With Cait Corrain back in the news, figured it was really time for me to write this review already! For those less terminally online, our story didn’t start in December but that is when it become a scandal and Booktwitter found out that a debut author scheduled for a 2024 release with some decent positive buzz had been review bombing fellow 2024 YA debuts with fake Goodreads accounts while giving her own book positive reviews (which is one of the reasons it caught the attention of Iron Widow author Xiran Jay Zhao). Not only was she review bombing other debut authors (including one from the same imprint), she was specifically targeting BIPOC authors. Long story short, she lost her agent and her book deal, and now two months later, she has an interview with The Daily Beast attempting to explain her behavior.
Normally, I don’t tend to preorder debut authors or first books in what will likely be a YA trilogy if it’s not one of my go to authors because I am not new to this! Intriguing premises that fall flat in execution, amazing first books with series that fall off badly etc. – I’m going to wait to see if the buzz sticks. However, after all this happened I pre-ordered all the authors that were impacted (except one who only had a UK release and not a US one yet), and So Let Them Burn was the first one released this year, and also the first novel I finished this February.
So often YA starts with the build towards rebellion and overthrowing the oppressors, so this was an interesting choice. As a result, it didn’t have the same momentum as some other novels and was a slower build as the sisters have to attend a peace convention with their queen and their former occupiers, and get caught up in intrigue. This isn’t a negative and I enjoyed the slow pace and build, but it was a more leisurely read for me than some other novels.
Now, I do think there were some small details that could have been built up more or where I wasn’t sure the internal logic was quite working – nothing specific comes to mind, parts simply felt a bit superficial or, “wait, how did they make that work” … I will also say that some of the overall strokes were predictable for anyone familiar with YA fantasy but enough was fresh that I didn’t mind certain tropes, I enjoyed the characters, and also, did I mention there were dragons?