A review by rstacey2000
Their Divine Fires by Wendy Chen

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Thank you to NetGalley, Algonquin Books and Hachette Audio for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

The book started off strong and really made me care about our main character in Part I, Yunhong. As someone lacking much knowledge of the Cultural Revolution in China prior to reading this novel, I think I learned a lot and really feel for what many families had to go through during this time. I found myself confused during parts of this novel because it moves quickly and lacks context in some areas, but that's on me to further educate myself on the subject. 

This is a short novel, but it definitely had many elements I enjoyed. There were a lot of good comments on the agency women deserve to choose their own destinies and the difficult decisions they are confronted with. I also found the discussion of generational trauma to be very intriguing and wish it was a topic we spent more time focusing on.

For a multi-generational story, the book felt disjointed, with certain parts gripping me while others dragged. Part of the reason for this was the sheer number of characters in the novel, who were inevitably hard to keep track of and therefore, made it difficult to choose any one character to really root for. I found our main women likable for the most part, but never felt I really knew enough about them to form much of an attachment. I think there are great themes touched on in this book, but because of its shorter length, they only dip a bit below surface level.

I read this book via audio and really enjoyed the narrator. I enjoyed the variety of voices used and found it helped pull me into the story even more! My only problem with the audio version was that I found it very difficult to keep up with the amount of the character names covered in such a small amount of time. I think it would enhance the experience to include a reference guide or family tree along with the audio version of this book.