I really liked the concept!

This adult fantasy is full of political intrigue, world building and an interesting magic system. I liked the idea of the plot and the expansive world, but I think the writing was a big let down for me. It felt at times too descriptive, and pulled me out of the story. There's so much going on at once- there's all sorts of paranormal creatures, so it's more like blend of all the genres, but none of the substance. I wanted to find a new sci-fi that I could fall in love, but ultimately this moved so fast, there was no time to digest anything.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an e-arc!

Rating: 2/5 stars

Content Warnings: Violence, murder, on page sex scenes, sexual assault, slut shaming

Reading the blurb for this book had me really excited - it sounded fascinating and definitely my kind of thing. Unfortunately, in reality I really struggled to get through it. If I hadn't been going to review it, I likely would have given up and DNFed because I just found it quite exhausting to read. I was often confused about what was going on, and too much of what I did understand I wasn't a huge fan of.

Silk Fire is a real sci-fi/fantasy mashup, with world-building combining magical and technological elements. In this matriarchal society, Koré is a courtesan hell bent on getting revenge on his wealthy father, by sabotaging his run for political office. By chance, Koré is imbued with draconic power by a dying god, making him the last dragon - a new source of the previously finite supply of 'essence'. Koré navigates a world of political intrigue, with stakes rising with the appearance of a necromantic threat.

Though overall I really struggled with this book, there were some elements I enjoyed. This was mostly in the world-building. I thought the concept of essence was quite unique and interesting. I also appreciated the incorporation of queer characters. Koré, the main character, is bisexual, and many other leading characters are queer. Their queerness is important to their characters, but not all-encompassing, which was nice to see. I particularly liked the explanation of how trans characters fit in this world. The characters are complex (though sometimes a little too complex - all the back and forth double-crossing and betrayal was tough to follow at times) and I particularly liked Ria and Faziz, the two love interests.

However, I did have a fair few issues with the book. The story takes place in a matriarchal society, which had me a little on edge, since the author is a man. I do think women are better placed to write an effective matriarchal society, as we inherently better understand the nuances of patriarchy better than a man can. I definitely did have some issues with the portrayal of this type of gender power balance. I thought a lot of it was very on-the-nose, just taking the exact experiences of patriarchy and gender-swapping them. For example, there is talk of 'male representation in media' which is very much just taking criticisms of misogyny in media and swapping the pronouns. I just feel this is an inherently uninteresting way to portray a matriarchal society. It also grated on me a little that plenty of the nastier elements of real-life patriarchy are portrayed in this book, only gender swapped. Knowing that these descriptions of women perpetuating the terrible things that happen in real life TO women was written by a man made me a bit uncomfortable.

Silk Fire has a very complex plot, but the way it's written only serves to make it more confusing. This was a book I didn't find myself wanting to pick up to continue, because it felt like such a slog just trying to understand what was happening. Some other elements made it an awkward read - the dialogue is a real mix of the kind of language you'd usually find in fantasy books and also very modern, colloquial dialogue. I thought this was an interesting idea, but ultimately not well enough executed to make it anything more than disjointed and disorientating. While I definitely liked the concept of including fantasy elements alongside things like cameras, hoverships, and bad movies, I also felt like this just made the book feel like it didn't know what it wanted to be.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader's copy of this book.

The premise of this book is fantastic and immediately captured my attention. Charming courtesans, LGBTQ+ representation, dragons, dinosaurs (?!), and planet-sized cities – what more could I want? There was even a compelling subplot about the importance of affordable housing.

Unfortunately, Silk Fire did not live up to my expectations. The basic premise is as follows: Courtesan Koreshiza Brightstar is in search of revenge on his father, a politician who is running for the position of magistrate. With assistance from his friends, his lovers, and the ancient gods, he attempts to overthrow his evil father.

A few general notes on what I didn’t love: the worldbuilding is incredibly complicated, to the point where I often had absolutely no idea what was happening with the plot. Koré was not the most dimensional of characters, as he generally had two modes of thought – wanting revenge and being sassy. This was entertaining at first, but I quickly grew tired of it.

The main problem I had with this book, however, lay in the attempt at a nuanced matriarchal world. In this world, sexism is simply reversed. Men are treated as poorly in Silk Fire as women are stereotypically treated in fantasy novels. While certainly different, I didn’t find this to be a productive course of action. Though it does point out the unwarranted violence against women that too often goes uncriticized in fantasy, I was not convinced that projecting this violence onto men – often queer men – was interesting or groundbreaking. Rape, assault, and questionable consent (among other issues) were all present in this book and not to be taken lightly.

Overall, I was disappointed in Silk Fire, although conceptually it was remarkable. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free eARC of this book!

Thank you for a review copy of Silk Fire by Zabe Ellor. This book was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I have been looking at other reviews to see if this review is just a me thing, but I completely agree with other reviewers on the pitfalls in this book.

This is a story that needs to be written by an author who has a little more knowledge of fantasy writing. It is very ambitious and I don't believe it fully pulled it off. The info-dumping is what has stayed with me and shows a lack of knowledge in worldbuilding.

But let's start with the positive because there was a lot I liked about Silk Fire
The aspects I loved:
The world had so much potential to be amazing and was so cool in so many ways I mean DRAGONS
The poly relationship was divine and I would love to see more of that wonderful dynamic between three people who love each other.
Our main Pov struggle with what he believes and how to achieve it especially with his father, and I liked how everything wasn't so black and white by the end.

Aspects that need work:
The writing is so clunky and the world-building is just info dumped on us throughout.
The dialogue felt all over the place and most of the time I had no idea what was going on. And this wasn't a good confusion like Harrow The Ninth where you have no idea what is happening but you trust the hand guiding you. Here I still had no idea what was happening when I reached the end.
But what really stayed with me as an advid Adult SFF fan was how young Silk Fire felt - at best new adult territory but even then the story felt young and needed to mature.

Overall I do think this book had a lot of potential but it felt very long and ambitious and didn't pull it off for me. However saying all of that I do struggle to read books longer than 300 pages on my kindle so I might try and buy a physical copy and see how I find it, as I did really like what Silk Fire was trying to do and that's why I feel so disappointed because I could see its potential trying to breakthrough.
I did really love the OT3 and thought their dynamics were great together but for me it didn't hide the difficulties underneath.

Im going to give it three stars because of the potential but really it is 2.5

What an ambitious novel! It was pretty hard to get into and finding it difficult to follow right at the start of the book. Many elements were captivating, like the world and its politics. However, it was just too much all at once. I could not finish it because no matter how much I read, it was still all very confusing. It was all difficult to comprehend because I felt like I had to keep going to the glossary or learn how to pronounce their names several times (which is quite difficult to do on kindle).
It has so much potential, but I couldn't finish it. Beautiful cover though.

I didn't get it! I gave it more time than I should have seeing as I didn't understand it. Maybe this just isn't for me but someone else would love it. I really don't know. It's not just the characters, it's the world also. I found the MC to be dry and unlikable.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC

this novel had many elements that i had hoped i would enjoy.. the beautiful cover plus an intricate fantasy world and plot with a poly relationship immediately drew me in. despite all these wonderful things, there was a failure in the way this world is depicted. there was a lot of potential but silk fire didn't make good use of it. the writing was dry and made the whole experience unenjoyable.

thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Silk Fire is an ambitious project, combining expansive epic fantasy worldbuilding in a re-imagined matriarchal society, political intrigue, social commentary, and Kore’s abusive backstory. Unfortunately, Silk Fire utterly buckles under the weight of its own ambitions.

So how did this book fail so badly? Let’s start with societal worldbuilding. The cultural background of Silk Fire is set in this alt-world matriarchy, where women take positions of power and men are largely expected to stay at home, raise children, etc, etc. I’ve followed the author’s Twitter for a while and part of my interest in this book was his talk about re-imagining how sexism works in a matriarchal society. HOWEVER, the sexism in this book is dialed up to like, a 12. It’s actually insane how much sexist rhetoric is in this book. Every other page there’s something about how, ‘oh you’re just a boy you’re too emotional to hold a position of power’, ‘be a good boy and let the women do the work’ etc etc. By 30% in, I was cringing every time I read the word ‘boy’. Instead of any thoughtful critique to modern sexism or really any design at all, the reader is just bombarded with slurs and slurs and slurs.

As for the rest of the worldbuilding, Silk Fire is set in a futuristic, sci-fi setting in a city the size of a planet. There’s a lot of vaguely mentioned history, wars, dead gods, dragons, etc. Lots of history and a ton of content to be explored, as expected in epic fantasy. None of it gets explored. Characters will make references to this war or that event or some person and because none of this has ever been explained to the reader, it gets progressively more and more difficult to follow the significance of any plot point. To be fair, it’s very clear Ellor put a lot of work into developing this world,. The problem is that none of it is explained.

To me, the main greatest failing in the worldbuilding is Ellor’s inability to explain and reasonably justify his world spatially and temporally. Our city (which I think remained unnamed?) consists of multiple districts, of which we focus on War. In a city the size of a planet, how big is this district? The size of a large modern city? A country? Unspecified. Within War, there are vague allusions to one or two neighborhoods with housing problems, but we’re largely confined to Victory Street, where our MC Kore runs his brothel. With how little effort is put into describing War beyond vague references and single paragraphs, this world just feels incredibly empty. My personal headcanon is the War is some backwards district the size of the Vatican City that every other district does their best to ignore.

Near the beginning of the book, a Lost District shows up! They’ve been missing for ten thousand years and bring with them all this cool old technology that no one has seen for ten thousand years! Which is great, but, that brings up a whole host of questions. This city has had some semi-continual governing system for ten thousand years? What the hell have the humans down in that lost district been doing for ten thousand years and why only resurface now? The Industrial Revolution only happened about 200 years ago, what kind of strange new tech does this district have? Can the population of this district still breed with all the other humans?? If you’re thinking these are interesting questions that get explored and answered, don’t get your hopes up. Kore’s dad throws a parade for them and they never get talked about again.

(For brevity, I’m ignoring the dragons, dinosaurs, necromancers, and zombies)

So let’s move to the actual plot. Surprisingly, the plot is fairly straightforward. Kore’s dad is running for judgeship (yay gender equality?) but because his dad is an absolute monster, Kore’s sole mission in life is to make sure his opponent gets elected. It’s one part political intrigue, one part fantasy adventure when Kore has to run off to different areas to do stuff and obviously shit goes down. The issue is because the worldbuilding is so poorly developed, there’s no weight to anything MC does. By 50% of the book, I should at least have some idea of how important such and such’s endorsement would be to the campaign.

The pacing of Silk Fire is strange in a way that gives the reader or characters zero room to emotionally process some pretty major events. (see the Lost District above.) There’s a part about midway through where Kore’s brothel gets raided, soldiers come in and smash everything up for about a page, they get kicked out in about a page, a big emotional reveal happens one page later, then bam sex scene. Kore’s brothel means a lot to him! When’s he supposed to process that all his furniture is in pieces and his employees are banged up (non-consensually)? This is breakneck speed is consistent throughout the book and so many events and consequences are brushed over to move on to the next piece of action.

Honestly, the characters were one of the better parts of this book, and even then I struggled. Mainly due to Kore running around every other page to remind the reader that he’s a monster and an awful human being and just really the worst. If you cut all that out and substituted it with proper explanations of the worldbuilding, I think this book would have been in a much better place. The author has a really bad tendency to really hammer in how you should think about each character with long, Twitter-style monologues waxing morals at the reader that I’m just so so over.

Perhaps the one saving grace is the interlude chapters. Throughout the book, we get short interlude chapters that show Kore’s past as isolated, single stories and those work really well! They’re self-contained, I know the motivations and background of all the characters, and the entire plot makes sense. The (many) sex scenes were also well written.

Overall, I rate this book a 1.5/5. This premise of a bisexual sex worker engaging in political intrigue behind the scenes was one of my most anticipated books for 2022. Unfortunately, the execution was abysmal.

Reivew will go live on my blog 10 June 2022

*sigh*

I am sad that I have to write this review as this is my first ever two star review in 2022. Silk Fire is an ambitious, queer, and unhinged story that was like an acid trip I wish I could forget. Honestly, I did not understand what happened in this book. I tried connecting the dots and compiling the major incidents in a list I still did not understand it. I completely skimmed 50% of the book because I was just lost in the sauce.
Zabe's writing didn't flow smoothly as it felt like the sentences were halted and clunky. I had to reread sentences to fully grasp the intention and meaning of the sentences. The best way I can describe the world building is that it is similar to a everything under the sink kinda sundae. It felt like the author took everything they know and want in high fantasy to be in this book. It's like as though every aha moment they had is poured into this book. Too much sometimes can be great but it all depends on the execution and sadly this one fell flat as a pancake. The descriptions of the world also hindered me from fully grasping the world as whole, I didn't know what was what and which was which. It's a werid world. The multiple pages of info dumping added nothing to my understanding of the world and the story, honestly, as I am writing this review I still could not understand anything from Silk Fire.
I would've overlooked the concept, world building, and writing if the characters were a smidge loveable or redeemable. Oh boy Kore really made it harder for me to love this story. They are just not well fleshed out to stitch together a complex character with believable growth. They are really annoying though. Also, Kore needs to stop hammering in the idea they are a horrible person. It is so repetitive, distracting, and tiring. It ruined my immersion multiple times. The side characters also took a back seat even though some of them are interesting. The author focused on the plot to an extensive degree that it didn't leave room for the characters to grow at all. The villains I could not care less because they were the typical one dimensional antagonist. Truly the real villain is Kore in this book.
The pacing is like a race track, the author covered a lot of things in the first chapter alone. I wish it was marinated longer to give readers a chance to fully understand everything about the events that happened in the chapter.

Ok. I appreciate many things about this book especially the unapologetic queerness of the characters and the dark concept for the main character. I understand that the author wanted to convey a message with this book centering on queer male trauma and healing but sadly the story was to messy in writing and pacing, shallow characters, and poorly executed story.

I do not have many words to say about this book at all, unless those words are "boring," "whatever," and "oh my God why." Two people who I reasonably trust with book ratings thought poorly about this, and it should have been a red flag for me immediately. Please read all the reviews for this if you're going to try it out. I don't even have the energy to say what has already been said before.

I wanted to like this so bad. So. bad. The fact that I didn't is such a travesty. The moment I saw that stunning cover and read the description!? You had me at matriarchal society, dragons, necromancy, and queer characters. Unfortunately, the journey from the book description to the book itself can only be likened to the short period between matching someone on a dating app and arriving at the restaurant only to discover that you've been catfished.

The shock is immediate because the first thing you see is a page filled with uncomfortably complex names and world-building terminology. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but every time I come across a book with that page, my immediate thought is always: Oh, so it's gonna be one of those, huh? It would have been more than fine if that was where the overt complexity stopped, but then we arrive at the actual narrative. Following my original analogy, this is when you sit down at the table with the thought: So what if his profile said 6'1" with black hair, but he's only 5'9" and blonde? Maybe he has a great personality!

I honestly don't even know how to explain it. I saw words in clear English, but I felt like I was reading a different language. Yes, there were alluring words and phrases on the page, and on their own, they're wonderful, but tying them together into a cohesive story was a struggle. What should have been an intricate kaleidoscope of literary color came across as if Jackson Pollock took a shot at writing instead of painting.

There were small moments where I could see signs of poetry and stylization, and then I'd read words like "triceratops bacon," and my brain fizzled out. Furthermore, the characters switched between high-brow verbiage to incongruous slang so frequently I got mental whiplash.

I can understand and even appreciate a more complex and stylized book, but there's a very distinct contrast between being different and trying to be different. As I said, the overall plot had all the building blocks required for a unique and compelling sci-fi book, but the execution was just not there for me. I've seen quite a few people say that this book is like the adult version of Avatar: The Last Airbender. And, like, sure - if you're talking about the M. Night Shyamalan movie adaptation (iykyk).

Thank you, NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing, for the ARC!

Link to review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4367865952

i don't think a single person apart from the author can fully grasp what happened in this book.

if i were to list everything that went wrong with silk fire, we'd be here forever. so let me just stick to the main points:

- the writing - clunky, choppy, disjointed. sentences often didn't connect well with each other and transitions between paragraphs felt awkward - i had to reread several times to understand some scenes.
- the worldbuilding - it's like the author took out every single thought they'd ever had for a high fantasy world and dumped them into this book. we've got dinosaurs, gods, dragons, robots, zombies - and that's not to say such disparate elements can't work together in a fantasy world but there needs to be an underlying logic to it all, which is sorely missing here.
- the world is so badly described, i couldn't tell you what anything looks like. i learned from the author's twitter that apparently this world has massive staircases that only creatures like dinosaurs can navigate - well that's news to me and i just finished the book.
- for all the info-dumping this book does, it never gives out any actually useful information at the right time. we learn the history behind the main political conflict way too late into the novel and even then it's so vaguely written, which is why i couldn't bring myself to care about the stakes or characters' motivations or honestly anything in the plot.
- as for the plot, it's pretty basic but so unnecessarily convoluted that you might be tricked into thinking it's complex.
- koré should've been an interesting protagonist - a sex worker with a dark past in a world set against him who turns out to be the chosen one - but really he's annoying, whiny, overdramatic and his supposed character development is too abrupt and unearned.
- painfully repetitive internal monologue - koré calling himself a monster for the 50th time had me wanting to bash his head in. like yes we all know you have one personality trait, you don't need to constantly remind us.
- i wanted to like the side characters and the poly romance but the novel is so concerned with its plot that characters fall to the wayside and don't get the depth they deserve - which is sad because the plot is so confusingly done, it desperately needed stronger characters to prop it up.
- laughably one-dimensional, wanting-to-take-over-the-world, boring villains.
- the pacing - took fast-paced to a whole new level. in the first chapter, we learn about a lost society that's been cut off from the world for ten thousand years. in the next two pages, people from that lost society suddenly show up. betrayals occur and are forgiven in the span of a handful of pages. this isn't just fast pacing - this is ridiculous. the reader is never allowed to sit with an event and really feel its impact, we're just frantically rushed through it all.

i do appreciate some things about this novel - having a bisexual courtesan protagonist and showing him perform sex work on page is a rare, cool thing to see in an adult fantasy. i also appreciate the message the author was trying to convey - the centering of queer male trauma and healing - but unfortunately, all that got lost in a messy, poorly executed story.

This book was extremely hard to get through.
Firstly, the plot was way too convulated. It takes serious re-reading of paragraphs to understand what a character is doing and even then it's hard.
Secondly, the development of the characters went back and forth too much. A character would pledge to do a certain thing in one chapter and then do something entirely different, with the barest explanation why. And then the plot twists at the end proceeded to destroy a lot of developments some characters went throughout the whole book.
Thirdly, the romantic relationship was just not it. There was little to no build-up between Koré and Faziz, and the multiple twists and turns took away any enjoyment one might get from reading about them. Ria and Koré's relationship had a strong base but the number of times there were betrayals and secrets made it seem shaky by the time we get to the end. The
Koré himself was not a main character I rooted for in almost 98% of the book. His repetitive speeches about how he is an unloveable monster failed to incur any pity, even when we actually get to know about his past. He took decisions after decisions that actively harmed the plot, blamed himself for it and then proceeded to mess up something else.
We got to know very little about the actual past of the whole world. The "districts" were barely explained, the history of the world and it's gods were strewn about in the book, and the War District itself was not clarified clearly. A lot of the book depended on the "Judge" and it was never explained what a Judge actually did.
However, the interlude chapters were really good. They provided an insight into Koré's past which actually tied up some of the many loose plot points, and were paced quite well.
All in all, this book had massive potential but failed to live up to them.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me this arc for an honest review.

Unfortunately this just ended up not being for me.I don’t know if I can fairly review this because I DNF’d it at about 20%, but it did leave me with some thoughts.

I can confidently say that the world building itself was very ambitious, and I think with time and more attempts at fantasy, the author will be able to better their craft. But this time there was too much going on and a lot of it just went right over my head. Could just be a me problem, but it felt like we were thrown into this world at the deep end with nothing but complicated info dumping to keep us afloat.

This book promised sex and dragons and on paper that sounds brilliant, but the end product left me too confused and uninterested to continue.

Silk Fire by Zabé Ellor is something else, and not in a good way, since I had to DNF the book fairly early.

This book is ambitious - VERY ambitious - to the point that the author has tried to cram every single idea into his book to the point that it comes across as clunky, busy, and confusing. 

He's written a very complex world but has not taken the time to explain what's going on, and I spent so much time trying to figure out what's even happening on each page. The writing doesn't flow well at all, which makes reading this book more frustrating and labouring.

I felt that the author constantly had new ideas as he was writing this but didn't know how to introduce them seamlessly into the story - so he just slapped them in as he went. Like, why are there dinosaurs? How does the magic/essence work or what it even is ? Who knows.

The author was very original in his naming convention, but the names/titles are so overly complicated that there had to be a guide - and yet I felt that the guide needed its own guide as it doesn't cover everything and the rest aren't explained.

An example is Dzaroshardze Faraakshgé Dzaxasigé - the author has put how they are pronounced; but is this a person's name? A title? A good rule of thumb for naming characters should be that readers must be able to somewhat pronounce the names and be able to differentiate them easily at a glance. This was not the case here. 

I couldn't gel with the MC as I couldn't get a grip on his actual character. We find out quickly that he wants to overthrow his father politically, but he doesn't offer any real plan on how he'll do this. But then he pulls from thin air that he has the support of a few political parties. What parties? How did he convince them? Why are they backing you? What can you possibly offer them?

Outside of this, I can't tell you much. The MC and his story bounces all over the place, and it's so confusing.

After writing my draft review, I popped over to this book's Goodread page and found the author had left a 5 star review, which includes:

"Remember, this book has:
-multiple sex scenes!
-stylized prose!
-many names and worldbuilding details!
-angst! betrayal! trauma! healing!"

Maybe? But I couldn't bring myself to read any more to find out. DNF'd at 15%.

2.75 stars
From the summary Silk Fire sounded like a book that I would enjoy, but it ended up being a disappointment for me. While I enjoyed the writing for the most part, its flowery nature ended up dragging down the pacing of the story. I enjoyed the worldbuilding for the most part, but after a certain point, the more the author kept on introducing things, the more confused I felt. I was having a hard time grasping exactly what was going on at certain points. But still, it is a good story and I love the romance that the author has written. As an adult fantasy though, Silk Fire falls short for me, though I think others may enjoy it more than me.

There was so much potential here but truly if your reader can’t engage and understand the material it isn’t a well written book. The story primarily suffers from the reader being thrust into a very complex landscape with zero purposeful world building. At 10% I almost had to DNF because nothing made sense and it was more frustration than joy to read but I pushed through hoping for an epiphany. It didn’t come. In fact the entire last portion of the book was so messy and convoluted I had serious trouble keeping everyone’s secret motivations straight.

In addition to all of that there was some deeply problematic overtures on anti-feminism and “reverse” sexism in this book. This mostly stems from the society being matriarchal and the author choosing to have a male main character. It lead to some real sour tastes for me as far as what the author was trying to convey.

Of note for readers the main character is a courtesan which leads to gratuitous amounts of graphic sex scenes including BDSM and attempted rape/assault. Additionally TW for character ignoring a safe word during a scene.

Thanks Netgalley for this ARC!

This book was pretty disappointing, I think Silk Fire has potential and the concept is really interesting. Unfortunately, there was just way too much information to try and process right away. I just couldn’t get into this book at all.

this book has EVERYTHING:

a pronunciation guide for the characters
matriarchal society + scantily clad men

sensuous feasts+ political scandals
chaotic polyamorous bisexuals + magic swords
dead gods + necromancy + dragons

fantastic architecture (of buildings)
a plot that will repeatedly give you WHIPLASH

came for the snark and political intrigue
stayed for the scorchingly HOT *** scenes
and the even hotter emotional healing scenes
and also DRAGONS

(and several trigger warnings)

I will be recommending my library purchase this book!

(note: i received a digital copy of an uncorrected proof of this book and receive no compensation other than the wicked pleasure of reading a book before it's publication date---enjoy!)

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this extremely ambitious novel. I can tell Ellor has incredibly inventive ideas, but it didn't quite translate into something palatable for me.