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angelod24's review
2.0
get straight to the point on this review.
The author was overly ambitious and tried to include every single trope, societal inequality, and fantasy element all in one book. I felt this was more a rough (very rough) draft/outline thank a complete novel. The lack of depth hurt the world building. Betrayal after betrayal just for the sake of a “twist” aspect.
The concept was interesting but the execution was off the mark. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this to others.
Thank you to NetGalley for the arc.
The author was overly ambitious and tried to include every single trope, societal inequality, and fantasy element all in one book. I felt this was more a rough (very rough) draft/outline thank a complete novel. The lack of depth hurt the world building. Betrayal after betrayal just for the sake of a “twist” aspect.
The concept was interesting but the execution was off the mark. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this to others.
Thank you to NetGalley for the arc.
iam's review
DNF @ 55%
I loved the idea of a high scale SFF book with a scheming polyam sexworker protagonist and dragons, but unfortunately I ended up not being quiet as engaged as I hoped to me.
The worldbuilding of Silk Fire was rich and fascinating, and it's one of those books that just throws you right in without explaining all too much. I have to say, even halfway through the book, I still struggled with following all the different people, their allegiances, or how the political system and connections all really worked.
This wasn't helped by how I found the writing confusing at times. Even when there weren't any schemes or specific worldbuilding intensive scenes, I couldn't always follow entirely what was happening from one sentence to the next. This happened during all sorts of scenes, action ones, conversations, and even sex scenes.
I also would generally have appreciated a bit more details surrounding some of the core concepts of the world, like the matriarchy, or who some of the big players in the power structures are and where they came from, and what their power truly entails. Of course, a lot could be gathered from context while reading, but I do like a bit of telling occasionally.
Koré was a protagonist that I both appreciated and... not. I like characters that are unlikeable and have glaring flaws and do mistakes and fuck up... in theory. Koré didn't bother me, but just like I couldn't always follow the plot, I also couldn't always follow why he was doing what he was doing or how his feelings and thoughts evolved.
That said, there was something interesting, and relateable, in his fast switches between confidence and competence, and moments of weakness. At the same time, that lead to situations and the plot developing in ways I didn't like.
Unfortunately, none of the main characters really were my type. I wasn't excited about getting to know any of them, really, and as I like character-driven books, this lowered my engagement with the book quite a bit. This, however, is down purely to personal taste, and I think many readers would find plenty of the characters interesting.
Overall this had a lot of potential, but I think I picked it up at the wrong time. I couldn't read more than a chapter or two at a time, partially due to outside circumstances, and it wasn't always easy to get back into the book. I originally wanted to finish this, but when I realized I had no interest in picking the book back up, I had to admit to myself I better put it aside from now. I would love to reread at some point in the future and find out how it all ends, but for now, this is it.
I received an ARC and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.
I loved the idea of a high scale SFF book with a scheming polyam sexworker protagonist and dragons, but unfortunately I ended up not being quiet as engaged as I hoped to me.
The worldbuilding of Silk Fire was rich and fascinating, and it's one of those books that just throws you right in without explaining all too much. I have to say, even halfway through the book, I still struggled with following all the different people, their allegiances, or how the political system and connections all really worked.
This wasn't helped by how I found the writing confusing at times. Even when there weren't any schemes or specific worldbuilding intensive scenes, I couldn't always follow entirely what was happening from one sentence to the next. This happened during all sorts of scenes, action ones, conversations, and even sex scenes.
I also would generally have appreciated a bit more details surrounding some of the core concepts of the world, like the matriarchy, or who some of the big players in the power structures are and where they came from, and what their power truly entails. Of course, a lot could be gathered from context while reading, but I do like a bit of telling occasionally.
Koré was a protagonist that I both appreciated and... not. I like characters that are unlikeable and have glaring flaws and do mistakes and fuck up... in theory. Koré didn't bother me, but just like I couldn't always follow the plot, I also couldn't always follow why he was doing what he was doing or how his feelings and thoughts evolved.
That said, there was something interesting, and relateable, in his fast switches between confidence and competence, and moments of weakness. At the same time, that lead to situations and the plot developing in ways I didn't like.
Unfortunately, none of the main characters really were my type. I wasn't excited about getting to know any of them, really, and as I like character-driven books, this lowered my engagement with the book quite a bit. This, however, is down purely to personal taste, and I think many readers would find plenty of the characters interesting.
Overall this had a lot of potential, but I think I picked it up at the wrong time. I couldn't read more than a chapter or two at a time, partially due to outside circumstances, and it wasn't always easy to get back into the book. I originally wanted to finish this, but when I realized I had no interest in picking the book back up, I had to admit to myself I better put it aside from now. I would love to reread at some point in the future and find out how it all ends, but for now, this is it.
I received an ARC and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.
legacysiren's review
1.0
I can definitely say I have read a lot of books in my 42 years on this earth. I have read a lot of bad ones and a lot of good ones. But...I have never read a book like this and I hope to never read one like it again.
neighborhoodbeanreads's review
This review is long overdue, I really needed to marinate in my thoughts before putting together the review. I DNF’d this book at the 20% mark. There were a lot of issues, right from the beginning, both in terms of world building and when it came to handling diversity in the book. This book relies heavily on the exploitation of orientalism; Asian motif’s and language are seen throughout the book in its basis and even in promotion kf the novel, its likness to Asian cultures used more so as an aesthetic than with respect to the fact these cultures belong to real-live people. This was present as well in the naming structure.
In terms of the books world building, there was way too much going on. We had dragons, dinosaurs and scifi technology elements which made the premise of the story hard to fathom. Way too much happens without the necessary foundational elements or world building in place.
I was really excited to read a novel with a focus on queerness and one with a matriarchy, something I’ve seen done beautifully in other novels and enjoyed, but the research on existing matriarchies (which are seen more often in non-western countries) was lacking and the representation felt hollow. There isn’t really a foundation of why the mattiarchy in this book is similar to the patriarchy in our world besides word-for-word copy and pasting rhetoric used against women flipped onto men. There seemed to be no foundation, at least from what I’ve read, where the power imbalance comes from— like we see in modern day patriarchal structures. It felt much more “women are mean to men too!!!”. You cannot simply copy/paste oppression without tweaking it past how it functions in our world. It reads as lazy and can be harmful. Unfortunately, when these concerns were brought up with the author after the books release, they doubled down. Refusing to take this criticism, Zabe instead told readers that we just can’t accept the fact women are abuse men too.
There was also some unfortunate TERF-like language and ideas embedded in the story, which was frustrating since the author himself is trans. I’m not sure if it is internalized misogyny or what, but it was nevertheless present. Example: the main character’s aunt transition from male to female and it is alluded to that they did so to get the perks of being a woman and the privilege that comes with in their society (TERF rhetoric).
Side note: I also didn’t appreciate the way sex work was portrayed or how often there were instances of dubcon. It felt like it was just shock value or trauma porn.
In terms of the books world building, there was way too much going on. We had dragons, dinosaurs and scifi technology elements which made the premise of the story hard to fathom. Way too much happens without the necessary foundational elements or world building in place.
I was really excited to read a novel with a focus on queerness and one with a matriarchy, something I’ve seen done beautifully in other novels and enjoyed, but the research on existing matriarchies (which are seen more often in non-western countries) was lacking and the representation felt hollow. There isn’t really a foundation of why the mattiarchy in this book is similar to the patriarchy in our world besides word-for-word copy and pasting rhetoric used against women flipped onto men. There seemed to be no foundation, at least from what I’ve read, where the power imbalance comes from— like we see in modern day patriarchal structures. It felt much more “women are mean to men too!!!”. You cannot simply copy/paste oppression without tweaking it past how it functions in our world. It reads as lazy and can be harmful. Unfortunately, when these concerns were brought up with the author after the books release, they doubled down. Refusing to take this criticism, Zabe instead told readers that we just can’t accept the fact women are abuse men too.
There was also some unfortunate TERF-like language and ideas embedded in the story, which was frustrating since the author himself is trans. I’m not sure if it is internalized misogyny or what, but it was nevertheless present. Example: the main character’s aunt transition from male to female and it is alluded to that they did so to get the perks of being a woman and the privilege that comes with in their society (TERF rhetoric).
Side note: I also didn’t appreciate the way sex work was portrayed or how often there were instances of dubcon. It felt like it was just shock value or trauma porn.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexism, Cultural appropriation, and Misogyny
jolietjane's review
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
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
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
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
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.