A complicated fantasy for sure. I don't know if everyone is going to like it, but I don't think it's one of those books everyone should like. I still don't even know if I like it, but I think it has an audience ready and available for sure. Not a book for a casual fantasy reader but one that when it finds its home will have a reader for life.

After trying to read this for months, I am officially admitting defeat and DNF’ing this one. The world is just a bit too complicated for me, and I really don’t like being confused when I’m reading. I’m really sad because I loved this author’s other book.

I... I honestly don't know what to even write in this review. Let me start with this: I requested the arc of "Silk Fire" because for many, this seemed to be one of the most anticipated fantasy reads this year. The premise is a great one: fantasy mixed with sci-fi, a male courtesan as the protagonist, a polyam relationship, lots of court intrigue. Sounds amazing? Absolutely!

Then I started reading this book and had to stop for a moment and google if maybe I was thinking about a different book, because surely this can't be that highly anticipated work by an author everyone seemed to love. I hadn*t even started chapter one by then, I was just reading that horryfying pronunciation guide listing all these fantasy names that are genuinely so ridiculous and made no sense at all (what's with the misplaced accents all over???), it reads like a very young fantasy fan making up some names for their first wattpad fiction attempt.

Quite frankly, most of the book reads like that. To be entirely honest: I did not manage to read the entire book. The rest I just skimmed, wondering if maybe this could get any better and because I really really don't like dnf-ing arcs. But I just.... I just couldn't do it. I usually start my reviews of books I didn't enjoy with the positives, because there are always some positives, right? Well, I'm so sorry to say but the positives of this book are these: It has a cool, interesting premise, and there are some ideas that could be, theoretically, kind of cool, if this were a different book.

I'm not going to write an overtly long review because I don't want to rant too much, but this book is borderline catastrophic. The writing is weak and convoluted, the world-building is a complete nonsensical mess that is mostly served as paragraphs of info dumping or thrown into the chapters with absolutely no contextual explanations whatsoever (what's with the quotes at the beginning of every chapter just vomiting some fantasy words with no context? what am I, as a reader, supposed to do with this?). There is SO much going on - dinosaurs and dragons and direwolves and gods and I don't even know, my head was about to explode trying to make sense of it all. There is no coherence to how this world is built, it's like the author took all these ideas and concepts and threw them at a wall hoping any of them would stick. It's absolutely wild.
Then there is the overabundance of meme-y writing ("we have fucking at home", are you kidding me??) and modern vocabulary that isn't explained within the context of this world ("slut-shaming", "queer", and so on). The matriarchal society seems to be little more than pure caricature, with no thought or research put into how matriarchal societies work - it's stylized patriarchy but with women and it only exists to show how all these women mistreat our protagonist. It is incredibly lazily done and makes absolutely no sense. Honestly, I found it rather misogynist, though I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt here. I'm just not sure if he knows what patriarchy really is and how it works and why it works that way, and thus why matriarchies work very differently. Ah well.

The characters are... I honestly don't know. Koré could have been so interesting, but he is flat and inconsistent. His love interests are not even fully fleshed out characters. The plot is... there I guess? It's all over the place, nothing makes sense, so many things happen in a span of like, five pages (the first chapter - what the hell was that??) and even moreso, there was no depth or consequence to any of the things happening. At one point, Koré turns into a dragon (mythical beings that haven't been seen for ages) in front of one of his love interests and her reaction is basically "okay then, ah well, let's get moving", as if this is just the most normal thing to happen to her. Oh, and this godsent dragon power? Koré gets it while he is being railed from behind by some customer in an archive, after half of that archive crumbled around them, which doesn't seem to bother anyone. Choices have been made. Generally, this reads like the author had all these plot points and events in his mind and it all made sense in his head, but he didn't manage to actually put them down on paper in a coherent way that readers who did not develop the ability of mindreading just yet can understand.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, and I cannot review the second half of the book though I doubt it gets any better. This is an absolute disaster of a book, as sorry as I am to say this. It needs a lot more editing and rewriting for this to become even just a coherent novel. As it is, it's nonsensical, poorly researched, void of any thought out concepts or interesting characters. I have no idea what was even going on. But there sure are dinosaurs.

I tried. I failed. this book I THINK had the potential to be v interesting if the writing wasn't so unnecessarily confusing and convoluted. I have been reading SFF for years and I just couldn't understand what was happening for a while. It's a genderbent society but without understanding the nuances of society and gender? I think? Also there are dinos? And something called Essence and apparently that can be taken by others through sex? But why. Also where is the political intrigue i was promised? Our MC has all the subtlty of... well of a man, to be honest.

Its a shame because I was SO excited to read this but I did not like (or get!) Blue this.

DNF
I did not finish this book.
I did not realise before reading this book that I had read the authors book previous YA release. If I had I would not have requested this book as that was possibly my least favourite read of last year. The author has issues with writing and constructing a story.

1.5*
Um to be honest I don't know if this is going to be a fair review seeing as I dnf 'ed it half way but I tried my best to get into it so. Everything was too all over the place for me and I genuinely asked myself what was going on more than a couple times. Maybe I'm too dumb to understand it, as it wouldn't be the first time I get confused reading high fantasy, but seeing other reviews I know it isn't just me. Characters were one dimensional, the book is way too long for the plot it had, the world-building was just info-dumping instead of proper descriptions, and the ideas respecting a matriarchal society and the history this setting had just weren't developed right. I don't think I would recommend it to anyone.

I want to thank the publisher for the review copy, however seeing all the hostility from the writer against some of the negative reviews that were shared - with very valid and concerning feedback - I will not be reading or reviewing it any further. Reviewers should not be pressured into giving positive reviews.

DNF: I'm not usually one to review a book having not finished it, but I feel compelled to put this one down in light of the author's recent behavior and the book's actual content. Given that I did not finish this completely, this is all I have to say regarding my decision to not continue reading and why.

CW: Lesbophobia, orientalism

I was going to read Silk Fire in March with a book club. We were all very excited to read this book. However, I do not think any have finished this book. Combined with the inappropriate behaviour of the author online, I have lost all interest in this book.

After seeing the behavior of this author on Twitter and some of the reviews I’ve read of this book made me lose all interest in this book. This author has a lot of personal problems that they first need to work on before writing a book like this. This book is just projecting.

The fact that they are lesbophic made me so so angry. You have issues and are dealing with them in a very hurtful way.

Decided to DNF it after two pages.

I’ve read from this author before and also DNF’ed that one. I think this writing style is not for me

sometimes i wish i could separate the art from the artist because this does sound like a great concept. unfortunately i can’t so even though i am very grateful for receiving this e-arc, i won’t continue reading this

Due to the controversy and actions of the author, I will no longer be reading or reviewing this book, thank you NetGalley for providing me and an arc, but I'm extremely disappointed in the acts of the author to even begin to read this book.

Initially the plot seemed very interesting, but once sitting down and getting into it and met with thankfully a pronunciation guide I felt a little heart sink as the names came off as jumbled word salad with accents. I brushed it off and thought, hey, I've read a lot of SFF I'll find my step eventually. But right away despite mentioning names it became hard to spot which persons was speaking and who exactly they were or where the characters from scene to scene. There was mention of a political strategy but I felt completely lost and uninterested because there was no grasp of any world building to make me invested in why they want to put someone else in position. Sadly, this is a DNF for me.

Due to the controversy and actions of the author , I will no longer be reading or reviewing this book , thank you netgalley for providing me and an arc but I'm extremely disappointed in the acts of the author to even begin to read this book .

DNF. Due to trusted sources from other reviewers that I have heard from this book has homophobia, transphobia, racism, and more. It is not a book I am willing to read, and not willing to review. This author needs to get their shit together, and should not be writing books like this.

DNF - due to the content of other reviews, including references to racism and lesbphobia, I no longer feel comfortable reviewing this book.

For the past few days, I've been debating with myself about whether or not I should review this book. I haven't read it and in the light of several reviews from trusted sources, I don't think I will. It's become clear that this book is objectively terribly written. Subjectively, it contains some serious misogyny, lesbophobia and transphobia. Others have said it better than I have, and I do not feel like pouring my time and energy into something that goes against every single part of who I am. I will not debate my existence or my rights with an author who does not care for either. I'm truly sorry to be writing this, but I can't give this book a chance.

I DNF’d this book at 20% because it was boring and difficult to follow. I have no desire to see how it ends. I normally do not rate books I haven’t finished but NetGalley requires a rating for each review.

I ended up DNF-ing this book about 20%ish in. The writing was confusing and the social commentary felt incomplete and borderline offensive. Role-reversal stories such as this (where society is an oppressive matriarchal system) rarely work well. The author has also doubled down on his stances despite constructive criticism. Lesbophobia and racism isn’t a cute look either. I think the premise is very interesting, but the execution needs a lot of work to make this readable.

Due to recent events surrounding the author's remarks and behaviours, I don't feel comfortable rating and supporting this book and so will not be doing so. Apologies for the lack of review.