Girls of Paper and Fire – Girls of Paper and Fire #1 – Natasha Ngan
Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for…and the most cruel.
But this year, there’s a ninth girl. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.
In this lush fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most oppressed class in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards still haunts her. Now, the guards are back, and this time it’s Lei they’re after–the girl whose golden eyes have piqued the king’s interest.
Over weeks of training in the opulent but stifling palace, Lei and eight other girls learn the skills and charm that befit being a king’s consort. But Lei isn’t content to watch her fate consume her. Instead, she does the unthinkable–she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens the very foundation of Ikhara, and Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide just how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge.
Review:
First of all: look at that cover! Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous? It’s exactly how I like my covers: simple, eye-catching and colourful but not too bright. I received this book in the Fairyloot book box and even though the blurb sounded interesting, I wasn’t entirely convinced. It also had several warnings for violence and sexual assault, so I was holding back any expectations when I started reading.
In Ikhara there are three types of ‘castes’: Paper, Steel and Moon. Moon caste are demons. They are the most powerful caste and as such are in power in Ikhara. Steel caste possess a mix of human and demon features. Paper caste are the poor, oppressed humans. Ngang writes a beautiful legend-like piece about how these different castes came to be in the beginning of the book, which immediately won me over. I love reading more about the history of the world I’m diving in to.
Every year, eight Paper caste girls are brought before the king as his Paper Girls who are essentially concubines. This year is however different: a ninth girl is chosen by a general who after a mishap wants to get back into the king’s good graces. Paper Girls are usually chosen from a group who have been put forward by their families, because being a Paper Girl is seen as a great honour to the families involved.
The protagonist, Lei, is famous for her beautiful golden eyes and lives in a remote corner of Ikhara with her father. Her eyes seem to be her downfall, because it’s this feature that brings the guards to her village to take her against her will to become a Paper Girl.
I liked Lei as a protagonist. Having lived through the trauma of seeing her mother taken by the guards years ago, she now finds herself in the same position. Lei is rebellious but fragile. She refuses to conform to all the rules of being a Paper Girl and she refuses to share the King’s bed. But for some reason she still worries about what people think of her in court and how the King perceives her.
Lei finds it difficult at first to connect with the other girls, most of them members of rich or powerful families. She forms a solid friendship with the youngest of the girls and is fascinated by the mysterious and quiet Wren. The one upside of her kidnapping is that this gives her the perfect opportunity to find out what happened to her mother. As the weeks go by Lei’s life changes forever as she falls in love, desperately tries to find out what happened to her mother and dreads the day she gets summoned to the King’s chambers.
Ngan has made Lei into a very relatable and realistic character, making it easy to feel invested in her future. Her meetings with the King tear through you and I desperately wished I could reach into the book and help her. The warnings on the book are definitely there for a reason and if sexual assault is not something you would like to be confronted with, I would give this one a pass.
The King is in his own way a fascinating character too. He is young and extremely ambitious. He has a warped view on life that can only come from growing up privileged and being taught that everything he wants is owed to him. He is cruel but he doesn’t think he is, he sees his actions as necessary for the country. He is manipulative and that shows in the relationships he builds with the girls, especially the more gullible ones. I won’t deny he made my skin crawl every time he made an appearance.
The love story was absolutely brilliant and this is coming from someone who’s very hard to please when it comes to romance in books. I loved every mention of it, every stolen moment. There was such chemistry and tenderness between the two characters, it just melted my heart. This is one of the few times I’m actually looking forward to the next book to read more about this couple.
Girls of Paper and Fire surprised me and turned out to be a pretty incredible book. Heed the warnings though as some parts are hard to read. The book ends in an explosion of action that after the steady flow of the rest of the book makes your blood race and leaves you on the edge of your seat. It’ll be interesting to see what the next book will bring.
Release Date: November 6th, 2018
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Age Group: (Young) Adult
Pages: 400
Format: Hardback
Source: Bought
