Burning Roses is a fairy tale retelling and a story of magic, love and gods. Rosa (Red Riding Hood) is helping Hou Yi the Archer stop sunbirds from destroying the countryside. Along the way both women reveal their pasts, both the good and bad, and discuss the mistakes they have made and the regrets they have.

This was a really interesting retelling. It features Rosa as Red Riding Hood but also have elements of Goldilocks and Beauty and the Beast. I also really liked that Rosa and Hou Yi were both middle aged because it's so rare to see heroes in fantasy/fairy tales that are older and weighed down by life and their choices. This was more of a slow story and very introspective and character driven. It was less about the hunt the women were on and more about how they came to be together on this hunt and what path their futures might take. I also really liked that it incorporated various cultures and fairy tales/folklore. It was a short book and a quick read, but really made you think about right and wrong and choices.

I loved the blend of fairy tales and Chinese mythology in this story. It's a 'fairy tale' retelling done in a way I have never seen before and it genuinely works. I'm really looking forward to reading more by this author - another successful introduction for me from the Tor novellas series.

Burning Roses is a queer Asian adult fantasy following two old women. Rosa, resembling little red riding hood with a rifle in her possession. The other Hou Yi, resembling Robin Hood. They enjoy sitting on their front porch smoking pipes and digging insults into each other, and protecting the land from giant killer fire birds.

There is so much happening in this short novella! Fairytale retellings x100, including Goldilocks and Beauty and the Beast.

The story is confusing at first, throwing names and snippets of past events at you quickly but each chapter is like a puzzle piece. As the characters travel together on a mission, they are sharing stories of their past. You begin to better understand the characters actions. Even up until the very end you’re given information that makes certain conversations in the beginning make sense.

I enjoyed this one. However, I did not find that the author took the world to the necessary conclusions for it to really work for me. It’s SUCH a mental journey for these women and the way the story ends so abruptly makes me feel incomplete. Then again, that’s kind of the heart of the story.

Burning Roses combines a mixture of different fairytales/folklore: Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks... and Hou Yi, an archer from Chinese mythology. It blends all these disparate-sounding elements together with aplomb, remixing Hou Yi's story in the meantime to make Hou Yi a trans woman, and winding in what reads as a racism metaphor in the grundwirgen (magical beings with animal qualities or animal forms, all of whom Rosa rather virulently hates in a way inherited from her mother and compounded by a ghastly experience as a child -- you can guess what that experience was when you consider the Red Riding Hood story).

I didn't think that all these stories could be combined like this so comfortably; for me, they're all on quite different formal registers. I don't know much about Hou Yi and how that story is usually told, of course, but the version I heard was rather formal and in the context of an anthology of mythological stories. On that basis, it initially seemed oddly placed next to a nursery story like Goldilocks. Just settle in and trust the author: in my opinion, it works out. I especially enjoyed the way that the story used both versions of the Hou Yi story that I knew of, showing they're essentially the same story from different angles, depending on who is telling the story.

The grundwirgen (which I read as a metaphor for racism) theme feels a little heavy-handed at first, but when I think about the story now that doesn't really register. The image that sticks in my head is that of both Rosa and Hou Yi working to be worthy of their families, failing and being human, and finding their way through it. It's not a story of young and giddy fairytale love, but of love that endures through pain, love that forges a true family which you can't walk away from.

I haven't read the short stories in this world, but I don't think it's necessary to appreciate and enjoy this novella.

The review will be posted on my blog two weeks before the release date in accordance with Tor's usual policy.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Macmillian-Tor/Forge for allowing me to receive this E-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

BURNING ROSES
by S.L. Huang

"A gorgeous fairy tale of love and family, of demons and lost gods, for fans of Zen Cho and JY Yang.

When Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces to stop the deadly sunbirds from ravaging the countryside, their quest will take the two women, now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of age, into a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family and the quest for immortality."

Rep: Latina lesbian mc, Chinese wlw trans mc, Chinese side characters

CWs: death, past abuse

The mix of Eastern and Western fairytales was so interesting and made for a very unique take on retellings than most that I have read. There are so many different takes on the representation that I found amazing. You have a Latina Red Riding Hood main character with the Chinese Archer, sapphic relationships, older protagonists, a lot of conversations about humanity and what it means to be the minority, in the case of this book it is used in conversation with Intelligent Animals and magic but is also a conversation that could clearly be about many of civil rights and equality.

Overall I highly enjoyed this book and loved that it was a novella, it didn't waste time on the needless filler content and just told the story in a concise but beautiful way!


Characters 8
Atmosphere 8
Writing 8
Plot 7
Intrigue 8
Logic 6
Enjoyment 8

RATING SYSTEM CREATED BY BOOK ROAST
1-2 REALLY BAD 3-4 MEDIOCRE 5-6 GOOD 7-8 REALLY GOOD 9-10 OUTSTANDING

Overall 7.57
4 Star Rating

For a quest adventure type story, this was a very quiet kind of read, but it works perfectly. Blending western fairy tales and the story of Hou Yi the Archer, Huang creates this story of two older women who made mistakes trying to do some good.

Rosa was raised with many prejudices against grundwirgen, animals with human intelligence and humans who are in form of animal, and for a long time her sole purpose in life was to hunt and kill as many as possible. After losing her wife and daughter, though, she has made every effort to change her ways.

Hou Yi is also trying to atone for the things she did that led to her losing her wife and her son doing everything in his power to hunt her down.

One of my favorite things with this story was how many different western fairy tales were melded together. Rosa is Red Riding Hood and Rose Red, Mei is Belle, and Goldie is Goldilocks and Snow White. I also really enjoyed the way the story is told. While Rosa and Hou Yi are on quest find Feng Meng, Rosa is recounting the events that led to her coming to Hou Yi’s country.

This is such beautiful writing and the style creates an almost mystical dream while reading. But it is also the story of “old women who hurt their children” and that is evident throughout, showing how much both regret the actions and how much they love their children. It’s beautiful how everything tied together and the way things concluded. Strongly recommend for a quiet but emotionally packed fantasy novella full of fairy tales and folklore.

Burning Roses is a beautiful little retelling of a number of fairytales all mixed together. It follows two older women, Rosa and Hou Yi, as they hunt down Hou Yi’s old apprentice, who is ravaging the countryside in an attempt to force confrontation. Throughout the journey, they each confess to the other the regrets they have in their lives.

You know how, with novellas, it can be a bit hit-and-miss whether one works as its own self-contained story, but this one does it so well. The plot itself is simple, but the way it is used as a vehicle for the characters to reflect on their lives, the mistakes they have made and the ways they have tried to atone, is excellent.

And overall I loved the main characters. I think possibly one weakness of this (on account of it’s a novella) is that the side characters are much less fleshed out. But as I said, it’s a novella, and it’s also a novella that primarily does focus on these two characters (and the antagonist), so as much as I wanted more of the side characters, it’s not exactly a major gripe of mine.

In the end, then, this is a novella that I would urge everyone to preorder. Not least because it’s sapphic (but that too).

This arc was provided by Tor, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

If I had to review this with only one word it would be superb.

It's not every writer who can write a 160-page fantasy novella with a world so gripping and impactful characters. It requires genuine skill.

I was completely mesmerized as I read along and got to know Rosa and Hou Yi. We slowly learn about their past as they divulge it to each other amid their adventure. They are both plagued by the choices they had to make and consequently, their mistakes. At its core, it's a story about family and sorrow for the life you wish you had and the person you wish you had become.

Despite the shortness in length, you get to explore our main characters' fears and the demons they're running from. There is so much richness with the retelling of fairy tales in this world, being that Rosa represents Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi represents the mythical Chinese Archer, along with Goldilocks and Beauty and the Beast (how? read and find out!)

And, lastly, I love how unapologetically queer it is. Both our MCs are queer and Hou Yi is a Trans woman. They are also older women, which really surprised me. It's not often that I read a fantasy book (or in general) featuring main older characters and their perspective in the action scenes. It shows that no matter how old you are, you can still make mistakes and learn from there, and determination goes a long way in achieving your goals.

I honestly don't know what else to say. I am purposely vague about the synopsis since it is a very short novella, but I urge you to check it out. It's such a great addition to the fantasy genre and I definitely want more!

I dithered for a while over whether to give this book three stars or four stars. Ultimately, I settled on four, deciding that no book that successfully gets me teary-eyed should earn anything below four stars!

This is a very character-focused narrative, so we do go without having certain aspects of the plot (mostly to do with the grundwirgen) explained to us, but the characters are without a doubt the strongest part of the book. You'll instantly recognise Rosa as Red Riding Hood, Hou Yi as the mythical greatest archer of all time, and several background characters as Goldilocks, Puss in Boots, and Beauty of the Beauty and the Beast tale. Huang successfully crafts a fairytale within a fairytale, interlinking each of these stories without making her world seem crowded. I was especially glad to see that the protagonists were two older women! It seems like in fairytales, these 'heroine' roles are primarily occupied by younger women, while women of middle-age and above are consigned to the 'mother' or 'crone' archetype.

All in all, Burning Roses was a heartfelt, novel take on the traditional stories, and I'm glad for the opportunity to have read it.

The second book I finished for the Asian readathon was another tor.com novella - I've read a few of them over the past couple of months and enjoyed them overall. We follow two middle aged women, Rosa and Hou Yi, as they join forces to stop the sunbirds from destroying the countryside. It is a quick and interesting read with two unusual characters and an age (middle aged women) that I haven't read from the perspective of before. I liked the overall story and the fairytale/folktale elements from red riding hood and goldilocks but I found myself losing interest vey quickly unfortunately.

Rating: 3.5/5

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this fantasy novella as much as I thought I would. I have previously read a fantasy novella from Tor.com that completely blew me away and this just did not impact me the same way.

I really enjoyed the fairytale retellings in this novella. The author manages to reinvent them and reimagine them in such a unique way. The book is also gloriously diverse.

What I had a problem with was the world building. Since there is limited space to truly explore the world, I found that I did not have enough information to clearly understand everything mentioned within the tale. I still do not completely understand how the 'Grundwirgen' work and how they come to be. Can everyone turn into animals? Can all 'Grundwirgen' turn back into humans?

The reveals at the end were not something that had a strong impact on me and I felt like the reunion between certain characters at the end was completely rushed and not given enough attention.

Overall, this magical retelling of some of the most well known fairytales set in a world of shapeshifting was an interesting read that explores love and family but it did not captivate me as much as I thought it would.

This gorgeously written sapphic novella re-imagines the well-loved fairy tales we all know.

Rosa has left her Red Hood and gun behind, promising to never kill again. But when sunbirds start ravaging the countryside she has to team up with the Archer Hou Yi to save the people of her land. But shadows from their past haunt both women, and it soon becomes clear that they will have to confront them if they mean to complete their mission...

This is such a compelling, interesting read! As more and more of Rosa's and Hou Yi's back story is revealed, the narrative slips from one fairy tale into the next. But all of them come with an unexpected twist that changes the narrative. Whether it's Rosa's grandmother teaching her to shoot a rifle, or Goldilocks turning out to be a thieving scammer, the stories hold just enough familiarity to be recognizable, but still manage to be something completely new. This book is amazingly paced, always making you wonder what happened before and what will happen next. It's such an interesting, original and amazing twist on the original stories, and I could not recommend it more!

I should make something clear up front! Since I read this as an e-ARC, I didn't realize it was a novella until I saw the completion percentage on my e-reader go up really fast. Sooo in case anyone else also missed the memo, this isn't a full-length novel -- it's a novella!

This was such a fascinating, brilliantly done story. It's beautiful and fierce and I love that the two main characters are queer middle-aged women, both full of pain and regrets. This is a Red Riding Hood retelling, as the synopsis states, but there are also other well-known fairytales incorporated as well, making it a fun read for anyone who enjoys retellings.

There's a lot to wrap your head around in this story. It's very densely written, packed full of conflicts and themes and backstory. So much, in fact, that I feel like I need to reread it (maybe several times) to fully grasp everything.

As with many fantasy novellas, there's world-building, but not a lot of room to explore the world being built. Which means a bit more work for the reader to imagine a whole world beyond what's on the page, based on the vivid scenes and hints at what else is out there that we get from the story. It's a tough balance, because it often leaves reader wanting more and wishing for a full novel, even though part of the beauty of a novella is that freedom to imagine. And that was the case with Burning Roses. The world-building was vivid and beautiful and piqued my interest, but also made me lament not having many chances to explore.

It's hard to say much more without spoiling the story, so I'll just say that this was an enjoyable, thought-provoking novella! I'd love to read more stories set in this world and I'll continue to read everything S.L. Huang writes!

Thank you Tor.com Publishing and Netgalley for providing a free advanced e-galley of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Hello Gemmies! I have an exciting book review to share with you today. Please note: I received a digital ARC of this book (via NetGalley) from its publisher in exchange for an honest and fair review.

Burning Roses is a new dark fantasy novella by S.L. Huang. S.L. Huang seamlessly weaves together different western fairytales, Asian folklore, and magic into one intriguingly delightful tale! This story is so creative, it felt like a breath of fresh air. I thoroughly enjoyed it! Let me start with the characters because that is really where this novella shines. Burning Roses is an extremely well written character driven story. We meet our two main protagonists Rosa and Hou Yi as they go on a quest to stop monstrous firebirds from attacking villages throughout the countryside. During the quest both women must face their own personal demons and come to terms with the mistakes of their past. The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that both Rosa and Hou Yi are middle aged. You almost never encounter a middle aged female lead in a fantasy story, let alone two. But don't let the age fool you, these ladies are smart, brave, and all around bad ass. I found them both to be relatable and complex especially as they try to come to terms with the bad decisions that brought them to where they are today.

The sisterhood between Rosa and Hou Yi is also very beautifully done. This is a cautionary tale to not let past betrayals and bad decisions taint your future or destroy your family. You cannot heal past hurts until you are ready to be honest with yourself and those that you love. There are so many lessons to unpack with this story. The world building takes a slight back seat to the characters but not enough to take away from the story. We still get plenty of magic, animals that shift to human, and various monstrous creatures.

If you are a fan of fairytale retellings, family drama, magic, redemption stories, sisterhood, and kick ass heroines then go read this book! This gem published by Tor.Com is set to release on September 29, 2020 and is available for pre-order from all major booksellers. I give Burning Roses 4 out of 5 gems. I cannot wait for this story to be out in the world for all to read. Happy Reading!

A fairytale within a fairytale. This was a beautiful book and immediately drops you into the immersion of being a fairytale. It has the story of Goldylocks, Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and more within it while maintaining its own separate story. It truly is a wonderful story and I really enjoyed it. I liked the theme of family, love, and forgiveness within it. The pacing was nice and the story wrapped up just fine. An overall fantastical read with elements of all of our favorite fairytales.

This novella was dark, sad, beautiful, and packed with meaning. It is a story about parents and children, about the pain of forgiveness, about grey morality, about the falsehoods we tell ourselves about ourselves until they are indistinguishable from truth. It follows the journey of two older women, Rosa and Hou-Yi, who live in a world where humans can turn into animals and animals to humans, where bears can speak in firebirds populate the skies. They are traveling together to find the individual who is controlling the firebirds that are ravaging several villages.

This little story is also an immensely clever retelling of a host of different fairy tales, all woven together into one story. I’m sure that I didn’t pick up on all of them, but I caught allusions to Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hoods, Goldilocks, and Puss and Boots among others. Each story is picked up an reimagined in a way that encourages the reader to see it in a very different way then they were told as children, prying away the veil that hides harder truths from our eyes.

I chose not to rate it higher in part because it was just a little too dark for my personal tastes, though it had a happy ending. I also feel like the world-building was ill-defined. This was a very character focused novel, and I know it can be difficult to establish an environment within so few pages, but I found myself confused by details such as Goldie’s talk of banquets and dances seemingly dropped in without much explanation. Honestly, the world didn’t really come into stark relief for me until the end when Rosa and Hou-Yi arrived on the island. The visual descriptions in this part of the novel seemed far more abundant than in the rest of the book.

Overall, a meaningful read. 9/10 for character, but more like a 6/10 for world-building.

When Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces to stop the deadly sunbirds from ravaging the countryside, their quest will take the two women, now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of middle age, into a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family and the quest for immortality.- Goodreads

Rosa is all types of messed up within this novel and not for nothing after some time it is completely her fault. It is as if this woman just lives to be miserable.  Do not get me wrong. She experiences a very horrific trauma that harden her heart but as she gets older and that little voice in her head telling her that what she is doing isn't right, she ignores repeatedly to stay in the bubble of hate, despair and anger she created for herself.

I do not feel sorry for her. Rosa had every opportunity, prior to where the reader finds her, to do something better. She was pointless in her actions and didn't acknowledge the damage that she did until it came knocking at her door.

Without actually saying the words, I believe the author was trying to get me to sympathize with these Women even though they were fairly trash to those that they love and the people around them.

But these characters were written extremely well and this short novel (160 pages) was a good read. Within the first two parts there is an intensity that draws you in. The author does a fantastic job retelling not one but two fairy tales.  I loved how seamlessly she was able to do it.  

Overall, I may not have felt sympathy for Rosa but I enjoyed this book. Rosa had a part and it was played well. However, the ending could have been better. 

3 Pickles

This book was amazing! Strong plot! Powerful characters! A plot that held my attention the entire time!!!! I couldn’t put it down. I needed to find out what happened next!