sense of humor and her inner monologue had me snorting many times. The slang and manner of speaking she and other characters use may take a bit of time to get used to, but it all added to the atmosphere of the story. I think it very clever on the author's part to replace modern cursing words with some made-up substitutes. Since in YA books cursing is either forbidden or frowned upon, the author managed to accomplish two things at once: he made the context clear of any dirty words, but at the same time some characters would put sailors to shame with their language. It didn't take me long to make the parallels: 
 Blaze = shit, crap 
 Bullshit = tugblaze 
 Scorch = hell 
 Searing and burning = fucking 
 It all made for some funny expressions, like: 
 "He wants to burnin' talk to you," Skye says. "But I tol' 'im he could shove it up his blaze shooter." 
 All in all, a very interesting read. 
 On the downside, the ending felt too rushed and the reasoning behind the 'spiracies, as Siena called them, required certain suspension of disbelief on my part. Some things just didn't add up. 
 And even if life expectancies were low in the Fire Country and women had to start reproducing at 16 (which I heartily disagree with!) to replenish the population, I still don't get why they had to be assigned to random guys and not the ones they chose. It doesn't make sense to me. 
 I'm certainly going to continue with the Country Saga and read the next book Ice Country soon.