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A review by thingslucyreads
Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
I received a review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. Thank you Jimmy Patterson Presents for the eARC. This is an honest review.
Luce, you'll say, didn't this book come out five years ago? Aren't you a little behind the times?
Yes, and yes.
(In my very dubious defence, I did start reading this in 2018. I just then put it down for a really long time.)
First things first, I want to make clear that while I read the first half of this book using the eARC, I read the second half in the physical hardcover edition (which I've had the whole time thanks to GoPaF being in the subscription box that Shall Not Be Named while I was still a subscriber, way back before they showed their arse and true colours to the entire trans book community. Anyway). I happened to be keeping track of my position in the physical book and began to notice that the eARC really was an uncorrected version and sometimes whole passages were missing from the eARC, or were omitted from the published version. (Which is normal.) I opted to read the published version because it seemed like I'd get a better idea of the story that way.
(Also, just hilariously, the eARC frequently, mysteriously omitted the word "king," meaning that phrases like "the opinion of the kingdom" was rendered as "the opinion of the dom." Which always gave me a good giggle.)
I think that if I read this book in 2018 when it was published, it would have been groundbreaking for me. It probably doesn't seem like it now, but back then, an Asian-inspired YA fantasy book actually written by an Asian author was a rarity, and a queer Asian-inspired YA fantasy actually written by a queer Asian author even less so. The book remains groundbreaking for these reasons.
When I say it isn't groundbreaking for me now, it mostly just means that this didn't speak to me as profoundly as it might have back then. But that's fine! Not every film has to be Oscars bait, and not every book has to be lifechanging. It was a fun time and I enjoyed my time with it very much -- but I can't help but wonder how differently I would have received it five years ago. I'll never know for sure.
This wasn't a book that I couldn't put down, but every time I did have a little leisure time I found myself gravitating towards it, planning to sit and read 50 pages and frequently reading 100 or more. The read dates aren't a lie, I did start this five years ago, but once I committed to getting through it, I really got through it. I was attached to a lot of the characters and felt that they were all pretty realistic in their reactions to their situations. I even started to feel sorry for Blue. I'm very interested to see where and how the other Paper Girls pop up in the next two books.
The world is interesting and pleasingly diverse, with fictional countries adjacent in culture to India, Japan and China represented, probably in addition to others I'm not well-versed enough to recognise by the names of characters, or food, or clothing. And while this book glared at me from my currently-reading shelf for a really long time, I'm glad that I took so long to finish this because since starting I've seen a few C-dramas and could easily imagine the clothes, buildings, courtyards and gardens in a way I wouldn't have been able to five years ago.
I have two quibbles, the first being Lei's insistence that Paper caste people, mostly women, were being treated as "less than human." This only really makes sense in our world, where we consider humans to be the most important beings, the benchmark against which everything else is measured. In the world of the book, humans, Paper caste, are the lowest of the low. They weren't being treated as less than human, they were being treated as human...ie, already less than nothing. A minor complaint, but it happened kind of often and threw me out of the flow every time.
The other quibble, slightly less minor, is that I think the relationship between Wren and Lei would have benefited from more on-page development, or even just more time spent together on-page. They had a decent amount of time together, don't get me wrong, but I feel like one or two of the Lei and Blue altercations could have been cut in favour of Lei and Wren spending time together, maybe having some more conversations about themselves that weren't necessarily plot-relevant.* At one point Wren is assigned to accompany Lei to all their classes but this is mostly glossed over with a time jump? I was reading their relationship through a "they're endgame" lens, but only because I knew they were. I'm not sure if I would have really felt it if I wasn't expecting it. Having said that, I recognise that these girls were in extenuating, stressful circumstances which would make their feelings for each other run higher and faster, and also, there's plenty of room for more development in the next two books.
*I will acknowledge that this book had a lot of plot to get through, which I thought was done very well and at a good clip - not breakneck speed, but not so slow that it ever dragged for me - and it was also fairly long already, and I understand that maybe this didn't happen because there were too many other things to set up in the narrative. But...I don't know. I, personally, would have appreciated some more girlfriend time. But again, there are two more books for that.
My final rating for this book is 3.75, because this is, after all, the first book in a trilogy and can't really be judged on its own. Trilogies are nearly always much, much greater than the sum of their first installment.
Luce, you'll say, didn't this book come out five years ago? Aren't you a little behind the times?
Yes, and yes.
(In my very dubious defence, I did start reading this in 2018. I just then put it down for a really long time.)
First things first, I want to make clear that while I read the first half of this book using the eARC, I read the second half in the physical hardcover edition (which I've had the whole time thanks to GoPaF being in the subscription box that Shall Not Be Named while I was still a subscriber, way back before they showed their arse and true colours to the entire trans book community. Anyway). I happened to be keeping track of my position in the physical book and began to notice that the eARC really was an uncorrected version and sometimes whole passages were missing from the eARC, or were omitted from the published version. (Which is normal.) I opted to read the published version because it seemed like I'd get a better idea of the story that way.
(Also, just hilariously, the eARC frequently, mysteriously omitted the word "king," meaning that phrases like "the opinion of the kingdom" was rendered as "the opinion of the dom." Which always gave me a good giggle.)
I think that if I read this book in 2018 when it was published, it would have been groundbreaking for me. It probably doesn't seem like it now, but back then, an Asian-inspired YA fantasy book actually written by an Asian author was a rarity, and a queer Asian-inspired YA fantasy actually written by a queer Asian author even less so. The book remains groundbreaking for these reasons.
When I say it isn't groundbreaking for me now, it mostly just means that this didn't speak to me as profoundly as it might have back then. But that's fine! Not every film has to be Oscars bait, and not every book has to be lifechanging. It was a fun time and I enjoyed my time with it very much -- but I can't help but wonder how differently I would have received it five years ago. I'll never know for sure.
This wasn't a book that I couldn't put down, but every time I did have a little leisure time I found myself gravitating towards it, planning to sit and read 50 pages and frequently reading 100 or more. The read dates aren't a lie, I did start this five years ago, but once I committed to getting through it, I really got through it. I was attached to a lot of the characters and felt that they were all pretty realistic in their reactions to their situations. I even started to feel sorry for Blue. I'm very interested to see where and how the other Paper Girls pop up in the next two books.
The world is interesting and pleasingly diverse, with fictional countries adjacent in culture to India, Japan and China represented, probably in addition to others I'm not well-versed enough to recognise by the names of characters, or food, or clothing. And while this book glared at me from my currently-reading shelf for a really long time, I'm glad that I took so long to finish this because since starting I've seen a few C-dramas and could easily imagine the clothes, buildings, courtyards and gardens in a way I wouldn't have been able to five years ago.
I have two quibbles, the first being Lei's insistence that Paper caste people, mostly women, were being treated as "less than human." This only really makes sense in our world, where we consider humans to be the most important beings, the benchmark against which everything else is measured. In the world of the book, humans, Paper caste, are the lowest of the low. They weren't being treated as less than human, they were being treated as human...ie, already less than nothing. A minor complaint, but it happened kind of often and threw me out of the flow every time.
The other quibble, slightly less minor, is that I think the relationship between Wren and Lei would have benefited from more on-page development, or even just more time spent together on-page. They had a decent amount of time together, don't get me wrong, but I feel like one or two of the Lei and Blue altercations could have been cut in favour of Lei and Wren spending time together, maybe having some more conversations about themselves that weren't necessarily plot-relevant.* At one point Wren is assigned to accompany Lei to all their classes but this is mostly glossed over with a time jump? I was reading their relationship through a "they're endgame" lens, but only because I knew they were. I'm not sure if I would have really felt it if I wasn't expecting it. Having said that, I recognise that these girls were in extenuating, stressful circumstances which would make their feelings for each other run higher and faster, and also, there's plenty of room for more development in the next two books.
*I will acknowledge that this book had a lot of plot to get through, which I thought was done very well and at a good clip - not breakneck speed, but not so slow that it ever dragged for me - and it was also fairly long already, and I understand that maybe this didn't happen because there were too many other things to set up in the narrative. But...I don't know. I, personally, would have appreciated some more girlfriend time. But again, there are two more books for that.
My final rating for this book is 3.75, because this is, after all, the first book in a trilogy and can't really be judged on its own. Trilogies are nearly always much, much greater than the sum of their first installment.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Violence, and Kidnapping
While the themes of sexual assault are graphic and ever-present (due to the nature of Lei's situation), the actual scenes themselves are not graphic.