Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Fire from the Sky

This book is a warm hug on a cold day. It’s a kiss on the forehead from someone you love. It’s holding hands for the first time with a crush. The prose is sparse but beautiful. It’s a queer, indigenous coming of age story that deals with cultural belonging and first love and navigating queerness in spaces that don’t necessarily feel welcoming. I adored this book.

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cleo_reads's review

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4.25

Lovely, immersive queer YA about a 16 year old Sami reindeer herder trying to figure out who he is and how to fully be himself in his home village.

This is a gentle book - very much a slice of life type story. A lot is unsaid - in that way it’s very different from American novels. Definitely read the sample.

The teens feel accurate, down to the mood swings and sulks and friendship drama- which I enjoyed and also found a bit stressful. This is why I don’t read a lot of YA.

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xangemthelibrarian's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I love this writing style. I realize this has been translated, but I sincerely hope the translator did the author justice in keeping the original tone of the book. I love the way the author describes how Ánte sees his world and experiences everything around him. I love Ánte's softness and his resolve to have both himself and his culture. His journey in this story was not easy. It won't be afterwards either. But this kiddo is strong. I believe in his power to create a world where he gets to have it all.

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bookishcori's review

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emotional hopeful fast-paced

4.0

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lettuce_read's review against another edition

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4.0

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betweentheshelves's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a quiet book, and a short book, but that honestly doesn't make it any less impactful. Set in northern Sweden, it follows Ánte who is a reindeer herder and trying to find his place in the world. It's about his acceptance of the fact that he's gay, and trying to figure out how to fit into his community that isn't super accepting. The way that the emotions were captured in this book was beautiful, and really what stands out the most from the overall writing.

If you're a fan of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe or Ready When You Are, this is definitely a book that you'll want to have on your TBR. It is a translated work, so parts of it felt a little bit choppy to me, but overall, it was a good story.

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cobwebshelves's review

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emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

"He had the right to this life, this culture. The roots went deep into the soil and he didn't want to cut them. No matter what others thought, he would always belong here.
Nobody else got to decide who he should be. Only him."

This was so, so close to 4 stars but didn't quite cut it. I wish this book had focused a little bit more on the Sámi culture and Ánte's relationship with it. Unfortunately, given how short this book was, it went unexplored, as did most other storylines.

It was kind of difficult to buy into Ánte's relationship with Erik because it was so surface-level. Ánte is an unreliable protagonist, yes, but it's never really made clear why exactly he fell in love with Erik. As someone else put it quite well in their review, Erik isn't much of a character. I'm not sure I can say much else about him other than he plays FIFA on console and he has a girlfriend who's the source of Ánte's envy.

Some of the plot points also felt quite tropey. A couple scenes in particular around the middle of the book felt like they were lifted from Skam and tweaked a bit to suit the book. I think if you were a fan of Skam or any of its iterations you might enjoy it.

While it touches somewhat upon homophobia in the Sámi communities, I wish it had been a bit more serious and thorough with the social aspects. I wish there was more exploration of the role of Sámi in historical and contemporary Swedish society. But this was, at the end of the day, about the romance – and I unfortunately found the romance to be the weak link.

Thanks to NetGalley and Levine Querido for the arc.

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