Problematic author and problematic stuff written in the book. Therefore I will. not be reviewing this book and heavily discourage people to pick this one up

First i want to thank netgalley and the author for gifting me a free copy for a honest review.

I gave this book 2 stars. This book is too much. Their are too many aspects in this book, the writing is way to infodumping and clumsy. I also hate the characters. The plot was alright but also not. I don't know what to think about this.

This book has so many aspects. There are dinosaurs, robots, high tech equipment, but also medieval equipment, magic is also a part of the story. There are even undead and a dragon. I think the writer could make this work but it would be really hard to do. In my opinion the author made this story to hard to write. If it was stripped done and a lot of these aspects were gone it would be a lot better and less confusing for the reader.

The writing is a f*cking mess. I was so confused throughout this story. I couldn't remember who was who. because there were so many names and sometimes they used their full names and other times a nickname or only their surname and it was way to confusing.
The world building was very bad. I really couldn't understand it. I didn't know what was were which country was where. Or how the buildings looked. I can't see in my head how this city looks like and how it is build. I also missed things like i read in a review that their were stairs for dinosaurs. I was in shock like where was this. i haven't read about dino stairs.
Also the writing was really difficult to follow. I had to read the page again a lot of the times because sentences were to confusing and some info i didn't understand. I really didn't have a good time with the writing.
Also i just saw some fanart and i am so confused i really didn't think the characters looked like that. I just kept starring at that picture for a couple minutes. I put so many hours in this book and i got almost everything wrong in my head. The writing was very infodumping but not explaining how something looked. So its sort of telling but not showing it.

Well the characters. I don't know what to think about this. The main character is extremely damaged. He thinks he is a monster and unlovable and a everything that goes wrong is his fault. And i don't know if this is right representation of mental health. I have no experience with it and i really like to know if this is alright how the author wrote about it. The big part about this story is that gender roles are sort of turned around. Women are mostly guards and rule society. The men are servants or courtesans. There are some ruling men but most aren't. Queer relationships are frowned upon in this main country (or a city) that their in. The main character is a courtesan and he is queer. He is bisexual. Beware of the slutshaming in this book. The main character gets called a slut or whore many many times and it really annoys me. The characters are honestly all very mean and annoying and i don't want to read about them again. One of the characters has a drinking problem the other one has a hero complex. He only thinks about other people and making the world a better place. The main evil is super narcissistic. He thinks he is the best and does everything to show that. There is too much going on with these characters.

The plot was a bit to much but it was alright. The plot was very political based. And the political aspects of this book where not that bad. They were pretty fun to read. Just the undead rising and stuff was just not necessary and i don't think it belonged in the story. The dragon was already a bit extra but i could handle that. The undead where just over the top. It could have been left out. The plot twist where pretty good though. I wasn't really shocked though because i really didn't care. But i didn't see them coming so if i cared i would have been shocked.

One more thing about this book. The sexual abuse and torture are heavy. The repercussions in this book for those kinds of terrible acts are just none existent or very very minimal. I hated that part so much.

Some positive things about this book is the fact that the main character is a courtesan and gets payed for doing sexual acts. You don't see this stuff much in books. And never as the main character. So i really liked that about it.

to sum it all up. I really didn't like this book. I'm literally proud of myself for pushing through this book. I really don't recommend it. It's not worth your time to be really mean about the book.
Yeah i'm done. I don't have any energy left to write more about this book. So thanks for reading and goodbye.

I had to score this low. One of the worst i've read. The horny pronunciations are despicable and the story was convulated and un-interesting.

The book was really hard to understand, I stopped reading really quickly. The story can be interesting but it's really difficult to get into it. It may lacks some introduction to the characters or even how the world works.

DNF @ 53%

Unfortunately, I was really let down by this. It was just so confusing and the pacing was so off, so I couldn’t finish it.

This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, so to say I'm disappointed would be an understatement.

The beginning of this book is dense. So dense, in fact, that I didn't make it past 20% or so. It starts with the honestly quite helpful, but ultimately overwhelming character list and pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book. We're very quickly introduced to characters with names like Akizeké Shikishashir Dzaxashigé, Zegakadze Kzagé, and Xezkavodz making my eyes glaze over so thoroughly that I wondered if I was actually an idiot.

Impetuously unloaded alongside characters whose names contain every letter of the alphabet were clunky info dumps back and current in time. I would have preferred them just talking about things without the context and picking it up as it was relevant later in the book, but I guess this was also an option.

I've seen a lot of reviews of others disliking the way the book handles essentially reverse sexism. I don't think I read enough to comment thoroughly on that, but it was a bit heavy-handed, wasn't it?

So um. I preordered this book ages ago from a local indie and I don't plan to cancel that, so perhaps I'll give this another chance when it arrives. For now, dnf because after trying unsuccessfully 5 times to read this, I just don't want to.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC. This book tried its best to be epic fantasy, but I felt it became quite confusing at points. I don't feel enough attention was paid to building the world the author envisioned - especially in so few pages. I did enjoy the what ifs and the complexity of the characters, but the plot didn't do it for me.

DNF at 45%. I was disappointed in this title, because I really wanted to like it! I love matriarchal settings and fantasy worlds that challenge gender norms. In the end, the writing was too disjointed and it felt a lot like the author had a lot of ideas but didn't know how to present them to the reader.

Objective criticism aside, I also recommend sensitivity readers to this publisher and author. I found the portrayal of a matriarchy in Silk Fire to be rather misogynist, since female leaders were depicted as evil for the sake of being evil. There was no nuance to this portrayal, no moral grey areas, or even believable motivation for these characters to behave the ways they did.

There were also Orientalist red flags where South or East asian motifs were used as ornamentation throughout the novel, and as an Asian person, I found them both shallow in representation (for the aesthetic, rather than a respectful or meaningful inclusion of Asian culture or art).

Unfortunately, this wouldn't go over well with our visitors. There is a LOT going on, and pacing is difficult..

An important item of note - courtesan and sex worker aren't really the same, but they're used interchangeably in the book. Our Asian readers would not appreciate their culture being portrayed in this way, considering the book seems to be set in an Asian society.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for the ARC.

Dnf, I’m confused by this book. It was really info dumpy and dense. It was nice to see a male protagonist but the book just wasn’t executed well.

my apologies but i cannot finish this book. i've tried, trust me. it is unbearable to read, so i will have to dnf. there are like 500 things going on at once and the book is so info-dumpey it's practically impossible to understand anything.

After seeing the discussion around this book and the reviews discussing the more problematic aspects, I was a bit wary going in, but wanted to give it a shot. Ultimately this book wasn't for me and I ended up DNFing. I think I could see what the author was trying to do, but this was a struggle to get through and not done well.

After reading the low rated reviews I wasn’t sure whether or not to read this book, but I decided to give it a go to see why lots of people might not have liked it. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me and I ended up DNF’ing. This might’ve been because I don’t read a lot of high fantasy or because of some of the content included in this book. I’m rating this 1 star purely because I didn’t finish it. I’m not sure if this would’ve increase by the end, but from other reviews it doesn’t look like it.

I can recognize what the author tried to do, but at times, it was just too much. I enjoyed the set up and how the world was created, but some things just didn't fit well together. I can admire the effort, but ultimately, this was a struggle to get through.

I unfortunately couldn't finish this book, the writing was all over the place - sentences often didn't connect with one another in a way that made it difficult to read. The world-building didn't make any sense, and the characters didn't feel fleshed out enough to connect with in any way.

The matriarchal world element did not work for me; instead of acknowledging how a world would be different if not a patriarchal one, it just seemed to swap roles and isn't giving the commentary it seems to think it is.

When you add in the criticisms of transmisogyny and orientalism I could not force myself to continue.

Very disappointed as I was excited for this book after reading the summary!

DNF @ 50%

I was so excited for this book since it promised so many things that I knew I would love: planet-sized cities, science fantasy setting with magic and technology co-existing, queer lead, matriarchal society.

Unfortunately, I really found this book difficult to sit through. While I somewhat enjoyed Ellor's... I don't know, voice? (It had that distinct adult SFF feeling I love) I found it too confusing to get through enjoyably. Hundreds of concepts are constantly thrust at you, references to thousands of years of history that everyone just seems to know off the top of their head, without the author taking the time to really explain how everything links, why we should care, how is this relevant. I'm a sucker for convoluted lore, but then it needs to support the story, which I felt was not the case here.

Character-wise, I don't remember much about any of them since I didn't find them engaging. Everyone seems to be a bit over the top - quick to anger, boisterous, loud, conniving. Qualities I don't mind but which felt a bit too-present here in too many of the characters. The MC was fine I guess, though I never quite felt myself rooting for him.

I'd look into more of the author's work perhaps in the future after they've gotten a better handle on their craft. Clearly, imagination is not lacking and I think Ellor could be a powerhouse writer if given enough time, practice and editing.

Silk Fire has an interesting premise, but ultimately it was not the book for me. Thank you for the opportunity to read this advanced copy.

I was so excited for this book however the world-building was so complex that it was difficult to get into. When I really focused, the story flowed well and I became more interested in its magic system however I frequently got lost and had to flip back to remind myself of the significance of one thing or another. The novel frequently uses a number of names (places, positions, etc) that are familiar to the characters but were difficult to follow as a reader. Additions to the glossary at the beginning (or adding one at the end) would be an incredible help as the reader is thrown into this world. The main thing I couldn’t keep track of was the districts and what they were supposed to mean. This made keeping track of the political storyline— a main plot— very difficult to follow. The main character Kore is interesting and I would love to see him grow. I would like to return to this book someday because I believe it has the potential to be a good slow-burn political fantasy.

Silk Fire by Zabé Ellor is utterly incomprehensible, and that is the kindest thing I can say about it.

I was genuinely excited for this book as it was one of the few coming out this year that sounded original and narratively spicy. I even broke my "cut it out with the ARCs, you have books at home" resolution for it. Instead, a friend of mine has started a Google Doc about it, and we are trying to piece together meaning from its everything, and we are failing.

How could we not when characters aren't even described with basic actions like taking an elevator down? No, instead, there's this: “A spring hissed. Steel cable hummed through gears. A bucket of rags shot upwards. Faziz dropped like a spider on a line, gold muscles tensing through his arms and back as he slid into a back handspring on the unspooling winch.” Does anyone know what happened here? If you do, can you tell me?

So yeah, between reading descriptions like that nonstop; the dinosaurs; the complete absence of scale for humans in the world-building (because of the dinosaurs, y'see); the info-dumping with fake languages and no real contextual information; the so-called reverse sexism that only has women acting like men and vice versa; and dialogue like "we have fucking at home," is it any wonder I threw in the towel after chapter 3? Can't wait to see how far my friend can get, tbh.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review:

I mainly read adult SFF and am aware of the genres norms. I like complex worlds and names, different species, political parties etc.
This book felt a bit all over the place though. When I read adult fantasy I trust the author to handle the pacing and give out information whenever it's necessary. Here I didn't click with the writing and I kinda missed that trust. The information wasn't cleverly woven into the story it just felt out of place tbh.
Now, I did like the cover, the idea and the queer/sex positive approach. One of my favorite series is the Captive Prince trilogy by C. S. Pacat... So I was excited to read another book about queer sex workers written by a queer author.

Sadly it couldn't reach my expectations and left me disappointed. If it hadn't been an arc I probably would've DNFed it after the first few chapter. Not for me.