Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

The Quick Cut: A teen girl is taken from her village as one of the Demon King's personal concubines. Emotions fly and chaos breaks loose as she attempts to survive and adjust to her new life.

A Real Review:

Fantasy is one of my favorite genres to read because there's so much room for creativity. Between the worlds made, stories told, and characters developed - so much can be done in the context of enveloping the reader in a whole New universe. In this new book by Natasha Ngan, the world created is so vibrant and dynamic you can practically taste it coming off the page.

Lei is a village girl who worked in her father's herb shop, content in the life she had. That is, until the king's warriors showed up and took her away from her family... to serve the king as a concubine. Forewarning: this book includes rape, sexual assault, and a whole lot of violence.

There are so many facets of this book that hit the mark that I truthfully don't know where to start. Even though it has a plethora of trigger topics, the world created is so intoxicating and real that I read every chance I could. Between the storyline with Lei's family, navigating the palace life, newfound relationships, and secret agendas. It sounds like a ton of plot lines, but they are woven together so elegantly that it is easy to follow.

Lei goes through a traumatic experience (along with the other eight girls) and it's intriguing to see how they all learn to depend on one another. At the same time, they also have no issue backstabbing one another in order to keep the ever watchful eye of the King's people off themselves.

I'm interested to see where they go with the sequel considering how much ground they covered in this first book. Clearly the door was left open for a second book, but I'm hoping that it turns into something unexpected.

With a beautiful world and phenomenal characters, this book serves up the fantasy gold with this hit.

My rating: 5 out of 5