Publisher: Tordotcom
Published Date: September 29, 2020
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: ★★★☆☆
REVIEW
I saw multiple people online saying you didn't need to read the first two novellas in order to read Burning Roses. However, i wish I did read them first because I feel like I was missing a lot of the worldbuilding. This novella mostly focused on the characters backgrounds as they told each other about their past. After reading the synopses of the other two novellas, I can tell that this is sequential. Perhaps if I would have read Hunting Monsters and Fighting Demons first my rating would have been higher, but I'm judging this on it's own so keep that in mind.
SUMMARY
This follows Rosa, who is this authors version of Red Riding Hood, and Hou Yi, who is a version of the Chinese myth Hou Yi. I am very familiar with the Western fairy tales that this book included, such as Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Beauty and the Beast. I am only familiar with Hou Yi because I recently read Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. You can find my review for that book here. Burning Roses follows the previously mentioned characters as they venture to stop the sunbirds. Along the way, they reveal themselves to each other through stories of their past. With a 3.75 rating on Goodreads and 4.4 rating on Amazon, this queer fantasy romance has many fans.
MY THOUGHTS
I loved the way that Huang wove both the Western and Chinese tales together. Even though people may be familiar with these characters, she put her own twist on them, including a genderbent Hou Yi and a criminal version of Goldilocks. While I understand that it would have been less confusing had I read the previous two installments, I felt like there was too much focus on the individual characters and their past. I didn't get to learn nearly enough about the world.
Their main mission felt a bit strange as well. I would have liked to know more about the sunbirds and why they were hunting them instead of being thrust into what felt like the middle of a story. The magic system was also very confusing. Humans were effected by it in a very specific way and it just wasn't explained very well. It could be that it was explained in one of the previous stories but it still felt incomplete to me. The ending happened very rapidly. The rest of the book was at a rather slow pace and I did enjoy hearing about Rosa's backstory from her perspective, but then the climax almost felt a bit rushed.
Overall, I may go back and read the other stories because they are rather short. I live for rich, full worldbuilding which is why I think I enjoyed it less than other people. It just fell a bit short of what I wanted from reading the synopsis.
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