The Fire Eaters is set in the time of the Cuban missile crisis. The story follows the life of a young boy who lives in Keely Bay near Newcastle. His dad falls sick, a teacher at school makes his life a living hell and a new boy has a plan up his sleeve. His name is Bobby Burns and the story is written in the first person.

When I first heard that we had to read these books my first impression was to read The Fire Eaters because of the cover. The fire on the front cover made it stand out to lots of other people and myself. You could see this as we all rushed up and the first books to go were the set of Fire Eaters. Now on with the book: as I started reading it I found that the words were slightly different to the ones that I had read in most other books. It was written in a northern way.

I had to figure out what some of the words meant by putting them in the text in different ways and trying to understand them. The book started off very well with an action scene but I thought, and so did one of my fellow readers, that after the opening scene nothing much else happened though the small things that did happen were well written.

I would’ve liked to see a bit more description, as I like to feel a big sense of reality. Finally I think that this book was all right though it could’ve been made more interesting.

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