Maybe my favourite of the nine books so far. It was fast-paced, a little bit breathless and everybody pulled their heads out of their... and started acting like a unit instead of a roomful of kids hyped up on too much birthday cake.
Fire Touched took a page of out Zee's book of philosophy and played no games; there weren't any sly plots on the side, no melodramatic angst, no misapprehensions or misunderstandings. It was a welcome change to have a story where Mercy and Adam worked together from beginning to end. I loved that Zee got a lot more page-time and I think it might be a little wrong how much I liked Baba Yaga's character. These two and Margaret's cameo made up for the absence of Samuel and the small bit with Bran (although I loved this scene, with Charles playing invisible chorus).
I'd have liked to have known more about Aiden's power (how it works) and his past, although I did enjoy learning a bit more about Underhill and, I don't know if the author intended this or not, I liked the allegory of mankind's treatment of Earth.
At the end of the book, I had a feeling it lacked a very small something, but on thinking about it, I think that's more about my expectation of side plots and melodrama (because let's face it, that's pretty much SOP in most books) going unfulfilled than anything of substance actually missing. I went 4.5 stars because as much as I really enjoyed the plotting, the writing and the characters, fae politics just aren't that fascinating to me, and that's purely personal taste. I'm looking forward to seeing what Briggs does next.