jolietjane's review against another edition
2.0
Unfortunately, I’m gonna have to DNF this book. I love the author and I love the ideas presented. Silk fire is a massive ambitious piece of work and the first attempt at fantasy from this author. The story is big and expensive and incredibly creative. I think that with a little bit more polishing, it could be brilliant.
Silk Fire suffers from too much ambition without a strong Application. The first few chapters of the book are a massive info dump, with characters vaguely discussing the politics of the past and their frustrations with said politics. The info dumps are expansive and continuous, but they’re so vague that you don’t 100% understand what’s going on at any point. A good way to compare this is with Gideon the Ninth, A book famous for being very cool but incredibly confusing. Silk fire has the same confusing factor but it’s hard to match the coolness that is Gideon, which makes it a bit of a chore.
I loved every single idea presented here. I thought the world was Badass and the characters and the intricate politics have a lot of potential, but confusing a reader in the first 150 pages isn’t a good way to start a series. If there was a little bit more effort cleaning this up and slowly introducing the politics gracefully rather than shoehorning them into the front half of the book, I think that there would be potential for some greatness here. There is a chance that some folks who are smarter and better at reading than I will understand what is going on and truly love this book. I wish the author well as I love their Twitter account and think that their approach to storytelling on the conceptual level is awesome.
Silk Fire is a behemoth. Jumping into A book this large, just know what you’re getting in for. I would recommend it to readers you consider themselves advanced who are comfortable with working with info dump materials and do not mind it so much.
Silk Fire suffers from too much ambition without a strong Application. The first few chapters of the book are a massive info dump, with characters vaguely discussing the politics of the past and their frustrations with said politics. The info dumps are expansive and continuous, but they’re so vague that you don’t 100% understand what’s going on at any point. A good way to compare this is with Gideon the Ninth, A book famous for being very cool but incredibly confusing. Silk fire has the same confusing factor but it’s hard to match the coolness that is Gideon, which makes it a bit of a chore.
I loved every single idea presented here. I thought the world was Badass and the characters and the intricate politics have a lot of potential, but confusing a reader in the first 150 pages isn’t a good way to start a series. If there was a little bit more effort cleaning this up and slowly introducing the politics gracefully rather than shoehorning them into the front half of the book, I think that there would be potential for some greatness here. There is a chance that some folks who are smarter and better at reading than I will understand what is going on and truly love this book. I wish the author well as I love their Twitter account and think that their approach to storytelling on the conceptual level is awesome.
Silk Fire is a behemoth. Jumping into A book this large, just know what you’re getting in for. I would recommend it to readers you consider themselves advanced who are comfortable with working with info dump materials and do not mind it so much.
eyan_birt's review against another edition
2.5
This was really ambitious worldbuilding and I wanted to love it. So many of the character elements and fantasy elements were right what I wanted, especially the examination of gender and identity. However the themes were all incredibly heavy handed, the plot drawn out, and the characters underdeveloped.
najiii's review against another edition
Not for me, I don't need to read about reverse patriarchy
helllucifer's review against another edition
2.0
ARC provided by Netgalley, all words are my own.
WELL.
Holy mother of god, this book was extremely hard to get through.
I'll start out with the thing that bothered me the most in the whole book. Koré, our protagonist is a male courtesan. Therefore, *obviously* he had to get called a "whore" or a "slut" by almost every single character, multiple times a chapter. Every single insult directed at him contained derogatory language about his profession, to the point where I started to wonder if the author had run out of insults. This book literally went "my main character is a sex worker and will be publicly criticized for it at every possible moment."
Secondly, the book talks about a matriarchal society. The book however, does not show a matriarchal society. It shows an extremely misandrist society where women demean and degrade men at every given point. This book honestly at a point felt like an essay about why a matriarchal society would not be a good idea, instead of what it claimed to be. The sexism is dialed up to an unimaginable degree, to the point where it felt irritating to even read further.
Thirdly, Koré. He is quite genuinely one of the most pathetic main characters I've read in a long time. He cannot go a single page without proclaiming that he is an "unloveable monster" and actively harms the plot by taking decisions after stupid decisions. I wouldn't have been sad if he had died at any given point of the book.
Probably the only character who I actually cared about was Ria. The rest were all either written badly, developed poorly, or betrayed each other without any reason nine times. Faziz in particular let me down very hard, because he made a lot of idiotic side changes and kept fooling Koré until he actually could not anymore.
The sex scenes in this book made me cringe so hard, I almost dnf'd the book mutliple times purely for them. I still do not understand how relationships actually work in that world, but I can say that no one is happy.
The pacing of the book was horrendous except for the interlude chapters which were probably the sole thing I enjoyed in this book. They provided valueable insight into Koré's past and actually tied up some of the numerous loose ends.
This book had massive potential. A bisexual character who is a sex worker and gets turned into a dragon, in a matriarchal society where he eventually falls in love with two people, and manages to get his revenge- sounds very good.
This book failed to live up to it at almost every single point.
WELL.
Holy mother of god, this book was extremely hard to get through.
I'll start out with the thing that bothered me the most in the whole book. Koré, our protagonist is a male courtesan. Therefore, *obviously* he had to get called a "whore" or a "slut" by almost every single character, multiple times a chapter. Every single insult directed at him contained derogatory language about his profession, to the point where I started to wonder if the author had run out of insults. This book literally went "my main character is a sex worker and will be publicly criticized for it at every possible moment."
Secondly, the book talks about a matriarchal society. The book however, does not show a matriarchal society. It shows an extremely misandrist society where women demean and degrade men at every given point. This book honestly at a point felt like an essay about why a matriarchal society would not be a good idea, instead of what it claimed to be. The sexism is dialed up to an unimaginable degree, to the point where it felt irritating to even read further.
Thirdly, Koré. He is quite genuinely one of the most pathetic main characters I've read in a long time. He cannot go a single page without proclaiming that he is an "unloveable monster" and actively harms the plot by taking decisions after stupid decisions. I wouldn't have been sad if he had died at any given point of the book.
Probably the only character who I actually cared about was Ria. The rest were all either written badly, developed poorly, or betrayed each other without any reason nine times. Faziz in particular let me down very hard, because he made a lot of idiotic side changes and kept fooling Koré until he actually could not anymore.
The sex scenes in this book made me cringe so hard, I almost dnf'd the book mutliple times purely for them. I still do not understand how relationships actually work in that world, but I can say that no one is happy.
The pacing of the book was horrendous except for the interlude chapters which were probably the sole thing I enjoyed in this book. They provided valueable insight into Koré's past and actually tied up some of the numerous loose ends.
This book had massive potential. A bisexual character who is a sex worker and gets turned into a dragon, in a matriarchal society where he eventually falls in love with two people, and manages to get his revenge- sounds very good.
This book failed to live up to it at almost every single point.
traysharps's review against another edition
Nothing makes sense from the jump. Impossible to follow from the very start, WAY too much useless info dump with barely any explanations. Oppressive matriarchal society is a big fail at an Uno reverse on the real world. No thank you.
readingshadowwolf's review against another edition
2.0
Dnf, I’m confused by this book. It was really info dumpy and dense. It was nice to see a male protagonist but the book just wasn’t executed well. Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the arc and this is my honest review.
bookbutch's review against another edition
Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
-
I am uncomfortable continuing to read this book based on the plethora of criticisms I have read from people in related minority communities. I did not mind the worldbuilding, which others had issues with, but the issue with the representation given by different communities is widespread and I am uncomfortable participating further with a book that people bring up so many valid criticisms of when I am not in those communities.
-
I am uncomfortable continuing to read this book based on the plethora of criticisms I have read from people in related minority communities. I did not mind the worldbuilding, which others had issues with, but the issue with the representation given by different communities is widespread and I am uncomfortable participating further with a book that people bring up so many valid criticisms of when I am not in those communities.
mschaeff's review against another edition
3.0
I had such mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the world building is incredible, and I think it might be the best "gender bent" book I've ever read; it makes incredible social commentary by reversing the roles of men and women. I will say I spent about the first hundred pages of this book trying to figure out what on earth was going on. There are good ways to do "learn by immersion" and "show-don't-tell" - unfortunately, I'm not sure this book nailed those, since there were huge chunks of world building I still could barely grasp by the end. But it was fascinating and an incredibly unique fantasy. The one thing that absolutely murdered it for me was a) the main character, who just left a lot to be desired, and b) my personal least favorite fantasy trope, insta-love. And, while it's nice to see poly rep in a book, the love interests are both flat and felt very one-dimensional. Really interesting world, really neat ideas, fascinating work around gender roles, and yet... just sort of flat.
Merged review:
I had such mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the world building could have been, and I think it might be the best "gender bent" book I've ever read; it makes incredible social commentary by reversing the roles of men and women. I will say I spent about the first hundred pages of this book trying to figure out what on earth was going on. There are good ways to do "learn by immersion" and "show-don't-tell" - unfortunately, I'm not sure this book nailed those, since there were huge chunks of world building I still could barely grasp by the end. (In fact, there were a... whole lot... of pieces I never got at all.) It also really tries to do too much. It's got some unique ideas, but there are so many of them that it's really challenging to follow. And the one thing that absolutely murdered it for me was a) the main character, who just left a lot to be desired, and b) my personal least favorite fantasy trope, insta-love. And, while it's nice to see poly rep in a book, the love interests are both flat and felt very one-dimensional. Really interesting world, really potentially neat ideas, fascinating work around gender roles, and yet... just sort of flat.
This book was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Merged review:
I had such mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the world building could have been, and I think it might be the best "gender bent" book I've ever read; it makes incredible social commentary by reversing the roles of men and women. I will say I spent about the first hundred pages of this book trying to figure out what on earth was going on. There are good ways to do "learn by immersion" and "show-don't-tell" - unfortunately, I'm not sure this book nailed those, since there were huge chunks of world building I still could barely grasp by the end. (In fact, there were a... whole lot... of pieces I never got at all.) It also really tries to do too much. It's got some unique ideas, but there are so many of them that it's really challenging to follow. And the one thing that absolutely murdered it for me was a) the main character, who just left a lot to be desired, and b) my personal least favorite fantasy trope, insta-love. And, while it's nice to see poly rep in a book, the love interests are both flat and felt very one-dimensional. Really interesting world, really potentially neat ideas, fascinating work around gender roles, and yet... just sort of flat.
This book was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
happybirb's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
This book has such an interesting premise and summary that you think it can’t possibly be boring. Then you start reading it and it’s about 400+ pages of this kid talking about how he’s a monster, no really, there’s a darkness inside him you really wouldn’t get. I skimmed the last 100 pages because I just wanted to know what happened.
Characters: interesting! I like the three main characters, even despite what I just said about kore. I liked watching them orbit each other and their interactions and relationship growth did feel very natural. We love a polycule, and this one actually seemed healthy so pop off.
Plot: I lost the plot. Not really, bc I kept being beat over the head with it, but my god. The more interesting necromancer plot was relegated to b plot while “I’m trying to get an endorsement for this politician” was 2/3 of the book. Slow. I didn’t really care about it
Writing: overall pretty good, I appreciated the attempt to use the matriarchal society to highlight how stupid some fantasy books sound in regards to female characters, but this was just too heavy handed. It came off very “and now a word from our sponsors: feminism”. I do think there’s an interesting discussion to be had here though about deconstructing thoughts that a matriarchal society would be a wonderland of loving equality, but I don’t think that’s what this book was trying to do.
Side note: the sex scenes were fine. Which honestly is pretty good, they weren’t horrible to read, even if I was jumpscared by the first one bc I didn’t expect this book to have multiple intense sex scenes in it.
Overall: 1.5 stars. I wouldn’t read it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to any one. Might rant about it while drunk at midnight
Characters: interesting! I like the three main characters, even despite what I just said about kore. I liked watching them orbit each other and their interactions and relationship growth did feel very natural.
Plot: I lost the plot. Not really, bc I kept being beat over the head with it, but my god. The more interesting necromancer plot was relegated to b plot while “I’m trying to get an endorsement for this politician” was 2/3 of the book. Slow. I didn’t really care about it
Writing: overall pretty good, I appreciated the attempt to use the matriarchal society to highlight how stupid some fantasy books sound in regards to female characters, but this was just too heavy handed. It came off very “and now a word from our sponsors: feminism”. I do think there’s an interesting discussion to be had here though about deconstructing thoughts that a matriarchal society would be a wonderland of loving equality, but I don’t think that’s what this book was trying to do.
Side note: the sex scenes were fine. Which honestly is pretty good, they weren’t horrible to read, even if I was jumpscared by the first one bc I didn’t expect this book to have multiple intense sex scenes in it.
Overall: 1.5 stars. I wouldn’t read it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to any one. Might rant about it while drunk at midnight
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Alcoholism, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, and Kidnapping
Minor: Drug use, Infertility, Genocide, Pregnancy, Stalking, Medical trauma, and Torture
with_discipline's review against another edition
The world struggles to thrive and the characters have no heart. Things happen around the protag but he just floats from one important thing to the next without ever seeming connected to them. After eighty pages, I struggled to care about him and couldn’t buy how poorly he played political games while being told he was good at it.