Several months have passed since Matilde, Sayer, \u00c6sa, and Fen escaped the Red Hand, a fanatical religious cult leader, by channeling elemental magic like the Fyrebirds of old. The four new Fyrebirds are now physically and emotionally distanced, however. In the Illish Isles, \u00c6sa secretly practices amplifying fledgling girls\u2019 abilities and wrestles with her family\u2019s traditional expectations. In Simta, cunning Great House daughter Matilde leverages her now-public identity as the Flame Witch into a strategic alliance in hopes of swaying public opinion to protect magical girls. Sayer is busy rescuing exploited magical girls, \u201cterrorizing\u201d the Great House lords, and avoiding her feelings for Fen. Meanwhile, Fen is focused on acquiring more witchbane to suppress the magic and the PTSD-like flashbacks it triggers. As rumors swirl about magical girls disappearing, the Fyrebirds learn of Sugar, a mysterious new drug engineered to make them more \u201cbiddable.\u201d But another threat looms as the king of Trellane sets sail for Simta. The fast-paced plot and resonant emotional beats organically explore pervasive, harmful patriarchal and misogynistic beliefs, choice and control, and resistance and revenge. Brief interstitials present vignettes from secondary characters\u2019 perspectives and ephemera that further the immersive worldbuilding. The leads read white; the cast overall is broadly diverse in representation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several months have passed since Matilde, Sayer, \u00c6sa, and Fen escaped the Red Hand, a fanatical religious cult leader, by channeling elemental magic like the Fyrebirds of old. The four new Fyrebirds are now physically and emotionally distanced, however. In the Illish Isles, \u00c6sa secretly practices amplifying fledgling girls\u2019 abilities and wrestles with her family\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}