Keeper of the Lost Cities

Fire is a major, recurring symbol in the story. Fitz locates Sophie in San Diego, where fires ring the city. Similar fires break out near cities around the world. They’re caused by renegade groups that protest the Council’s unwillingness to deal with the rising dangers presented by human technology. The fires also might be an early salvo in one group’s attempt to kill off all humans.

Grady and Edaline’s daughter, Jolie, dies in a house fire. Sophie suffers a recurrent nightmare where her human parents are trapped in a burning house. She’s terrible at fire-catching, a skill required to pass elementalism class. She sets fire to a pile of leaves to help a flareadon stay warm, which upsets Edaline. Fire is a wild thing, hard to control, and highly destructive. In the story, it symbolizes anarchy, rebellion, and chaos among the elves; it also represents elvin contempt for humans.

The elf world’s most elite school, Foxfire is where “prodigies”—exceptionally bright kids with unusual abilities—go to polish their skills and prepare for entry into the noble class. Socially similar to a human secondary school, Foxfire teems with the soap-opera drama of students as they socialize and angle for dominance. Its biggest role in the plot is as a testing ground for Sophie’s entry into elvin society; it also serves as a sly commentary on the social similarities between elves and humans.

Students who flunk out of Foxfire must attend Exillium, a school that teaches skills beneath those used by the noble class. All Foxfire students fear exile to Exillium; Sophie works extra hard to avoid such a fate. Exillium is evidence of the elvin class system that pretends fairness but elevates the nobles and encourages bias and snobbery.

Elves travel by light leaping: A beam of light transfers their bodies instantly from one place to another. Each journey requires a pathfinder, a wand with a crystal at the end that grabs onto a beam of light and sends the holder’s body to a specific place. Children must wear a nexus, a bracelet that protects their bodies from “fading” and dissolving during transit. The light beam transposes bodies into a stream of particles, and the nexus stabilizes the process, keeping the traveler safe until she grows strong enough to do light leap without one.

Fitz gives Sophie his old nexus, and she wears it until it’s taken from her by kidnappers. Sophie’s most dangerous challenge is to escape her captors by light leaping without a nexus while transporting the injured Dex. The attempt nearly kills her, but Sophie’s burgeoning mental powers save her. In the story, light leaping is a convenient plot device that speeds up the action and a symbol of the elves’ superior technology.