@leocg thanks for the fast reply. unfortunately I have no idea how to get to that file/location on the Kindle Fire. I'll search around with ES File Explorer.
He means you should type opera://sync-internals/ in Opera's address bar on your Fire tablet. That will show some diagnostics which might help pinpoint what's wrong.
@yeswap
got it. there are ~8 tabs across top--about, types, Data, Events.
In Data I see many check boxes. all are checked including Bookmarks. I don't find anything saying sync took place however.
@jimjinnj I'm sure how to read that page. On mine I see things like syncer_ok and running that suggest everything's working. I expect that if something was wrong I'd see error somewhere.