Kill It With Fire / Literature

Kill It with Fire in literature.^note This website does not endorse book burning. Thank you.

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• The Adventures of Strong Vanya: Anissim, one of Grand Duke's minions, sets the Steppe on fire to attempt to burn Vanya to ashes.
• Sun Tzu devotes a chapter of The Art of War to the use of fire against an enemy.
• Bazil Broketail: Jumble was burned alive on a sacrificial stake.
• In the Boojumverse story "Mongoose", Izrael Irizarry specializes in clearing space stations of infestation by extradimensional scavengers called Toves. He notes that they are capable of surviving in vacuum, and recommends exterminating them with fire.
• Bruce Coville's Book of...:
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters: The narrator of Personality Problem (who is based on Frankenstein's monster) mentions that people have tried to do this to him many times. He's not amused by it.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of Magic II: The evil wizard in The Wooden City, who dies when a king throws a bundle of wood at him and it catches on fire thanks to the torch he's carrying, forming a circle of flames around the wizard that burns him to death.
• As in Mythology on the main page, the vampires in numerous works of Gothic literature — including Carmilla, Varney the Vampire, and Dracula must be destroyed with fire after they're staked and decapitated. The fact that Dracula's body is not burned when he's killed in the original novel is often cited as a reason for latter-day authors to bring him Back from the Dead. Again.
• A subversion: in H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a repeated theme and instruction is to refrain from killing the necromancer villain with fire, as he can be resurrected from the ashes. Instead, the protagonist is instructed to dissolve the body in acid.
• In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath, fire is the best way to kill the shapeshifting, vampiric Changers, which are hard to kill but whose blood is very flammable. It's also the best way to kill the zombielike Haunts.
• The Cinder Spires has Master Ferus. Some men decide to attack him in his home. The resulting scene is mostly from the POV of Folly, his apprentice, so we don't know what happened, exactly, but even she can tell they're cooked... without looking.
• Codex Alera:
  • Although all the Elemental Powers in are useful in war, using firecrafting to make a Flaming Sword is a common tactic when High Lords are fighting because wounds that have been cauterized are extremely difficult for watercrafters to heal. Fire is also handy against the Vord, since the croach they rely on to keep them alive is very flammable.
  • The beam of sunlight (while technically a product of aircrafting) is a prime example.
  • Firecrafting can also induce powerful emotions, like passion and fear. First Lord Gaius Sextus once wields a flaming blade so powerful with this firecrafting-induced fear, men just dropped dead from their fear killing them.
  • In First Lord's Fury Tavi learns that while bonding with a fury to make it loyal to the person requires watercrafting, another person can disrupt that basic process with firecrafting, freeing the fury.
• Colt Regan: The only way to keep nihil from coming back for more.
• Dahlia Sin'Felle uses the lightning properties of her weapon in Companions Codex to set fire to a female drider that was cornering her and Effron during an ambush in Port Llast. This incident comes back to haunt them, when it turns out that said drider was the lover of Yerinninae, the Xorlarrin's strongest drider, who is now bent on revenge.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Black Colossus", the charging knights are destroyed with a wall of fire.
• In H. G. Wells's short story "The Cone", an angry steelworker decides to kill his boss by throwing him off of an overhead catwalk onto the red-hot vent cone on top of a blast furnace. His victim starts burning immediately, and it goes From Bad to Worse when the vent opens releasing scalding gases.
• The Monster Plant Beasties from The Day of the Triffids are especially vulnerable to flamethrowers. (Bullets don't have much effect because Triffids don't appear to have any vital organs.) Sometimes they panic and set their allies on fire as well. Too bad there's a fuel shortage due to that Cosy Catastrophe...
  • In Simon Clark's sequel, The Night of the Triffids, the protagonist's group have mitigated the fuel issue by developing flamethrowers that run on the one thing they're not in immediate danger of running short of: triffid oil.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld:
  • Werewolves can only be killed by either silver or fire. Likewise, zombies, vampires, and mummies are very flammable.
  • A joke from both Small Gods and Jingo about this trope: "Give a man a fire and he will be warm for one night. Set a Man on Fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
  • In I Shall Wear Midnight, this is how Tiffany defeats the Cunning Man. Given he's the vengeful spirit of a witch hunter, it doubles as a Karmic Death.
• In Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, fire spewed by male and green dragons (and flamethrowers wielded by queenriders and ground crews) are the primary means of fighting Threadfall.
• When Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files yells "Fuego!", you take cover and pray for mercy. When he yells "Pyrofuego", you run for your damn life. He's only had to cast the latter spell twice in the entire series, and both times, those on the receiving end... let's just say they had their whole day ruined. Memetic Mutation has turned him into the Anthropomorphic Personification of this Trope.
  • Don't forget, one of those times he was so furious that he said "Pyrofuego! BURN!" Meaning he may have cast the spell in English. Something that is pointed out many, many times to be terrifyingly dangerous, as saying spells in another language, one you don't understand, provides some psychic insulation.
  • His very first duel involved an Eldritch Abomination, a gas station, and fire. Harry won. (Note, though, that Harry eventually discovers the Eldritch Abomination threw the fight, and it could've ripped him apart easily.)
  • He's also a fan of a shotgun loaded with fireball or dragon's breath rounds, as is Kincaid.
  • Harry also once created a spear of flame 20 stories high. Not for nothing does Elaine (no slouch herself) refer to him as the most powerful wizard she's ever met.
    • A bit of clarification: In terms of raw power, Harry is in the top percentile. However, Harry himself notes that more experienced wizards, such as the Wardens or the Senior Council could twist him into knots without even trying, because in the Dresdenverse, as in real life, skill matters much more than power.
    • This one was neat because he wasn't even using it as a weapon—the fire was a heatsink for a lake. Magic is such a Game-Breaker that it's not even funny. ^note  It's hilarious.
  • "How about a little fire, Scarecrow?"
  • The Holy Fire of the Swords (and occasionally their wielders) is very effective against the forces of darkness.
    Harry: Let that be a lesson to you. Hands off the Fist of God.
  • Don't forget the use of superpower hellfire and soulfire, the former of which is (literally) hell on wheels for destroying stuff, and soulfire, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, and allows a wizard to be more of what they already are by supercharging their spells.
  • In-Universe, Harry notes that fire really is a highly effective weapon against all sorts of nasties, as well as being used against magical enchantments. Fire can disrupt and destroy enchantments when used with that intent, and any wizard worth their salt in combat learns how to use fire first. In Turn Coat, a squadron of Wardens cuts loose on a horde of summoned spirits, and the ensuing literal firestorm is simply stunning to behold.
  • Of course, as stated by Harry himself, he follows the above-mentioned Tao of Pratchett.
• The Enemy employs this against the Zombies several times. It seems to be the most effective weapon against them; unfortunately, it's the hardest to safely employ.
• In the conclusion to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Scottish philosopher David Hume says that reasoning can only lead us either to mathematical truths or knowledge about matters of fact based on experiment:
  If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity of number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
• Experimental Film: With Sidlo's help, Lois is able to trap Lady Midday on a reel of film. She plans to burn the film without watching it in order to kill Lady Midday; unfortunately, Wrob steals the film in order to turn it into one of his art films, resulting in a fire that kills thirteen people when he tries to screen it.
• Beatty in Fahrenheit 451. "If you have a problem, don't face it, burn it". Indeed. The world in Fahrenheit 451 subscribes to this ideology against books and literature.
• Fengshen Yanyi:
  • Under Daji's suggestion, King Zhou builds a set of massive hollow brass pillars which are filled with hot coals and embers: people condamned to execution are stripped naked and pushed against the red hot columns, burning to ashes in a few moments.
  • Taiyi Zhenren defeats Lady Shiji by trapping her in his Nine Dragons Divine Fire Basket, where the dragon fire kills her.
  • Subverted when Jiang Ziya puts the fake corpse of the Jade Pipa Spirit on a burning pyre: the intent wasn't killing her, but proving that she was indeed a specter, as her body is impervious to mundane flames and after four hours of burning it's not even singed.
  • One of the Ten Lethal Formations, the Earthly Fury Formation, destroys the victim with a combination of lightning from above and flames from below. The Violent Flame Formation uses flame pillars and unbearable heat to destroy its victims, but the intended target Lu Ya is such a powerful taoist he can No-Sell the flames unaided.
  • Wen Zhong falls victim to Yunzhongzi's Heaven-Connected Divine Fire Pillars and vanishes in a roaring inferno of dragon fire.
  • Luo Xuan, the Fire Spirit Immortal, has several Fabao related to fire and flames and nearly wipes out the entire city of Fengmingzhen with a roaring sea of flames.
  • The climax of the great battle of Immortals inside the Ten Thousands Immortals Formation has Yang Ren setting everything ablaze with his magic fan, killing countless enemies.
  • This is ultimately how King Zhou kills himself, setting ablaze the Star-Picking Tower with himself still inside so that not even his corpse will fall into enemy hands.
• Fighting Fantasy examples:
  • The Mandrakes from Legend of the Shadow Warriors, being plant-based monsters, dies instantly when touched by flames.
  • In any books with Mummy/ Mummies as a major foe, fire is going to be the player's best weapon. Using flame amulets in Curse of the Mummy can wipe out an entire army of mummies (except the Big Bad, the Pharaoh Akharis, who in this case gains power by absorbing fire), while a lesser boss in Legend of Zagor called the Great Mummy can be severely damaged by a lantern or a fireball spell.
  • Island of the Lizard King: Fire is the only weapon that can harm the Gonchong's otherwise invincible host, and the Gonchong itself. Collecting a Flaming Sword is compulsory to defeat the titular Lizard King.
  • The third book of the spinoff, Literature/{{Sorcery - The Seven Serpents, have the player being hunted by the titular serpents, but each of them have a certain Weaksauce Weakness to exploit. The Moon Serpent is particularly vulnerable to fire - a Fireball Spell can kill it on the spot, while warriors (who can't use magic) can collect a tinder-box for creating flash-fires, which proves to be a far more effective weapon capable of killing said serpent in two to three hits.
• A major villain in the Fingerprints series starts out as a knife-wielder. When it becomes clear that a single knife is insufficient to carry out her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, she figures fire will work better. It does.
• Forest Kingdom: As seen in book 1 (Blue Moon Rising), fire is pretty much the only way to kill a really big demon, since they are Weakened by the Light.
• As mentioned in the main description, the trolls in the Forgotten Realms world regenerate and can recover from anything...except being set on fire. The heroes in Streams of Silver take advantage of this weakness as much as they can.
• Goblins in the Castle: Discussed — according to Igor, after the goblins' spirits were sucked out and imprisoned, he suggested burning their bodies. The old Baron, however, rejected the idea because the bodies had to stay intact in order to maintain the spell keeping their spirits trapped.
• Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy where Marlon is immolated by Dexterity's glowing touch.
• Harry Potter and Dumbledore use it to drive off the Inferi at the end of The Half-Blood Prince. And in Deathly Hallows, Fiendfyre turns out to be one of the few ways to destroy Horcruxes.
  • Notable for the brilliant exchange between Harry and Dumbledore that went something like...
    Dumbledore: However, like many creatures that dwell in cold and darkness, they fear light and warmth, which we shall, therefore, call to our aid should the need arise.
    Harry: (bewildered expression)
    Dumbledore: Fire, Harry.
    Harry: Oh... right...
• In the Heralds of Valdemar universe
  • Demons are very tricky to get rid of, usually requiring special demon-slaying blades or magic powers to kill them. In Arrow's Fall, Hardornen mages summon a good hundred demon warriors that start slaughtering their way through the Valdemaran army, impervious to their weapons. Fortunately Herald Griffon is on scene to use his Firestarting Gift; setting the demons afire does kill them, but locating and burning their summoner finishes the job much faster.
  • The rival kingdom of Karse worships the sun and executes persons with "witch powers" by burning at the stake. Both Rethwellan and Valdemar gave them a taste of their own: the Skybolts ended the "Prophet's" campaign on the spot when they torched a shrine the army had been towing; Valdemar deployed the ill-fated Lavan Firestorm, whose cataclysmic and suicidal last blaze reduced the Karsite army and the pass they were standing in to cinders.
• In The Hobbit, fire proves effective in driving off wargs, but much less so when some goblins arrive, who simply use it against the dwarves.
• Robert E. Howard's "Lovecraft-but-with-sword" short story "The Hoofed Thing" ends with the hero setting fire to a house with a temporarily defeated Eldritch Abomination inside, hoping that will finish it off.
• In Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. books, this is how Garrett kills a nest of vampires.
• In Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, when Shere Khan incites the Pack against Mowgli, Mowgli uses "the Red Flower" against them.
• At the end of Jurassic Park (1990), there isn't any of that "Let the dinos live in peace on the island" stuff from the movie. The Costa Rican Air Force levels the island with napalm. Somehow, Ian Malcolm survives the napalm attack to be in The Lost World (1995). His presence in the sequel book is Hand Waved by stating that his death in the first one was a mistake on the part of those chronicling the events, and he was only critically wounded and later recovered upon receiving proper medical care.
• Kane Series:
  • The story "Lynortis Reprise" takes place on an old battlefield marked by a two-year long siege. The alchemical phosphorous bombs shot by the defenders of the city were particularly devastating and at one point the effect of two salvaged duds used against advancing enemies is described in gruesome detail.
  • In another story, "Cold Light", Kane locks himself in an old warehouse with two of his enemies. The warehouse was used to store fabrics and quite a lot of them still remain. He proceeds then to set the building on fire. He escapes through a hidden tunnel, the other two are killed.
• Stephen King:
  • The Shining: Used to deal with the Hell Hotel, with bonus wasp's nest-destroying Flash Back.
  • Subverted in the short story The Road Virus Goes North (part of Everything's Eventual). A horror writer buys the last surviving painting of a troubled artist who burned all his other works and then committed suicide. When he realises the painting is cursed he tries to get rid of it, but the painting keeps returning intact. Eventually, he burns the picture, because that's what works in the books, right? Unfortunately, it turns out that the artist didn't burn all his paintings except this one, he burned all his paintings including this one.
  • Henry does this by burning down the cabin in Dreamcatcher.
• Knowledge Of Angels: At the close of the book, Palinor is burned at the stake by the Inquisition for heresy.
• A tanker truck, a fire truck, and an intentionally damaged bridge that the Posleen have to cross provides much fun for the humans defending Fredricksburg, at one point in Gust Front.
• In The Licanius Trilogy, this is the only way to dispose of the eletai, as well as those who have been killed by them. If not, the corpses will be revived as new eletai and assimilated into their ranks.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:
  • In the first fight against the Ringwraiths, swords prove ineffective, so Aragorn grabs a flaming piece of wood form the fire and drives them back. Works remarkably well considering they are the immortal indestructible specters of long dead kings, capable of killing with even a slight blow and causing even squads of veteran soldiers to run in fear. It's hinted, though, that the Ringwraiths are in a weaker state during their initial attack on the Shire. Somewhat justified as they are at the point described as being stronger in the dark and that they need the cloaks to have form and to affect the world. Cloaks can burn and the fire is a bright light.
  • Also, in the modern movie adaptation, fire is the orcs' most useful weapon against the Ent attack. Which is a pretty good idea, as Ents are trees. When Isengard is flooded, you can see a burning Ent rush forward and dunk itself to douse the flames. In the books Saruman uses some kind of automatic flamethrowers against them, causing them to flood Isengard. Also in the books, the dwarves' need for firewood (for their forges) was one reason Ents didn't like dwarves very much. There is a bit in The Two Towers where a tree bends down to get some warmth from a fire, but in general, the trees don't like it.
• The Lost Redeemer: Being a Sanctifier who can manipulate energy with his mind, Thane uses fire as his primary weapon throughout the first book.
• In Masques, the refugees hide away from the undead monsters in a cave. Conveniently, the cave comes with protection runes, that make a wall of flames appear when the undead try to enter it. Quite effective, but the smell of roasted undead is nasty.
• Men in Black: The Green Saliva Blues: The preferred method of dealing with the Zahurians. Specifically, when facing a large group of them, Jay breaks out the same massive Phaser rife that he'd used to shoot down Edgar's ship in the movie, switches it to a wide beam (which is explicitly compared to a flamethrower, but with an invisible beam that's so hot it melts almost anything it touches) and torches the Zahurians and any and all plantlife around them.
• Merkabah Rider: After battling the ghul for some time in "The Shomer Express", the Rider finally remembers that the only way to destroy is with fire. After a gruelling battle, he manages to batter it into the firebox of the locomotive with a shovel.
• In Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy, the animals are afraid of human technology, including, but not limited to, fire.
• In John Hodgman's second book, More Information Than You Require, he says of rats: "You must kill them all. Do it with fire."
  • He says the same thing about infestations of Scottie Dogs and... tides.
  • Fire works well for most household pests. But for replicants, you've just got to bite the bullet and hire a Blade Runner.
• Most Secret by Nevil Shute is about a fishing boat during World War II that is fitted out with a large flamethrower in a plan to destroy the German escort vessels keeping an eye on the French fishing fleet. The use of this trope in fighting evil is specifically lampshaded.
• The finale of The Night's Dawn Trilogy, The Naked God, has a straight example — the Orgathe are immune to most weapons but very vulnerable to heat.
• In the Night World series, fire is the only thing that can kill any creature, be it witch, human, werewolf, shapeshifter, or vampire. One character does freak out when another speaks nonchalantly about burning a werewolf to death (including the phrase "one of the traditional methods"), so it appears to be a less-used tactic... now.
• Andre Norton invokes this trope in many of her science-fiction novels when referring to destroyed planets as having been "burned off".
• In the Old Kingdom, fire is good for killing off most of the Dead, and purifying cremation is a good way to keep more Dead from rising.
• The Cthulhu Mythos story Once More from the Top by A. Scott Glancy shows what happened when the marines were sent to clear out Innsmouth. They hold their own against the Fish People, only to be routed when a shoggoth comes swarming over the sea wall. Fortunately the narrator and a Sociopathic Soldier are able to throw it back with the help of a couple of flamethrowers and some phosphorus grenades (even diving into the water doesn't help the shoggoth, as phosphorus can burn underwater).
• A peculiar variant with the fire-spiders in The Quest of the Unaligned. Their own natural pyromancy means that fire doesn't actually hurt them, but exposure to a lot of fire affects them like Alien Catnip. This more-or-less saves the heroes' lives when one of them accidentally fills the cave they're in with an inferno and stuns the vast swarm of fire-spiders for over an hour, allowing the heroes to escape.
• From the Redwall series:
  • In the original novel, Cluny's horde builds a siege tower. When it rolls up to the walls, Cornflower panics and hurls a lantern into it, setting the whole thing alight.
  • In Pearls of Lutra, Saint Ninian's has been used as a base for invaders for the third time (Cluny from Redwall, Slagar the Cruel from Mattimeo, and this time a horde of crows, ravens, and Jackdaws. Rollo demands that the ruined church be burned to the ground.
• Matthew Reilly:
  • Rapier in The Five Greatest Warriors burns several men to death inside the Third Vertex.
  • The Great Zoo of China: CJ kind of falls into using this as her primary weapon once she gets hold of a flamethrower. Which is handy given she has to face actual fire-breathing dragons, one the size of a bus, the other bigger than a jumbo jet.
• Given its setting in ancient China, it's no surprise that fire is a pretty big deal in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Its use against armies is obvious, and several mentions are made of Sun Tzu's stratagems in regards to fire. Perhaps the most dramatic example would be the Battle of the Red Cliffs. The Southern Coalition forces couldn't face the North's superior numbers head-on and thus had to resort to alternative methods to overcome Cao Cao's forces. The massive Northern naval fleet is tricked into chaining itself together to prevent seasickness, then set aflame by a surprise attack by Coalition fire boats. What the armies of the South could not do, a single decisive strike with fire accomplishes overnight — Cao Cao's fleet is effectively wiped out by the runaway fires jumping from ship to ship due to the chains holding them all together.
• In Michael Moorcock's The Sailor on the Seas of Fate there's a scene where the heroes have to destroy a pair of buildings. The captain of their ship is insistent that the buildings can only be destroyed by fire. It turns out that the buildings are a pair of evil alien sorcerers.
• The Scholomance:
  • The titular Wizarding School handles its recurring monster infestation with a biannual scouring of "mortal flame", a Magic Fire that consumes magic (which the monsters are made of) as well as matter. The scouring is automated, so any student not in their dorm room when it begins is out of luck.
  • Strangely enough, Incarnate Flames are killed by overloading them with more fire, not by extinguishing them.
• In Septimus Heap — Physik, Queen Etheldredda's ghost and her pet animal are finished off by burning their portrait in an appropriately designed BoneFyre.
• In Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events: In the Village of Fowl Devotees, burning at the stake is the designated punishment for breaking any of the town's numerous rules (which includes the biggies like murder, but also trivial and ridiculous offenses like using mechanical devices, reading certain books, and talking out of turn in town meetings).
• In The Silent War the Redcloaks have, among other things, the ability to channel supernatural fire into melee weapons. It cuts through demons and the walking dead like they're made of paper.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • The undead wights are nearly indestructible except to fire. The only body part of a wight in the series not destroyed by fire remained animate until it rotted away.
  • The late Mad King Aerys was a big fan of this trope. By the later part of his reign, his favorite pastime was burning traitors or suspected traitors through the pyromancers. The point of no return for Robert's Rebellion, which brought his downfall, was when he executed Rickard Stark by suspending him from the rafters above fire while still wearing armor, cooking him alive. Then there's the real reason why Jaime Lannister decided to kill him: he planned to burn the entire King's Landing using wildfire, denying everyone the satisfaction of deposing him.
    Burn them all...
  • Aside from Aerys, the Targaryens milked this for all its worth when they still had dragons.
    • Aegon I and his sister-wives conquered Westeros with nothing but three fire-breathing dragons. They burned the castle of Harrenhal, killing an entire Ironborn House. Even to this day, most of the castle is abandoned.
    • Repeatedly used during the Dance of the Dragons, when the dragons were driven extinct. Aemond Targaryen used his dragon, Vhagar, to burn the Riverlands to the ground. During the frenzied storming of the Dragonpit, hundreds of civilians were roasted when they attempted to kill the dragons. Queen Rhaenyra herself was burned alive by her rival, Aegon II, in front of her son, Aegon III, which was suggested to be the main reason why he was so moody.
    • And Daenerys, of course, has her three pet dragons. The very first thing she trains them to do is breathe fire at people. And she has ambitions to use said dragons, once they grow up, to conquer Westeros. Her family's motto isn't "Fire and Blood" for nothing, after all.
    • Before the Doom of Valyria (itself an example of this) made the Targaryens the only surviving dragonlords, dragonfire was the entire reason why Valyria became the largest empire in the Known World. During their last battle against the Rhoynar, a Valyrian detachment was constantly defeated by the Rhoynar, in spite of bringing three dragons to the field. Solution? Call reinforcements consisting of three hundred dragons from Valyria. Thousands of Rhoynar were immolated, while others jumped into the River Rhoyne, where they were cooked because it was boiling hot.
  • Who could forget the Battle of the Blackwater when Tyrion Lannister packs a squadron of ships with wildfire (which is basically magical Greek Fire on steroids) and sets not only both fleets but the river itself on fire.
  • Dragons actually only eat cooked meat. If they are given food raw, they will always burn them first. This was probably the original reason why they can breathe fire.
• In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, vampires are highly vulnerable to flame, to the point where matches will make some flinch.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the novel "Bloodletter" a quarantine module is built at the station out of an old abandoned freighter to provide a completely isolated environment to deal with visitors with contagious diseases. Powerful explosive charges are incorporated into the hull to vaporize the module if there is a disease that cannot be cured and needs to be stopped from being spread. However a group of Bajoran Fundamentalists sabotages the explosives so they won't all go off at once. When Dr. Bashir and Major Kira activate the explosives to deal with the group's leader Hören Rygis, the station is severely damaged but it is successful in eliminating Hören.
• Averted in Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears. An Eldritch Abomination shows up and starts killing the crap out of people. A wizard sets it on fire. It screams in pain. Then it puts the fire out and starts killing people some more.
• Kantri of Tales of Kolmar have this instinct towards anything that makes them angry. They use claws and teeth too and will rend bodies long after the foes are dead, but when it's over they burn the bodies and preferably things the bodies have touched, right down to the soil. They are dragons.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Delta finishes off a group of trapped Slimers by creating flaming torches on top of them. She did have other options, but burning them was the safest and most efficient one.
• In Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, they discover the troll can be killed only with fire. (This is the source for D&D.)
• In the last Time Scout book, a bad guy running from the heroes tosses a burning rag onto a barrel of gunpowder in the middle of an arsenal in the middle of Victorian London's dockland. This causes some commotion.
• The tsé naayéé' of Trail of Lightning are resistant to bullets but vulnerable to fire, a fact exploited when Maggie and her allies are facing armies instead of individuals.
• The vampires in The Twilight Saga can be permanently destroyed by using fire and not much else. It's worth noting that Carlisle failed to try immolation during his many attempts at killing himself after he became a vampire, despite his father being a pastor who believed in wiping out evil supernatural creatures in such a manner.
• The Unwomanly Face of War: Some of the Belarusian partisans who narrate remember that many villages were wiped out by the Einsatzgruppen by gathering the locals in the school or church and then setting the building on fire.
• The Vampire Chronicles, like many other vampire stories (as noted above) have fire as one of the only ways to destroy a vampire (though particularly strong/old vampires are immune even to that). Louis de Pointe du Lac, the narrator of the first book, has a particular fascination with it, burning down two houses, a theater and his creator within his book alone.
• In Brian Caswell's The View From Ararat, the only known ways to destroy the inorganic super-plague threatening life on planet Deucalion are extreme heat, and an enzyme conveniently found in all native Deucalion plants and animals, half a galaxy away from where the disease first surfaced.
• The War Against the Chtorr. Flamethrowers are the best means of dealing with the Chtorran gastropedes (and various other forms of Chtorran ecology), and are preferred by the antagonist over cold-gas and flechette rifles. This is because their unique alien physiology makes the gastropedes very difficult to kill.
• Warhammer 40,000 Expanded Universe:
  • In Brothers of the Snake, when Khiron killed a fellow Space Marine, he claimed he had been possessed by a daemon and that, since he had not used fire, it had escaped. Fortunately, Priad remembers this when he figures out who it escaped to.
  • In the Ultramarines novel Dead Sky Black Sun, the Living Shadows in the Eye of Terror can be killed only with fire. Even that is not very effective; while the Space Marines can survive, the two Imperial Guardsmen with them are nearly killed by the heat they need, even with the Marines trying to shield them.
  • In Watchers of the Throne, Aleya starts the story wielding a heavy flamer — basically, a massive flamethrower — and uses it to burn regular cultists (presumably just in case some of them are possessed). She quickly drops it for a BFS, though.
  • In the White Scars novel Hunt for Voldorius, the Bloodtide, begging for death, tells the White Scars to use fire.
• In The Wheel of Time, fire is one of the three weapons effective against the Finn. Music puts them in a kind of trance, and while they can become intangible, pure iron and fire will still hurt them. The explanatory poem goes:
  Courage to strengthen
  Fire to blind
  Music to dazzle
  Iron to bind
  • Also, Balefire.
• In The White Rabbit Chronicles, this is the only way to end zombies for good. In the spirit realm, a slayer can summon white fire in his or her hands which is used to "ash" the zombies.
• Subverted in "Who Goes There?", in which the scientists in Antarctica use high voltage electricity to kill telepathic, body-morphing aliens. This makes a lot more sense than the flamethrowers used in The Thing (1982) because it takes a while to kill something with fire. Electricity can zap every cell in an organism instantly — hard to adapt to, eh? For another good reason to use electrons, see the end of the movie, where the entire base is charred rubble and the survivors are shelterless in Antartica. Played straight in the conclusion of the original story — the final alien is destroyed with an oversized blowtorch after a human fires bullets through all three of its eyes, which causes it to become immobilised. Also, the electrocution weapon required mains power from the base's generators, and the final confrontation is too far away to run a lead.
• The only reliable way to kill the undead in The Witch Watch. That and just cutting their heads off and leaving it powerless and buried underground whilst still being conscious.
• The burning of heretics comes up a few times in Wolf Hall. A few of Thomas Cromwell's Lutheran associates are burned by Thomas More for making public displays of heresy (namely reading aloud from Tyndale's English translation of the Bible). Cromwell also recalls an incident from his childhood when he watched an old woman burned as a Loller and is horrified by the painful death and the crowd's jubilation. He lingers after the crowd disperses until the old woman's friends arrive to gather her remains and one of them marks his palm with the greasy ash.
• In World War Z, the Army develops an incendiary bullet, nicknamed the "Cherry Pie", designed to burn up a Zombie's brain without causing collateral damage.
• The Zombie Survival Guide notes that fire is the only way to safely dispose of a Solanium-infected corpse. It's not that effective as a weapon, because the zombies don't feel pain and won't notice they're on fire, but all traces of the infection will be wiped out once the fire brings them down.
• The Krytos Plague in the X-Wing Series is so highly infectious that decontamination of a building consists of burning everything inside it with plasma, including burning half an inch of concrete off the walls.

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