A review by softstarrynights
Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

3.0

Phoenix Extravagant is a fantasy book that I picked up on a whim from my library. All I really knew about it was that it was a Goldsboro SFF pick and that I’d seen mixed things about it. I was ready to love it but I realised pretty quickly that this was not going to be the book for me. I was never excited to pick this book up, and I never felt like I wanted to read it. When I did convince myself to pick it back up I did tend to read big chunks of it, which says something about the writing, but I just never felt that desire. I did not like the protagonist, which was a shame because I was interested in reading a non-binary protagonist for the first time, but they were just a bit of a wet wipe. I don’t need my protagonist to be an action man, but I need a bit more. And then came the romance. If you haven’t noticed I’m currently only reading two types of books; fantasy and mystery. Note that I did not include romance in that list. These characters just seemed to suddenly be in a relationship, despite the fact that I don’t think they had much chemistry prior to that. I also found it a little strange that the protagonist was willing to look past loyalties to friends and family because of this person they’d known for two minutes. But like I said, I am absolutely not in the mood for romance at the moment. Overall what really struck me about this book was that it felt like a debut, even though it was not. As you can tell this clearly did not do it for me, but for the most part, it was just fine. It was a story, some things happened, and I’ll probably not think about it again.