Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc of this book.
I really wanted to love this book but it felt flat for me. Part one was engaging but it was a bit confusing to learn about the world. I liked the pacing of this part, lots of important events and characters are introduced. As we get to part 2, where Khamilla is at Za’skar, the pace gets really really slow. It got to a point where I wanted to stop reading. Lots of information was thrown, not much was happening. It felt almost like a different story. Then, the pace picked up in part 3 and it got better. I did have trouble to connect with Khamilla. It’s not a bad book, the writing is nice. However, the pacing of the story was lacking for me. I found that the world building was also confusing and I had trouble at times to keep up. I don’t think I’ll read the next book.

3.5 ⭐️

I received an advanced copy of Dawn of the Firebird, in exchange for an honest review. The following review is based on my opinion and experience.

I liked the plot, spy/assassin character and world building of the story. I felt confused and lost at the beginning, however, halfway through the story began to evolve and it ended up being a very enjoyable reading experience and an engaging story.

“[…] family is not the blood running through your clan or the gnarled roots twisting beneath a tree in archaic tradition, a cage to be rebuilt generation after generation. It’s the people worth every breath, every labour, and every act of love to create a home.”

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARc!

I am very torn.
So let’s start with the positives. Right from the start, the writing is so rich that you feel the story through all your senses. I could almost taste the dishes, feel the fabric, see the architecture, hear and smell the plains. I also loved learning more about cultures and mythologies that I am (sadly) not as familiar with. In the same way that European mythology often isn’t explained in books (writers suppose that everyone knows what an elf is), the vocabulary used isn’t explained, although context clues are sufficient to get the gist of its meaning. I was quite happy to do some googling to get a deeper sense of the atmosphere and world of this story!

The author manages to tackle the themes of trust, loyalty, love, home, family and identity throughout the entire book and I thought it was done particularly well. There is also a creepy-sentient-shadow creature that kept me guessing up til the very end. This world is harsh, dark, but still very much believable and clearly inspired by history.

Now, there are two aspects that I struggled with. The first is that for the middle part of the book, the FMC is intolerably immature and boring. This has a purpose; the narrative clearly explains why she is this way, and it all ties up nicely with the ending. However, I had a hard time staying invested in her story, to the point where I considered DNFing. The fact that the pacing slows in the middle contributed to my diminishing interest. The second thing is linked to how my brain works. I am a very visual person, but the magic system, although really interesting, is linked to metaphysics and psychospirituality, which is understandably quite hard to visualize. The fact that the story is narrated in a way where the reader only knows what the FMC does did not help me with figuring out how the magic actually works.

Also, a warning for people with emetophobia! There is a surprisingly large amount of times where characters are sick.

Overall, although I loved certain aspects of the book, the ones I disliked make me unsure as to whether I will continue with the series. I’ll probably wait to read reviews of the sequel and decide at that moment if I wish to continue.

A gripping coming-of-age fantasy, mixed with real-world religious history elements, cutthroat political maneuvering, and complex characters!

Thank you to both NetGalley and the publisher, HarperCollins Publishers, for access to this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I DNFed this book at the 15% mark. The main struggle that I had was with the format of the ebook. It was similar to a pdf which made it very difficult to read and made it hard for me as a reader to enjoy this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!


As a debut fantasy novel, I’m impressed by the sheer ambition of this book. While it doesn’t always and consistently deliver on scope, breadth and depth, I can totally see the series getting better with each book.

In this book, the author has clearly dedicated a lot of time, a lot of thought, and a lot of energy to building a unique world that carefully and respectfully pays homage to Asian communities and cultures (I assume central, south, and southwest asian). The author does this by reaching beyond the contemporary nation-state era back to a quasi-feudal form of political organization. There is a major emphasis on these characters, engaging with, and also being situated in smaller, more localized communities, marked by villages, regions or feudal lords. This is at the core of the structure of the novel, and also shapes the subsequent relationships and the central conflict. I really enjoyed this part of the book because Rana doesn’t copy-paste or rely on real-life cultures to do the heavy lifting of her worldbuilding. Instead, she takes these elements and plays around with them to differentiate her worldbuilding from others. The end result subsequently feels like a real-life kingdom/province. At the same time, I could totally see where readers (specifically those who don’t tend to pick up adult historical fantasies) can get lost, as the information does feel overwhelming at times.

As Rana draws from real-life inspiration, she’s also keeping the story rooted in a historical, more fantasy-based, elemental-centred world. The worldbuilding in her novel extends to what I mentioned before (more material forms of cultural inspiration, like foods and clothing). But at the same time, she’s weaving in political intrigue grounded by a really interesting Quranic magic system. In fact, this political intrigue throughout the entire book was one of the absolute highlights for me personally. While the upkeep of the politics isn’t always perfectly consistent or pursued with the same degree of energy throughout the narrative, I still think it really speaks to how great the book is on this front. Specifically, the central narrative gets re-anchored to different parts of this world. As a reader, I thought the transition between these different settings, in terms of the actual environment and political games, was a little awkward at times and felt abrupt/illogical. As I said earlier, you can really tell the author is passionate about this; it’s clear she spent a lot of time researching because the politics and strategies we see in the academy portion are layered, complex, and well thought-out.

In terms of the writing style, there were two aspects to it that I had complicated feelings about. On one hand, I loved the prose. Concerning description and setting up vivid visuals for the reader, the author does an excellent job. The beautiful prose made up for some of the weaker points in the book, especially in the middle sections where the character is at the academy. That part was one I found was the weakest, with a stagnant subplot, so having such smooth prose really helped to chug the narrative along.

However, I didn’t really vibe with the tone and voice of the characters, specifically our FMC. I think at the start, the author does very well in depicting the immaturity, age, and potential areas of development of the FMC. As the book progresses, she does end up going through a brutal and dark character development arc. Yet, while she technically matures, the voice weirdly stays the same. I really do feel like there was more room for the tone to mature along with her.

Overall, this was such a fantastic read! With how dense the worldbuilding and politics can be, I think this will especially land with those who enjoy books such as the Green Bone saga and/or She Who Became the Sun!

5/5

This book really floored me. I’ve truly never read a book like it. It’s rare to see reclamations of Biblical (I hate using that word because Quranic is what I would rather use as a Muslim, but most people don’t know how the stories of Adam and Noah also fall under Islamic canon, hence I digress) stories in fantasy. And this story set out to do exactly that while still adhereing rigidly to Islamic laws of monotheism and attributing all power and abilities to the Creator. I’ve never seen that done besides maybe City of Brass but even then, this one did it stronger in making it explicitly clear with rigid magical rules. Just for that alone, I was really blown away. It’s such a complex hard magic system and I loveeed how fleshed out it was.

It’s been some time since I finished reading it, and I’m still thinking about this. I loved that the prologue had 3 parts to it, and gave us such a deep delving dive into nomadic culture and the prelude to the MC’s life before everything got torn away from her. It helped set up strong stakes for the rest of the story. But things really picked up and took a sharp turn when the MC had her new life torn away and she’s left with no choice but to enter a military magical academy. A lot of it was unexpected and grimdark and gritty and I really enjoyed that a lot. I couldn’t put it down once we got to the magical academy and the training arcs and duel scenes were so epic! And then some surprising turns took place with magical plot twists in the last act that took this up a notch. Very gritty very grimdark. I loved the philosophy discussed. And it made the war and the costs of it and the choice the MC had to make very surprising and nail biting. I did cry when certain characters died. It was so unexpected and I did scream NO at my kindle several times. Also Khamilla is VERY morally grey trust me. I’m very intrigued to see how the repercussions of her choices are explored in book 2.

Side note - the worldbuilding of this book is on a different level - in the best way possible. Really loved how layered and immersive it was!

I truly feel like this is going to be the debut and fantasy book of the year. If you love the poppy war, then you’re going to love this! Don’t miss out on it!

I had some very high expectations for this book, as a lot of the early reviews I saw online were very positive, and I'm disappointed that I wasn't more impressed with the writing. The narrative voice feels clunky and the grandness of the story isn't landing the way I think it needs to hit properly. I really enjoyed the characters as a concept but their execution was fairly underwhelming and cliche. The world building is very patchy and underdeveloped, leaving the reader feeling disjointed and fairly lost through most of the book.

Truthfully I didn't finish reading it, but what I did read was really not for me.

This is going to be the book of the season, because oh my god did it ever have me hooked and wanting more! This is truly a powerhouse of a fantasy novel, people who are looking for their next great fantasy read are going to want to keep their eyes out for this book!

The world building, the story telling, and the characters are so well flushed out that everything reads smoothly on the page. It is definitely one of those books that is going to go viral when people start reading it, I couldn't put this book down no matter what I did, I needed to get it finished because it had me hooked right from the beginning.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

Giving a neutral rating because I DNFed this book.

The writing isn’t for me, everything else — the plot, the characters try and try to live up to this contrived grandness and just ultimately do not land. I hope that this book will find its audience, but as of now I cannot recommend it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

2 and 1/2 stars.

What started as a promising, even intriguing fantasy unraveled into a chaotic patchwork of half-explained magic, dense lore dumps, and scenes that felt ripped from every popular fantasy book of the last ten years. The pacing dragged under the weight of its own worldbuilding, which often felt more performative than purposeful. It throws around big concepts without ever grounding them. The main character began with potential—a young, traumatized girl navigating memory loss—but the lack of development made her arc fall flat. She’s reactive, not reflective, and it felt like the plot kept pushing her forward without letting her be anything. Add to that a tone that tries too hard to be gritty: every scene is dialed up to maximum angst and intensity, so when the story should hit hard, it doesn’t. It’s emotional overkill without emotional depth.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Dawn of the Firebird was ultimately not for me. I loved the premise and the writing style. The book itself was more plot driven and since a lot happened to the main character, I wish there was more character growth (even though she does age throughout the book) and more inner monologues. I think the memory looses are an interesting/magical way to think about PTSD.