A review by ohmage_resistance
So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole

adventurous medium-paced
Yeah, this book didn't quite work for me. The beginning was better, but once the two main plotlines started, I wasn't super interested in either. Faron had this really annoying plotline of "should I trust this obviously super sketchy figure that everyone tells me not to trust. I probably shouldn't. He's such a bad boy though and I have literally nothing else to do, so I think I'm going to trust him."
Surprise, he's evil and she shouldn't have trusted him. Who could have seen that coming? But of course it needs to be written that way, because the author needs to create conflict somehow for the next book, and that can't happen organically.
Anyway, I never like those sorts of plotlines. I was also a little weird because I think they kind of depend on the MC being attracted to the bad boy that they shouldn't trust, but this book like kinda half reads as a love triangle with Faron, the bad boy, and Reeve (Faron's actual love interest) but half doesn't because Faron is demi so there's no reason why she should be attracted to the bad boy love interest.
Again, doesn't really make sense to me, but probably works as a setup for book 2
. Elara's plotline is going to fantasy!English dragon school. I feel like this was speed through so fast that a lot of it lost impact and was poorly defined. Honestly, if you want a book that slows down and actually explores the concept of a girl going to a dragon riding school run by her colonizers, just read To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. The commentary on racism, colonization and empire is also way better thought out there. Where in this book, you have things like apparently people standing over Elara's bed with a knife being casually mentioned as a racist threat she faced, her getting into a contest to defeat a racist bully who called her a slur (which I get it is bad, but it's not threatening her life), to half of her classmates and teachers, almost none of which she has an actual on page relationship with, caring enough about her to go to
war on her behalf against their own country
. There is absolutely no connecting tissue between any of that. A lot of the commentary on racism and colonization is just "something that bad people do" and not really critically looking at how they form systems of oppression, which is why this book's take on it feels very like simplified fiction rather than realistic or grounded commentary.
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