Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Can i say this story changed me as a person? I enjoyed reading this. As soon as I finished it, i recommended it to my friends and they loved it as well.

This book is a warm hug on a cold day. It’s a kiss on the forehead from someone you love. It’s holding hands for the first time with a crush. The prose is sparse but beautiful. It’s a queer, indigenous coming of age story that deals with cultural belonging and first love and navigating queerness in spaces that don’t necessarily feel welcoming. I adored this book.

A beautiful story of young queer love. There's lines of sheer poetry within "The sky was endless above them. Tiny twinkling spots in the vast darkness. A net of pearls." Atmospheric. Written by a 23-year-old Sámi debut novelist. I recommend this novel!

A unique, important and well written young adult novel translated from Swedish, about indigenous Sámi boy Ánte who lives a modern life in a small town, with the exception that his family are reindeer herders. Sámi life is steeped in a lot of tradition, as well as a history of prejudice and mistreatment.

Ánte is struggling with his sexuality and being in love with his best friend. He's wondering if he can ever be his true self in such a heteronormative culture. He is also learning upsetting things about relatives not many generations back who were subjected to the Swedish State's "racial biology" practices, classifying the Sámi as an inferior race.

All of this is told through an engaging coming of age story, with Ánte's friends and family at the center. The romance is not the main focus, other than the main character having feelings for his best friend and struggling with coming out. There are very sweet moments between the two though and maybe eventually something more.

Fire from the Sky is very well written with beautiful prose. The dialogue is a bit simple at times and the translation doesn't quite do the writing justice (I've read the book in Swedish before and gave it five stars), but overall this is a wonderful read that I highly recommend!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC for review consideration.

I am not exactly sure how to rate this book properly. At times I was not understanding what was going on, while other times I was really interested. I was in a reading slump, and was trying to get back into reading, and I think that might have an impact on this. This book was kind of short, so I tried out this book. Short books usually help me get back into reading.

I do think people should read this. It seems like there is a lot of potential, and I would go back to this in a few months, and reread it. It just was not the best time for me to read this, however, I definitely believe it is the perfect book for some people. Especially with how short it was

This is a quiet, gentle read with many hard-hitting and thoughtful themes. It's a soft novel and packed full of emotions, Ante's feelings are palpable throughout the entire book.

The cover of this is beautiful and it matches the writing style and quality.

I really enjoyed this, it's a lovely read.

Thank you to netgalley the publisher and the author for this chance to read.
First loves are not like this in real life. Sometimes they are messy and not worth it but with this it was worth it and so beautiful i went through so many tissues because it is a sore subject for me. Not in a bad way in an oh my god this is beautiful and im so happy for them. I 100% loved the storyline and the characters i would read again. Not anytime soon gotta calm down after this but i would read again and recommend.

This was a beautiful (albeit brief) coming of age YA. I really wish that it was longer so we could have seen more of Sami culture (not to mention actually have the race book conversation feel meaningful and not just a random inclusion), and also so we could have seen Ánte and Erik actually in a relationship. The ending felt very rushed and compressed to the point where it didn't feel the most realistic— everyone just seemed to get over their discomfort over queerness very quickly.

This book was beautifully done. I enjoyed the over all theme and plot. Some of the work was long winded but still a truly great.

Thank you so for letting me read this book.

Thank you NetGalley for the review copy!

What a surprise this little book was! very emotional and touching.
Loved the cultural aspect of the book. Highly recommend!

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book*

"Fire from the Sky" is a sweet yet somewhat predictable coming of age / YA story about a gay Sami boy struggling to come to terms with both his heritage and his sexuality: Are there gay reindeer herders?

I enjoyed reading the book even though I found the protagonist in both his passivity or headless angry moments a bit annoying. Some great ideas in this one, some slightly underdeveloped (the past in local memory vs the racist book or the godfather) and the ending felt rushed, but it's the first time I've read a queer YA book with a Sami protagonist and I learned a lot. An important book!

4 stars

A really interesting and sweet YA book about Sami life and queer romance, coming of age. I think the addition of the info about racial biologists who tried to show that Sami were inferior was also an interesting addition. A short read that drew me into this world!

omg inlove mlm books sm. The way everything happened had me hooked like aaaa
thank you netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review

Fire From the Sky, translated from the Swedish by Eva Apelqvist, is a young adult coming-of-age story about Ánte, a Sámi teen struggling to reconcile his desire to become a reindeer herder like his father and his impossible to ignore feelings for his best friend Erik. With no one around to model what life would look like for a queer Sámi man, he begins to think that leaving the village will be his only choice.
Ánte isn't always a great person, but it's understandable. He's a messy teen trying to figure himself out and how to balance his understanding of his identity with the traditions of his people. He's scared of ostracization, and sometimes takes it out on those he loves. His feelings are overwhelming and full-body and he just doesn't know how to manage them.
I particularly loved the relationship between Ánte and his grandmother, which makes up the crux of the book's B plot about the racist experimentation done on Sámi people and the intergenerational trauma it left behind. It's not an aspect of history that's much discussed, and it deserves its moment here. There's also a lot of homophobia in this book, both internal and external. It can be distressing to read when it comes from Ánte's friends and family, but despite these darker moments the book stays overall quite hopeful.
The writing sometimes felt a little choppy, maybe to do with being a translation, but it's a very quick, emotional read with short chapters that really fly by. And I LOVE that we're seeing more Sámi literature getting English translations.

"He had the right to this life, this culture. The roots went deep into the soil and he didn't want to cut them. No matter what others thought, he would always belong here.
Nobody else got to decide who he should be. Only him."

This was so, so close to 4 stars but didn't quite cut it. I wish this book had focused a little bit more on the Sámi culture and Ánte's relationship with it. Unfortunately, given how short this book was, it went unexplored, as did most other storylines.

It was kind of difficult to buy into Ánte's relationship with Erik because it was so surface-level. Ánte is an unreliable protagonist, yes, but it's never really made clear why exactly he fell in love with Erik. As someone else put it quite well in their review, Erik isn't much of a character. I'm not sure I can say much else about him other than he plays FIFA on console and he has a girlfriend who's the source of Ánte's envy.

Some of the plot points also felt quite tropey. A couple scenes in particular around the middle of the book felt like they were lifted from Skam and tweaked a bit to suit the book. I think if you were a fan of Skam or any of its iterations you might enjoy it.

While it touches somewhat upon homophobia in the Sámi communities, I wish it had been a bit more serious and thorough with the social aspects. I wish there was more exploration of the role of Sámi in historical and contemporary Swedish society. But this was, at the end of the day, about the romance – and I unfortunately found the romance to be the weak link.

Fire from the Sky (Himlabrand) by Moa Backe Åstat is a beautiful coming-of-age story.

I enjoyed reading the slow paced flashes from a daily lives of teenagers. I really love the mentality of the Nordic ya books. The usual teenage angst is there, but it's much more subtle and without any extra or over the top drama that you so often find in some other cultures.

For those unfamiliar with Sámi people and their culture in Sweden and in the nordic countries, the book has a fair amount of information within the story from raindeer hearding to the racial biology happening in the 1920's. I urge everyone to search more, for the discrimination is still going unfortunately and shamefully strong.

The only thing I regret was that I didn't read this in Swedish. The story would have probably been even more beautiful in its original language.

This book was beautiful. Ànte is a Sámi boy whose family has a long history of being reindeer herders. In his culture, everyone is expected to live the same life: work to help your family, get married to someone of the opposite gender, have kids and continue your family’s work. But Ánte feels different. He is falling for his best friend Erik, and is trying to find his place as a gay Sámi boy who wants to continue the work of his family.

This book has a lot of similar themes to a lot of the YA books about gay boys, but this one just hits really hard. Holding on to your family and your tradition while still holding true to who you are is such a hard balance, especially when that culture is under threat. through the book, you also learn about Sámi history and all the ways their culture was almost lost. Ánte feels this so poignantly and wants to surround himself with the culture and people that are his. But he is also trying to find his own place within that culture, when there is homophobia (especially in the older generation).

Are there issues in this book? Absolutely, there are some things that happen that don’t make sense. However, this book is so well written and the story is so well told that they didn’t really come across as an issue.

This book was beautiful and gave me too many feelings. I loved it so much and will probably read it multiple times

Short novels don't get enough credit, and this one deserves so much praise. It was one of those stories that is utterly breathtaking and keeps you enraptured from the first chapter. You can feel Ante's hopefulness, struggle, and exploration of self. coming off the pages. Fire From the Sky was a beautiful coming of age story.

I would absolutely recommend it if you love quick reads that get you in your feels. We watch
Ánte process his emotions for Erik and what that might mean for him. The story beautifully weaves acceptance and hopefulness while also showcasing Ánte's processing and fears about how others will respond. I think the novel illustrates the struggle of coming out to a family where you don't know how they will react.

If you love coming of age stories with some solid character exploration and LGBTQIA+ reads this book if definitely one I would recommend you pick up. It left me feeling hopeful for the future. Thank you to Levine Querido for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I always say that a book that has been translated will be good, it has to be for the trouble of translating it, and Fire From the Sky is no exception. The story follows a young gay Sámi boy, Ánte, and it tells the tale of his first-love.

This was a pleasure to read, I sat down to start it and before I even knew I had finished. Overall, the book is well written and charming. The relationship between Ánte and Erik is incredibly raw and realistic, with moments of both unfiltered delight and overbearing depression, perfectly capturing the mind of a teenage boy. It balances a complicated love story with the difficulties of coming out as gay in a seemingly conservative enviornment.

While Fire From the Sky is evidently a queer romance novel, it does not end there. It is a book about family, tradition, Sámi culture and much more, all within 216 pages. The relationships between Ánte and his mother, father and his Áhkko were just as impactful as the relationship between Ánte and Erik. As a reader, I empathised with his family, who did not understand what was happening with him, why he was suddenly acting so strange. Åstot did an excellent job in crafting these delicate and authentic relationships.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, however my only qualm was the length, I simply wished it was longer. I have read many books that have streched on and on into what seems forever, but Fire From the Sky felt like the opposite. The main plot was fleshed out quite well, but it would have been nice to see the story between Hanna and Ánte broadened slightly. Same applies to the interesting dynamic between Ánte and his two other guy friends.

Nonetheless, this was a brilliant read, when the only complaint is that you wished there was even more, you know the author is very talented.