"Love and duty collide in this richly imagined, atmospheric young adult debut about a witch whose dark powers put her at the center of a brewing war between the only family she’s ever known and the enemy who makes her question everything.

Monster. Butcher. Bloodwinn.

Ranka is tired of death. All she wants now is to be left alone, living out her days in Witchik's wild north with the coven that raised her, attempting to forget the horrors of her past. But when she is named Bloodwinn, the next treaty bride to the human kingdom of Isodal, her coven sends her south with a single directive: kill him. Easy enough, for a blood-witch whose magic compels her to kill.

Except the prince is gentle, kind, and terrified of her. He doesn’t want to marry Ranka; he doesn’t want to be king at all. And it's his sister - the wickedly smart, infuriatingly beautiful Princess Aramis - who seems to be the real threat.

But when witches start turning up dead, murdered by a mysterious, magical plague, Aramis makes Ranka an offer: help her develop a cure, and in return, she'll help Ranka learn to contain her deadly magic. As the coup draws nearer and the plague spreads, Ranka is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her power, her past, and who she’s meant to fight for. Soon, she will have to decide between the coven that raised her and the princess who sees beyond the monster they shaped her to be.

But as the bodies pile up, a monster may be exactly what they need."

I judge a lot of books on if their made up turns of phrase sound right and trip lightly off the tongue. So here's to Bloodwinn and all the logical yet fantastical names Rebecca Mix has created!

The Ones We Burn
I have looked forward to reading this book for quite awhile now. It is a long book but made for a quick read as I couldn’t put it down. While I have read there is controversy surrounding this book, my own careful reading has led me to believe that the controversy was unjust. Not a page of this book shows racism or anti Jewish sentiment. Not a page. In fact, from my reading, every character in this book seems to be a different shade of brown or tan. Even those labeled as “pale” seem to be just a lighter shade of tan. Race plays absolutely no part in this book. I’ve read every single page. I kept waiting for something to jump out and scream racism. It simply does not exist in this book. What this book does bring light to is that hatred causes war and death and fear. It shows us that even those we love and trust can betray us.

Now for my review. In every generation or so, a witch is born with blood magic. Not the type of blood magic you read about in stories requiring blood as a magical ingredient, but the type that lives in the blood of the witch. In those cursed with this gift they will awaken to a feeling of starvation for death. They are seen as killers. Monsters. Ranka was one woman born a blood witch.

The humans are terrified of all witches and seek to burn them alive. The witches are afraid of the humans and of being burned alive. While there are many types of witches, they all belong to their own covens and live apart from the humans. When a parent realizes their child has this gift, or curse, the covens will try to bring them in. If unsuccessful they are generally burned alive with their own families watching. Ranka was found by the Skra coven and taken in. Her blood magic awakened when she was back with her parents and she would come to be known as the Butcher of Belren for all of the people she slaughtered.

Each generation a blood witch is chosen and named the Bloodwinn. She must travel to the seat of the monarchy in Isodal and marry the monarch. This is supposed to act as a truce between the covens and the humans. Unfortunately, witches are still slaughtered by the humans and the treaty is little more than a veiled attempt to maintain a peace that doesn’t exist. Ranka was chosen as the Bloodwinn.

As she traveled to Isodal, intent on eventually killing the prince she was to marry, she came upon a very sick witch. It appeared a plague had begun to take root. Once in Isodal Ranka uncovers a nefarious plot to infect witches and kill them off. She also learns that the prince and his twin sister are not the witch killing monsters she has been told they were. A group called the Hands seek to destroy every witch that they find and it appears they have help from within.

Ranka works to figure out how the plague is spreading and with the help of the princess, to find a cure. This will take her down a path of of twists, betrayal, love, loss, destiny, memory, facing her own demons…..all while trying to figure out who is manipulating who. Who is the villain? Is she the monster? Who can she trust?

Read this book. It is a great one. On that note, read every book someone tells you not to read. Chances are that they didn’t even read it themselves.

Don’t skip the epilogue.

I would be ignorant to state that I was unaware of the controversy that surrounds this book, so I won't lie. However, I also understand that the edition I'm reading has been read by sensitivity readers and edited accordingly. With that in mind, I cannot speak to the other comments on the previous version of this book, as I did not read it.

With that out of the way, The Ones We Burn was one of my most highly anticipated releases this year. I should know better by now than to get my hopes up for Sapphic fantasy, but I still do. It wasn't entirely that this book missed the mark, it's more that the book was oversaturated with concepts. These concepts and plot points are good, some of my favorites, even. But to put them all in one singular book and hope they all can come together, in the end, felt a little like drowning at times.

There is a lot of internal conflict for our main character Ranka, and reasonably so. Yet, it seemed her initial battle, was hardly an issue for her for the majority of the book- only when it mattered. It's hard to address these plot points without spoiling the actual book, so I'll be avoiding doing so. I can only say there were too many concepts, and too much world-building needed to flesh it all out, and I felt overloaded with information.

I enjoyed Ranka and the twins, and I enjoyed the dynamic between all of them. The body horror was what I would expect from a young adult book, and the "zombie witch" storyline thread was possibly my favorite to follow. This book was good, not great, but gives me an understanding of Mix's writing and a chance to look forward to more from her.

AS CAWPILE:
Characters: 7 | Atmosphere: 8 | Writing: 8 | Plot: 5 | Intrigue: 6 | Logic: 4 | Enjoyment: 7
Total: 6.43 / 3 Stars

The Ones We Burn is a gripping, angry story about people doing their best to survive in a world of warring factions and hate. Ranka is a blood witch, able to enter a berserk state to crush her enemies, but she and her fellow witches live on the fringes of a society that hates them. To solve the disappearance of her best friend, she must go to the capital and confront the system that would see her dead, along the way finding love in unexpected places.

I wanted to pick this up out of curiosity due to the controversy, and after reading it, I find many accusations against it rather unwarranted. Yes, the two royals at the head of the system that has oppressed witchkind are brown, but they are heroic characters that Ranka bonds with. These two inherited a broken system as children, and have spent their whole lives trying to make things right. Humans and witches alike are multiracial, so it's hardly a case of "white good, brown bad," especially when all the main villains are actually white. The blood libel accusations feel dubious to me as well, since blood magic in this book is basically like going into hulk mode instead of using human sacrifice to enact terrible crimes against humanity. Ranka herself, our main blood witch, is very Scandinavian-coded, with a Viking aesthetic, blonde hair and a big axe. I could see an argument if she and the other blood witches were Jewish-coded, but... they're not.

As for the story itself, all of the characters are deeply human. Flawed yet determined, making mistakes while persevering. The villains are nuanced and the characters go on arcs of development that leave them broken and healing all at once. It's a moving story about leaving behind the ties that hurt you and forging new ones that make you strong. While I enjoyed the character journeys, I ultimately found the plot itself rather bloated and slow, even if the final act was pretty good.

Kudos to the writing for being very nice. I imagine that readers will latch onto certain powerful quotes, especially those who can empathize with the struggles in this book.

I do hope that this book finds its audience, especially since there's definitely a larger discussion to be had about how authors should be executing certain story tropes and ideas. I definitely encourage people to read other reviews that go into textual evidence that counter the accusations of white supremacy. While I think that the Twitter mill jumped on the bandwagon too quickly, I don't want to dismiss the concerns of people who are worried about dangerous trends popping up in the media we consume. I just don't think this is the one to be worried about.

I was really looking forward to this novel, but after hearing of the problematic tropes that are harmful towards BIPOC readers, I am no longer comfortable promoting this novel.

This book is a glowing example of why the publishing industry needs in the most desperate sense more BIPOC workers. Editors, agents, everything. Because if it did, this reverse racism fantasy would never have been brought to bear by a big publishing house. That’s not the world we live in however so here we are.

If you aren’t aware of it from my other reviews, I’m Black. I’d heard about this book and a large part of me wanted to avoid it because of the racism and antisemitism. Another part felt I owed it to my community to read this book and warn other BIPOC readers, especially those close to me, about it.

In short, we’ve got a book that paints BIPOC individuals as the oppressors and white people as the victims. It takes events that you can see mirrored in history such as the stealing of land, the invasion of islands to strip them or resources, and flips them making the perpetrators of those crimes the victims in a fictionalized setting.

Reverse racism is a white nationalist fantasy, more than just a dog whistle and it’s impossible for me to read this book and think “oh, the author just didn’t get it” because if the author is capable of being this ignorant about the issue, that’s malicious.

It also posits the what if of well, if white people hadn’t done it to BIPOC, then we would have done it to them, which is also a white nationalist justification for the hatred we see on a daily basis. Ideas like this cost people their lives, books like this go on to shape the ideas of people who end up seeing BIPOC as threats and dangers. Not to mention it takes our struggles for equality and turns them into something ugly. Some bogyman to say “look, they’re scary and we’re right to fear them”.

To say I’m angry doesn’t even begin to cover it. Things like this get published while BIPOC stories flounder. while BIPOC authors get small, hilariously small advances so their work doesn’t get the marketing it should, they have to work harder but a reverse racism fantasy gets hyped to the skies.

There were so many opportunities for some of the multitude of people who had their hands on this book to stand up and say “this is wrong, this is a problem” and they didn’t. So they either didn’t see it, which is hugely problematic, or they didn’t care. And I don’t have to say why that’s an issue.

Do not read this book. Do not support the author. I’m aware of her “apology” on twitter and it’s not an apology. So one Black authenticity reader was enough because we’re a monolith? Claims of a diverse publishing team? So none of them saw the inherent white supremacy? saying “I didn’t want to hurt people” does not negate the harm done and the author takes no responsibility for it.

So, don’t support it. Don’t support the author. Support BIPOC authors instead. I’m disgusted.

Because the star rating exists, I’m giving this one (1) star but it gets none. Absolutely none. I will never touch anything else this author writes because there will be more and it’ll get published no problem and the circle will continue.

(Big thank you to Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing and Net Galley for giving us this eARC in exchange for an honest review!)

I am going to begin starting off that I did not like the execution nor do I like the plot of this book. It felt very offensive to be reading about people of color written in this light, especially when the author herself is not a person of color. I felt very uncomfortable reading this book and I wouldn't necessarily support this author or book.

This was a very fresh take on witches and witchcraft in fantasy. I was instantly drawn to the multi-faceted and morally murky nature of the protagonist, and the plot kept a fast but measured pace from there on out. Every character had their motivations, their ticks, and their shortcomings. Each was thoughtfully and carefully developed. I went in expecting a run of the mill "I came to kill you" plot line and instead found an exciting mix of found family, enemies to lovers and so much more that transcended the bounds of most YA tropes. There were portions in the middle of the book that dragged a bit for me as the characters ran into continuous roadblocks and spun their wheels. This was important to plot, given what was at stake, but I could have used more spark in those pages to keep me excited for the conclusion. Otherwise, I found the writing extremely well done. It was immersive and moody and rich without being stuffy or overdone. I was grateful for the resolution at the end of the book after what was a very stressful few chapters. Even if there is a sequel, which I hope there is (!), I love that this book ended with true closure and felt self-contained. An excellent debut, and I look forward to reading later works from Mix.

Please see BIPOC reviews for this. I believe this is harmful and will not be supporting this. However, I am not the right person to delve into those aspects of this story.

copying my goodreads review here just to get this out of my queue, if I have more thoughts about it they'll be up on my blog eventually. i have literally no further thoughts about this book i have read it too many times.

I want to write this here and now: this book is not antisemitic. The magic in the book is not really blood-related; Ranka's powers mostly revolve around her craving death. (I mean there's also other magic but it also isn't antisemitic). This can be gross and gory and unpleasant, but it is not antisemitic. There is no blood libel in this book. Blood libel involves killing and eating babies and/or drinking their blood for 1) dark Jewish rituals and/or 2) fun. A blood witch character would need to be coded as implicitly or explicitly Jewish, and Ranka is not. Just having a blood witch character or having a blood magic trope does not make this book anti-Jewish.

updated 7/3 to add: have seen someone say that because Ranka goes to Seaswept with the express intention of murdering Galen with blood magic, that’s a harmful antisemitic stereotype. I must say, assassination is not antisemitic as a concept (and I’ve already covered how the ‘blood magic’ in this book is not blood-libel related). If Ranka was implied to secretly be controlling the world order with her blood-eating rituals, that would be antisemitic. However, she does not have any blood-eating rituals. Also, if Ranka was also implied to be Jewish, that would be problematic, but she is not - she is blonde and is not at any point is portrayed with any stereotypically jewish traits, positive or negative. Ranka is one of the Least Jewish characters I have ever read about. And I read all the 100 books.

Mix writes (7/11): “The plot line involving blood-magic draws heavily from my own experiences of the physical consequences of trauma and my brain injury. The subsequent resolution is directly informed by my daily HGH injections to resolve my major IGF deficiency. There is no ritualistic use of blood or consumption of blood in the text.” which rings true for me; whenever Ranka meets another blood witch, she is desperate to make friends with them and to share her experiences, which reads more like a metaphor for queerness or chronic illness. If it was intended to be blood libel, Ranka would have an active community of Jewish people around her, helping to commit more blood-eating rituals. Instead, Ranka is totally and brutally alone in her experiences at the beginning of the book.

Absurdly long addition 7/26:
Jake Maia Arlow (author of the excellent How to Excavate a Heart) writes (6/26): "this is also how i feel about the fact that it’s about a blood-witch. like do i think it’s purposefully anti-semitic? no. is it about a powerful witch who gains magic from blood and is persecuted for that a la literally every blood libel stereotype leveled at jews? yes"
1) it is not about a powerful with who gains magic from blood - this is not how the magic system really works, and also she doesn't gain magic from blood, she gains it from death.
2) is she persecuted for being a blood witch? yes and no? she thinks she is persecuted for it more than the actual reality of it happening (disparate people in power have different opinions about various things), and also blood witches are both rare and respected within the text (Ranka is a blood witch but the previous queen was ALSO a blood witch, and also more blood witches are happening and ...It's also a story of unlearning your previous biases and learning that you aren't a monster, so this one is complicated). Being a blood witch is something that I personally relate more to having a chronic illness than a persecution narrative. I personally didn't find it antisemitic, but I don't usually think "all persecution narratives are automatically about jewish people", although obviously we can relate to persecution narratives due to [waves hand at history, Remember That We Suffered starts playing in the background]. And due to the fact that the blood magic is so far removed from blood libel, these two facts don't really connect into something that is antisemitic. (Compare/contrast to Wild and Wicked Things which also has blood witches and lesbians. I should reread that book, which I did say I was going to do; I remember nothing about it due to the fact that I read too many books. Also probably compare/contrast to Gideon the Ninth which also has lesbians and blood magic, which I remember nothing about due to not having read it).

This is the only other Jewish person I was able to find talking about this book (with specifics), not counting the tiktok comments I trawled through, which I will not relate due to how awful tiktok comments are to follow (both in terms of content and in terms of how tiktok is set up). I also did further research bothering Everyone I Know and also some people I don't know about blood magic and if it is Always Blood Libel If It's Blood Magic, and the general consensus is this:

Blood magic is not always blood libel, especially when it does not contain any blood libelous aspects. It's a fairly universal concept to say "hey, this red stuff inside of us could be magical!" It can also be noted that we do not consider blood magic practiced by Latin-American or Afro-Caribbean cultures to be antisemitic. HOWEVER. Jewish people can be triggered by the inclusion of blood magic because of, you know, centuries of blood libel. I think that people who are affected by this content can read the synopsis and say "wow, this book is not for me, because it includes blood magic, which I am triggered by". (Obligatory; content warnings are not moral or immoral, they are literally just warnings for content).

I also really enjoyed this podcast while I was researching, The Blood Libel Accusation with Magda Teter, who wrote Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth.

update 7/28: doing regular twittering and found this thread by Dahlia Adler (editor of all my favorite anthologies) which reads "In general the amount of “This is antisemitic!!” I’ve seen going around about stuff that patently is not is uhhh disconcerting? Because I know you mean well but all it tells me is you associate us with even more terrible stuff than the baseline." Further, Abby Pickus in the quoted thread writes "I actually have read it, and it didn't seem blood-libelly to me, since I don't think anyone actually consumes blood. The "blood magic" is handled very differently." ("it" being The Ones We Burn in this context)

I am Jewish disclaimer etc etc. Nothing about us without us. Rating for visibility, this is literally the longest book review I've ever written, I absolutely cannot have any further thoughts about it. I also love to be proven wrong; please feel free to argue with me in the comments, or I have an open Goodreads inbox.

9/18 update: okay well so many people have enjoyed this review that my goodreads notifications now only read "many others previously liked it" which is the most viral I'll ever get, probably, so, check out my soundcloud as it were. I Also Have A Book Blog, please check it out here. I publish a book review every day except Wednesday.

Please see BIPOC reviewers reviews for more insight into this book. I do not recommend this book and I highly recommend that others do not support this book as well. Again, please see the reviews of BIPOC reviewers for more information.

DNF at chapter three.

My goal was to ascertain whether or not the criticisms leveraged against this story were of any merit. Unfortunately, the style this book was written in gave me a bit of a headache. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the POV of the story seems to put a glass wall between the reader and the characters, keeping us at a distance.

Maybe reading more would have told me whether or not it was on purpose, but it doesn't matter because I struggled to get far enough into the book. I couldn't find a way to care about the main character at all. It's all just very... detached? I guess?

Anyways, please check out the reviews detailing the racism and homophobia present in the storyline. Bigotry is still bigotry, no matter the intent.

This book just did not hold my attention. I think this is her debut novel and you can really tell that it is. Keep up the good work though as this did make numbers!

Thank you Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
 
I went into this book fully prepared to tear it apart for the claims of reverse racism. Instead I am docking stars from the internet, because the claims of reverse racism and blood libel are just…not in this book. The Black characters in this book are the heroes from the first scene they are in & both countries are diverse. Neither has a racial majority that could make this a reverse racism story, and the witches are also canonized in text as humans who are othered for political reasons as opposed to racial.
 
If you think this book is a reverse racist story and you have proof from the book I would love to discuss with you, because I really am just not getting it. The premise described was “a nation of Black and Brown people are oppressing a nation of white people” and in literally the first chapters we see that the witches are not all white, the humans are not all POC, the white witches in Ranka’s coven who are bigger characters are very clearly the villains and are punished by the book for their actions, and even Aramis and Galen’s dad is canonized as white.

If I had to guess at Mix’s reasoning for making Aramis and Galen Black and both countries distinctly multi-racial, I would assume it’s because Black characters deserve to be included in stories that are not inherently about their Blackness, but where they get to be princesses, have magical powers, go on adventures and fall in love. I don’t want stories from white writers with a clunky race allegory, so I prefer this angle. Leave stories of racism up to BIPOC writers. Make your world inclusive, yes, but there are plenty of other problems to focus on. In my opinion that’s what Mix does here.

Much of this book muses on what it means to lead while unpacking toxic family dynamics and interrogating what it means to love and be loved. While I do wish Galen and Percy’s arc was more developed I enjoyed the way it’s important to the core of this book that Galen, Percy, Aramis and Ranka are still children being forced to grapple with problems in an adult world in a way that feels true to YA. This book does have it’s floundering points (pacing in some areas) but they are not ones book twitter made them out to be. From what I can tell after reading this most of the people who led the charge against this book have not read it, they just saw a soundbite and ran with it, and if we’re being honest that is not good for publishing or readers. I will say this book is pretty gross gore wise at time so check the content warnings.

I'm glad I was able to read this, it was a unique story about witches and I was invested in what was going on in it. The characters and the use of magic was what I was hoping for, Rebecca Mix has a great way of making the powers unique and work for the characters. It's a interesting idea of a mysterious, magical plague killing witches off and it worked for the book. It does what I wanted from this type of book and I enjoyed reading this a lot.

"Ranka’s heart ached for him. They were so different—the boy groomed for his magic, the girl whose power erupted out of her. Galen had spent his entire life shying away from violence, tempering the magic in his veins, knowing the weapon they’d forge him into lest he set his power free. But Ranka had been reborn amid fire and blood. She was ruled by the death in her veins, had accepted her role of monster long ago."

This synopsis sounded good despite what I'd seen about this book on twitter. As a Jewish reader, I was curious to read it. I didn't find the blood-magic aspect antisemitic but there's a lot of killing involved with it and I just feel like that could have been easily solvable by just simply calling it something else. I encourage everyone to listen to black reviewers about the insensitivity & racism in this book. I did like the sapphic relationship in this book and some of the jokes were really funny but the characters could have been better developed.

It’s hard to review this book with the discourse around the reverse racism plot. While i did not initially see this, I do not want to speak over reviewers of color.

This is a gorgeously written book with some racial problems that Black reviewers have pointed out. Which is a shame as the story that Ranka undergoes in this book is captivating and heartfelt. However, I can see how a Black reader could go into this book and be disappointed and feel hurt when we are introduced to the twins (Prince Galen and Princess Aramis). We are told they’re the villains at the beginning—this is proven wrong. And the story itself—of a young woman overcoming and unlearning the lies she had been fed by her adoptive mother is an incredible and well written arc. Unfortunately, I wish there had been more care taken on how race could be perceived in this book for an outside audience.

While I enjoyed the concept up this book, especially the sapphic enemies to lovers, I wasn't fully captivated by the writing style. Likewise, I found that Aramis and Ranka's arc felt disjointed; there seemed to be a very quick switch from enemies to lovers, and personally, it didn't feel earned to me.

I loved Rebecca Mix's THE ONES WE BURN. This character-driven fantasy had me enthralled from page one. I loved Ranka's complex character, the way her story slowly unfolds as the reader learns more about her, and her relationships with the other characters. The side characters were all very well-formed and memorable, especially Percy. Ranka's relationship with Aramis builds slowly and believably throughout the story. There were certainly twists and turns that I didn't expect throughout. Overall, I can't wait to recommend this book to a wide range of readers!