Their Divine Fires is about their struggles and loves across times and generations. It's stories about people who survive rebellion, war, and unrest. About love, arranged marriages, and the loss of our loves. It's about legacy, names, and what they mean. But what happens when we have to disavow them? There are big changes which coincide with these moments, on the precipice of a spark of igniting, and changing across the world.

This multigenerational story follows the family and hardships of four generations as well as the Chinese revolution. Broken into four parts we follow each of the women’s experiences over the years. The beginning parts were a bit more interesting than the later parts to me. As we learn more about the characters in middle and towards the end, I began to get a bit confused with who was who and where they fell in the story. It seemed the story lost its momentum. Not to spoil anything, but there was mention of one of the secrets that brought me back to the who of the story and the final parts of the book I loved. It was a beautiful wrap up of the story.

I did enjoy listening about the cultural aspects of the story and the historical pieces mentioned in the story. I thought it was interesting to read about the secrets that were kept between the women and learning how they are revealed throughout the story. I just felt at times there were things missing that could have added more to the story. I did enjoy listening to the audiobook along with reading the ebook.

I would recommend reading this if you enjoy reading about the historical, cultural, and political aspects of stories! Also, this one is inspired by the authors family history!

This multi-generational debut story gives you a lens into what people endured during the time of the Cultural Revolution in China. It is eye-opening to see what people endured and how they struggled to survive.

A captivating multi-generational saga starting at the beginning of the Chinese Revolution with Yunhong falls in love with a landowner, but whose brothers fight on the side of the communists and continuing through the consequences and trauma passed on to her descendants.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for the gifted copy. All opinions below are my own.

This story follows the women of a family through about 100 years of history from the Chinese revolution through to modern day. We see each generation coping with the change thrust upon them by the government and the impact of those changes on their lives particularly in regards to their loves. Each generation keeps their pain from their children and seems doomed to repeat the stiff upper lip attitude despite their heartbreak.

I liked the history of this story but struggled to connect to the characters as much as I wanted. I think this was due to their containment of emotions and denial of their devastating disappointments. I was most connected to Yunhong and her story but just as her heartbreak begins we get a big time jump, that was a bit too jostling to me and it took me a while to sink into the new story. I appreciated all I learned about the times but felt like this one needed a little smoothing overall.

Read this if you enjoy Lisa See.

Wendy Chen’s Their Divine Fires comes in at only 256 pages, but that length is deceptive: this is a sprawling, multi-generational tale of three generations of Chinese women that takes the reader from 1917 Liuyang, China to 2009 Massachusetts, United States.

Chen’s novel, inspired by the experiences of her own ancestors, begins with the story of a young girl, Zhang Yuexin, living with her family, including her two brothers, in Liuyang. Yuexin is devoted to her oldest brother, so when he cuts his traditional braid, angering her parents, Yuexin cuts her hair, as well. This initial symbolic event sets the stage for unrest: the family is broken when her oldest brother leaves to join the Revolution, setting them on a path that will have unexpected effects on them all.

After her brother leaves, Yuexin’s young life is again altered forever when she saves Tan Haiyang, the young son of a local wealthy lord. He stays with the family while Yuexin’s father, a doctor, cares for him. Yuexin and Haiyang form a strong connection, but once he returns home, it seems likely that they’ll never see each other again, driven apart by the distance in their families’ situations. The only hope is that he felt the connection as strongly as Yuexin did.

The narrative captures the effects of this Revolution, the ways that its aftermath cycles through the generations, moving through the Cultural Revolution of the 70s to the diaspora who make their way to the United States.

Chen’s writing is stunning, and her sense of character is so vivid. Watching the way that early generations appear again later, the ways that ancestors affect their descendants, offers powerful commentary on the cycles of history.

Despite the depth and power of its content, The Divine Fires is a propulsive read, and I can’t recommend it enough.

The female members of a family are born with a birthmark. It links them together so that they can never be parted from one another. It is a source of pride to some and shame to others. Through a changing country and political climate, this family carries burdens of the past through generations. Does love always end in sorrow?

This book was so beautiful. I was captivated from the first page. The beautiful writing pulled me in initially, but the story captured me soon after. Experiencing the Chinese Revolution from the perspective of a child and young woman removed from it was so interesting. Experiencing the loss of Yunhong’s innocence to the world was heartbreaking. You could really see how the hurt of mother transferred to daughter throughout the family line. In Yuexin’s treatment of her marriage and how it affected Hongxing and Yonghong. Yonghong’s attitude toward love and how Emily was affected. How a family that was once so close could be irrevocably changed by a decision. This is a book I will be thinking about for a while. I recommend this book to anyone looking to branch out of their usual genres. It is a great book.

Their Devine Fires follows a Chinese family through the women. It shows how Chinese culture and attitudes towards women change (or don't) over the years, how they lived and loved, and adapted to the times or fought against the grain. It's an intricate look into the lives of these women, and very enlightening, heartbreaking.

THEIR DIVINE FIRES follows three generations of Chinese women spanning one hundred years and two continents.

This is a multigenerational family saga that centers around the Zhang family - Zhang Yunhong, a Chinese countryside girl who wants to attend school, falls in love with the son of a wealthy landlord. The story is populated by love stories/affairs, of people sacrificing and giving up for the everlasting love. The romantic relationships felt organic and sweet; and the family bonds, with its flaws, felt heartwarming.

At its core, this novel captures the way huge transformations (after the end of Chinese dynastic rule and Cultural Revolution) impact the characters. How can family bonds endure the brutality of war and trauma? Chen also covers themes of heritage, family, marriage, grief, regret and political conflicts (Guomindang x Communists) with a straightforward writing that acquires a lyrical tone when touching on cultural elements, incorporating a coat of tenderness that makes one immersed in the storytelling.

Part two suffered from the slow pacing - it felt more distant and political. However, part three and four converge in a way that brought back the layers of emotions - they paint a raw depiction of people who survived and lived through changes in a volatile world. The story is chronologically told from multiple POVs and in an attempt to include several perspectives, I wish some characters were further fleshed out. The author infuses Chinese myths in the narrative and I personally thought this is one of the novel's strengths.

Inspired by the author own family’s history, THEIR DIVINE FIRES is a beautiful debut novel. Highly recommend for those wanting to learn more about Chinese history or read a sensitive historical fiction.

ps: I appreciated the family tree, which was helpful at giving a better understanding and smoother transition between POVs

Folklore and Myth in one book - sign me up please! I really enjoyed this very much and can't wait to read more by this author! The cover is amazing and will be suggesting this one for a fall friends buddy read.

1917 southern China: life, romance and heartbreak. The entire novel is very detailed and is very fast-paced: too fast really. I got confused in parts and felt it was overly wordy and the pace started to lag, especially in the parts about Chinese history. I don’t know anything about Chinese history and wanted to learn about it. I wish those parts could have been included in a more accessible way.

There were some amazing visuals, especially during the preparation for the wedding and the wedding itself.

I wanted Emily to have more involvement in the plot.

Thanks to Wendy Chen and Algonquin Books for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars.

This book kept me up till 4am, completely wrecked my circadian rhythm, and I said thank you.

A sweeping saga of family that spans four generations, a hundred years, and two continents. It's fascinating to see how the characters' experiences affect their descendants. You will root for the characters and hurt when they experience sorrow (and there's a lot of it). This is a book I will reread and recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

THEIR DIVINE FIRES is a gorgeously written, multi-generational story about a family enduring and surviving hardship from the Chinese Revolution to the present day. It reminded me of everything I loved in books like Pachinko, with haunting, poetic prose exploring the ripples of trauma passed from mother to daughter from generation to generation. Without sharing any spoilers, it's heartbreaking, achingly beautiful, and inspiring all at once, culminating in a final scene that had me tearing up. Its pacing is slow but intentional, with sudden bursts of violence, devastation, and loss that leave you reeling.

I'm not a big fan of myth and folktale retellings. With that in mind, I liked this a lot more than I though I would!

I am a sucker for multigenerational stories so this was a perfect choice for me. Very hard topics to read as the family dealt with the changing political landscape of China, but I gained a greater appreciation for the history.

Upon first glance, I immediately jumped at the chance to read "Their Divine Fires"; a multi-generational novel focused on a family of Chinese women at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries? As a Chinese-American female myself, I was excited to read a novel that might mirror my family's and my own experiences from a perspective that isn't widely written about.

The novel is told chronologically across different perspectives, beginning with Yunhong, a young girl who grows up at the precipice of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the countryside of Liuyang. With her father as a respected doctor and two older brothers on the path to being respected scholars, her life should be a peaceful one - especially after she saves the life of a wealthy merchant's son and is promised that he'll return for her. Her life is altered though, when her oldest brother destroys her future plans, and Yunhong raises her daughter Yuexin without a father - and Yuexin later gives birth to two twin girls named Yonghong and Hongxin. The middle portion is told primarily from Yonghong's perspective; she envies her twin for her aptitude towards dance and music and struggles to find her own footing. The policies of the Cultural Revolution also alter her path in life, eventually causing her to leave for America to build a new life for her own daughter Emily outside of Boston, while her sister Hongxin remains in China and rises as a budding celebrity. Emily grows up straddling two worlds, never quite understanding the truth behind her family story and the complex relationship the women in her family have with each other.

There is a lot in this deceptively short novel that I appreciated - highlighting just how deeply the policies of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong's actions changed the lives for Chinese people; the deep-seated generational trauma that can carry through many years; and the difficult decisions women have had to make over the years to survive. Yunhong's story was the most captivating for me, and I deeply connected with her desire to make her own path for herself.

However, there were definitely things I struggled with in this novel as well; for readers who have little to no background on the Cultural Revolution, much of the events and policies will be confusing and make little sense, especially as there isn't much context given to the earlier conflict between the Kuomintang and Mao's Communist Party as well as the forced "send downs" of city/urban dwellers to the countryside. I also found that there were just too many characters in this novel - four generations of women the relevant side characters in each of their storylines - is a lot to pack in, and made it difficult to keep each one separate from the others. Because of this, there isn't sufficient attention paid to each of them, as Yuexin barely makes an appearance in this novel and feels skipped over, and Hongxin's and Emily's perspectives feel overlooked. The pacing is inconsistent as well, and I struggled to get through the middle of this novel as it felt sluggish and uneventful. I think this novel will be promising to those who are intrigued by this time period and setting, but found that the execution of the writing detracted from the overall storyline.