Book Review: Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Nov 30, 2018Nov 30, 2018 Lola Andrews1 Comment

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for…and the most demeaning. This year, there’s a ninth. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.

In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it’s Lei they’re after – the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king’s interest.

Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppresive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king’s consort. There, she does the unthinkable – she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world’s entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge.

First of all, this book comes with a trigger warning for sexual abuse and violence.

Please, don’t let that deter you! Girls of Paper and Fire is definitely the revelation of the year, with an intricate plot that weaves themes of self-love and identity with a beautiful coming of age story built in a well-crafted and very interesting fantasy world.

Girls of Paper and Fire introduces us to Lei, the member of an oppresed caste who is chosen to become a Paper Girl, or the equivalent of a sex slave to the king. Along with her, seven other girls get chosen, a ritual that happens every year and that once upon a time saw Lei’s mother taken away from her. Lei meets Wren, another Paper Girl, which in turn twists the story into a romantic adventure in the search for justice.

The setting of the world is beautiful, weaving elements from Asian mythology with original fantasy imagery. Ngan’s world is evocative, and it becomes an enchanting spell of scents and sights in which to root the story of these young girls.

Thematically, this book is dense, but only in the best of ways. It carves out a society in which women are objectified, and offers a very clear view on rape as a tool for power. The topic is difficult, but it is treated with genuine care and without being unnecessarily graphic. Thus, the book tells a powerful tale of male sexual violence used as a means of exerting domination, rather than as depravation or mere lust.

The girls in this book meet during a traumatic period in their lives, and find strenght in each other and in the reclaiming of their own selves, their minds and their bodies. The focus on recovering from trauma is beautiful, and it makes for character archs that build into three-dimensional stories of great complexity, and great hope.

I recommed Girls of Paper and Fire for fans of fantasy, lesbian romance, and well-crafted young adult novels with great characters.

Buy Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan Lo here.

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You can find this book in my list Top 10 Best Fantasy and Romance Novels

Book Review: Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

Nov 26, 2018Nov 26, 2018 Lola Andrews3 Comments

Melissa Bashardoust’s acclaimed debut novel Girls Made of Snow and Glass is “Snow White as it’s never been told before…a feminist fantasy fairy tale not to be missed” (BookPage)!

“Utterly superb.” —ALA Booklist, starred review
“Dark, fantastical, hauntingly evocative.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“An empowering and progressive original retelling.” —SLJ, starred review

Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.

Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass starts its narrative as a retelling of Snow White, and soon turns itself into something completely different. Devoid of the classic take on jealousy and female competition, Bashardoust gives the tale of these two women shades of emotional complexity, coming-of-age narrative, female agency and conflicting feelings.

A character-driven story, Girls Made of Snow and Glass focuses on two main characters, Mina and Lynet, the would-be evil queen and her step-daughter. Told through flashbacks and their two different points of view, it weaves a story of both powerful betrayal and hope.

Mina, trapped by her own idea that love will forever elude her, grows hungry for power and pushes everyone away. Calculating and obssesed with power, one can’t help but sympathise with her loneliness and her longing for that which she believes herself uncapable of.

Lynet, living under the shadow of her own mother, whose memory her father is obssesed with, struggles to find her own identity, and can’t help but find a role model in her step-mother Mina. Her coming-of-age story rings believable and heartfelt as she figures herself out and tries to free herself of the ghost of her mother, all the while handling her relationship with Mina, the only mother she has ever known.

Ultimately, this book is about the complex relationship between these two women, which takes on the theme of mother/daughter dynamics with dexerity and great detail. Refusing to follow the core ideas of the classic Snow White fairytale, Girls Made of Snow Glass brings the two characters together in unexpected ways, creating something completely new and filled with surprising emotion.

The lesbian relationship in the story is subtle, and while not the main subject of the book, it rounds the narrative along many other themes, such as gender roles, growing up, femininity and sense of self.

I highly recommend Girls Made of Snow and Glass to fans of fairytale retellings and dark fantasy populated by complex female characters. The dash of lesbian romance is only a bonus that adds to the beautifully rendered female relationships, the fairy tale twists, and the nods to the original Snow White.

Buy Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust here.

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You can find this book in my list Top 10 Best Fantasy and Romance Novels

Book Review: Ash by Malinda Lo

Nov 22, 2018Nov 26, 2018 Lola Andrews5 Comments

In the world of ASH, fairies are an older race of people who walk the line between life and death, reality and magic. As orphaned Ash grows up, a servant in her stepmother’s home, she begans to realise that her beloved mother, Elinor, was very much in tune with these underworld folk, and that she herself has the power to see them too.

Against the sheer misery of her stepmother’s cruelty, greed and ambition in preparing her two charmless daughters for presentation at court, and hopefully royal or aristocratic marriage, Ash befriends one of these fairies – a mysterious, handsome man – who grants her wishes and restores hope to Ash’s existence, even though she knows there will be a price to pay. But most important of all, she also meets Kaisa, a huntress employed by the king, and it is Kaisa who truly awakens Ash’s desires for both love and self-respect …

ASH is a fairy tale about possibility and recognizing the opportunities for change. From the deepest grief comes the chance for transformation.

The easiest way to describe Malinda Lo’s Ash is to say “queer Cinderella for Young Adults”. However, such a simple statement is a disservice to the deeply engaging world Lo creates for her protagonist.

I like to think of Ash as a wonderful departure from tradition, even when its world is firmly rooted in classic fairytales. Yes, there is a ball to attend that the fierceless protagonist must abandon before midnight, there is a prince, and there is, of course, a wicked step-mother. However, the story doesn’t enslave itself to the Cinderella that we already know, and instead creates its own unique path.

To recap quickly: Ash’s mother passes away and her father remarries, bringing into his household a step-mother and two step-sisters for Ash. When Ash’s father dies, she becomes a servant to her own step-family. Sound familiar? Indeed it is up until that point. However, soon Ash starts seeing a strange man that belongs to the fairy race, and who substitutes the fairy godmother character (with a lot less bibbidi bobbidi booing). Ash longs to go with him, unless until she meets the head of the royal hunt.

The world-building of the novel is fantastic, mixing a Celtic style of fairy folklore with a classic Disney-like approach, thus treating the reader to dark fantasy at its best. Fairies appear as a magic race that humans deal with at their own peril, and whose favors always come with a price. The writing style, too, makes the story feel both traditional and new, honoring folktales while playing around with more modern social notions.

The lesbian love story isn’t treated as controversial, which is always a nice surprise, since the conflict comes instead from a very classic coming-of-age narrative, as well as from class difference. The relationship between the two characters isn’t overtly romantic until maybe halfway through the book, and it’s quite innocent as well, but satisfying in its akwardness and friendship that grows into something more.

The best thing about the book is definetely its well thought-out characters. Three-dimensional and engaging, Ash is an easy favorite for a YA protagonist, likeable, coregeous and spirited. Her struggle with the fairy world is well-supported by her grief over the death of her mother, and her choices are understandable.

Kaisa, Ash’s love interest, is a completely original creation to the Cinderella story, and works as a sympathetic and strong presence within the narrative, making it easy to understand why Ash’s final choice is between the magic world of fairies and the human world where she has found love.

Lo has crafted here a beautiful and dark tale, where the protagonist must decide between a dangerous flirtation that offers her a reprieve from her sadness, and finding salvation on her own terms. Ash will conquer fans of LGBT YA books, but I reccommend it for any fan of well-built fantasy worlds, fairytale retellings, romance and great female protagonists.

Buy Ash by Malinda Lo here.

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You can find this book in my list Top 10 Best Fantasy and Romance Novels