I’m back on another blog tour, baby! I love getting these opportunities to help promote upcoming books, and this will be the first of hopefully many in 2023. This time I’m reviewing a beautiful Chinese-inspired fantasy book thanks to Random Things Tours. Song of Silver, Flame like Night was a book I was genuinely excited for.
In this book, we follow Lan, a young girl who spends her days searching for information about the strange mark her dead mother left on her and surviving her country’s colonizers. No one else can see that mark, though, until Zen. A practitioner of magic long since thought lost, Zen saves Lan’s life after she accidentally uses magic. Lan and Zen have secrets, but they’ll have to work together to free their land and protect the world.
In the last year or so, Xianxia has become a genre of Chinese fiction that’s been getting massively popular. More people are watching Chinese dramas, and we’ve been getting translations of novels too. Those all seem to be danmei, the Chinese literary equivalent of Boy’s Love. But now, that love is starting to seep into western fiction by authors from or with East Asian families. This is so very exciting.
Song of Silver, Flame Like Night gave me the vibes those Chinese novels have been giving. And it makes sense, as it’s the same type of magic system, world-building and inspiration. It was just written in English rather than being a translation.
Thankfully this book has some great world-building. The magic system is well explained, and I never felt confused or lost. I could picture exactly what was happening at the time, which can be difficult with such complex systems. Zhao did a great job there.
The pacing of the story was interesting. It did feel a little slow, but when I looked down to see how many pages I’d read, I found that I’d read more than I’d expected. This is a book that you can gobble up quickly, so if you’re looking for a fantastic but fast read, this book will definitely be the one for you.
My final note is…look at that cover. It’s absolutely stunning. I’d been planning on ordering the Waterstones signed edition of this one, and I still might, as I don’t mind looking at this cover multiple times. Sigh.
If you’re looking for more Chinese fantasy and want to see more of it on the western market, I highly recommend grabbing this one. It’s a fantastical read and deserves all the love it’s bound to get.
Title: Song of Silver, Flame Like Night
Author: Amelie Wen Zhao
Genre: Fantasy/Xianxia
Age Range: Adult
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Release Date: 2/2/23
BUY LINKS
Amazon UK | Amazon US | Waterstones (Signed) | Waterstones (standard) | Bookshop Org
Lace and Dagger Books 
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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