I am a huge lover of books of many types, have five children and read aloud daily and we loved Chronicles of Narnia, Little House series, Beatrix Potter, Harry potter, Milly Molly Mandy, the Moffats and many, many more well-written stories. We hated The Fire Within and had to force ourselves to finish it. The story has potential--dragons which live in modern times and work with the energy of humans who own them, and a side story about squirrels--but the story is not interesting enough to slog through the bad, bad, bad writing. It is dull, bland, soporific, boring, and not one of us (age 7-40-plus) liked it even a little. Not worth itand I wish I could have the time back in my life spent reading it.