TW: Murder (mentioned repeatedly, not described)
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal was a diverse, rich, and illustrious first book in the Sands of Arawiya duology. The novel begins with a mysterious world and intriguing characters, pulling you into the fiery world that is We Hunt the Flame.
Cons: As you all can see, my normal format is finally making another appearance in my reviews; I think I’m going back to it for good. My only cons for this novel are pretty general. First off, one of my first thoughts when reading the first few chapters were, “wow, this feels very cliche”. Having the morally gray royalty for a love interest felt overdone for me (yes, I know thats a me problem). I was worried that the author was going to romanticize a toxic murderer and inherently ruin her strong female mc’s characterization along the way, just playing off the love interest as “misunderstood” and “hurting”. I’m tired of authors trying to justify the male love interests extremely harmful and toxic behavior through his trauma, it really gets on my nerves and makes me think about the fact that men are really held to a lower standard than woman. I’m exhausted of trying to ignore these traits of men for the sake of liking the main couple or ignoring it because he is traditionally attractive. (Honestly this review is making me think I should make a post about this issue in books. Would you guys want that?) I’m going to say it: A PERSONS TRAUMA DOES NOT EXCUSE THE HARM THEY CHOOSE TO CREATE.
Despite my writing in the cons portion of the review, the main male character didn’t seem toxic; he was just a mass murderer. (Which doesn’t change much lets be real) I struggled to ignore the fact that he goes around murdering people, I felt that even though his father is abusive and makes him do these things it was inexcusable. In fantasy worlds and books, murder is extremely normalized based on how the world was written. I find it hard to accommodate my morals for a different world for things like this. In other fantasy books, I can excuse their actions based on the circumstances in which they committed these acts; it feels necessary for their survival; or maybe they were fighting in a war; but with We Hunt the Flame, it didn’t feel like there was reason enough for Nasir to go around murdering innocents. I just couldn’t find it in me to excuse Nasir’s actions.
Pros: Putting my thoughts above aside, I really did enjoy this book. Hafsah Faizal did an amazing job at leaving a sense of mystery and tension in the air throughout the entire adventure. The stakes felt high and the connections real. The female main character, Zafira, was extremely likable and relatable. Her struggles felt real, and her morals were strong; it was refreshing for a strong woman to be shown as a leader, important, and powerful instead of being portrayed as reckless, stubborn, and a joke; so for that, I thank the authors incredible character work. As this book being Faizal’s debut, you can really see her writing growing as the story progresses, its kind of wonderful actually; seeing someone grow so beautifully even through their writing and a story. (Kind of weird, I know)
A lot of reviews for this book mention that they found the world building confusing and not well explained; I disagree with those statements. I personally found the world building rich and new. Despite my thoughts of cliches in this book, the world is not a part of that. The history was intriguing and the brutalities of loss and greed were portrayed excellently; they were woven into the history with great precision. Each detail of the world building felt planned out with extreme thought behind it. I applaud the author for their amazing job of description and theme shown in the world.
The adventure displayed in We Hunt the Flame was fascinating. The aspects of affinities and ancient magic were shown so mystically. I loved the way that the quest of finding a magical artifact was so dangerous yet necessary. Hafsah Faizal used so many tropes in cliches and put an interesting and fresh twist on them, making the book feel legendary. I really did love this book.
I’m struggling to put a rating on this book. I think the story is 5/5 stars, but there are underlying aspects that pull the rating down a bit. But, I think I’ll stick with the five star rating.
Please be aware that a lot of the cons written above are not shown in We Hunt the Flame. I was trailing off onto harmful tropes written in predominantly ya fantasy and don’t actually apply to We Hunt the Flame.
To end this review off, i want to remind you all to continuously hold people accountable. Writing this review, I have realized a lot of the harmful tropes written into young adult fiction and romance are inherently misogynistic and are often glamorized and romanticized. Please please recognize that these patterns are harmful to the readers and continuously normalize toxic behavior from predominantly men. Thank you for reading and please share your thoughts on the comments or in my dms!
✨📖✨
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal was a diverse, rich, and illustrious first book in the Sands of Arawiya duology. The novel begins with a mysterious world and intriguing characters, pulling you into the fiery world that is We Hunt the Flame.
Cons: As you all can see, my normal format is finally making another appearance in my reviews; I think I’m going back to it for good. My only cons for this novel are pretty general. First off, one of my first thoughts when reading the first few chapters were, “wow, this feels very cliche”. Having the morally gray royalty for a love interest felt overdone for me (yes, I know thats a me problem). I was worried that the author was going to romanticize a toxic murderer and inherently ruin her strong female mc’s characterization along the way, just playing off the love interest as “misunderstood” and “hurting”. I’m tired of authors trying to justify the male love interests extremely harmful and toxic behavior through his trauma, it really gets on my nerves and makes me think about the fact that men are really held to a lower standard than woman. I’m exhausted of trying to ignore these traits of men for the sake of liking the main couple or ignoring it because he is traditionally attractive. (Honestly this review is making me think I should make a post about this issue in books. Would you guys want that?) I’m going to say it: A PERSONS TRAUMA DOES NOT EXCUSE THE HARM THEY CHOOSE TO CREATE.
Despite my writing in the cons portion of the review, the main male character didn’t seem toxic; he was just a mass murderer. (Which doesn’t change much lets be real) I struggled to ignore the fact that he goes around murdering people, I felt that even though his father is abusive and makes him do these things it was inexcusable. In fantasy worlds and books, murder is extremely normalized based on how the world was written. I find it hard to accommodate my morals for a different world for things like this. In other fantasy books, I can excuse their actions based on the circumstances in which they committed these acts; it feels necessary for their survival; or maybe they were fighting in a war; but with We Hunt the Flame, it didn’t feel like there was reason enough for Nasir to go around murdering innocents. I just couldn’t find it in me to excuse Nasir’s actions.
Pros: Putting my thoughts above aside, I really did enjoy this book. Hafsah Faizal did an amazing job at leaving a sense of mystery and tension in the air throughout the entire adventure. The stakes felt high and the connections real. The female main character, Zafira, was extremely likable and relatable. Her struggles felt real, and her morals were strong; it was refreshing for a strong woman to be shown as a leader, important, and powerful instead of being portrayed as reckless, stubborn, and a joke; so for that, I thank the authors incredible character work. As this book being Faizal’s debut, you can really see her writing growing as the story progresses, its kind of wonderful actually; seeing someone grow so beautifully even through their writing and a story. (Kind of weird, I know)
A lot of reviews for this book mention that they found the world building confusing and not well explained; I disagree with those statements. I personally found the world building rich and new. Despite my thoughts of cliches in this book, the world is not a part of that. The history was intriguing and the brutalities of loss and greed were portrayed excellently; they were woven into the history with great precision. Each detail of the world building felt planned out with extreme thought behind it. I applaud the author for their amazing job of description and theme shown in the world.
The adventure displayed in We Hunt the Flame was fascinating. The aspects of affinities and ancient magic were shown so mystically. I loved the way that the quest of finding a magical artifact was so dangerous yet necessary. Hafsah Faizal used so many tropes in cliches and put an interesting and fresh twist on them, making the book feel legendary. I really did love this book.
I’m struggling to put a rating on this book. I think the story is 5/5 stars, but there are underlying aspects that pull the rating down a bit. But, I think I’ll stick with the five star rating.
Please be aware that a lot of the cons written above are not shown in We Hunt the Flame. I was trailing off onto harmful tropes written in predominantly ya fantasy and don’t actually apply to We Hunt the Flame.
To end this review off, i want to remind you all to continuously hold people accountable. Writing this review, I have realized a lot of the harmful tropes written into young adult fiction and romance are inherently misogynistic and are often glamorized and romanticized. Please please recognize that these patterns are harmful to the readers and continuously normalize toxic behavior from predominantly men. Thank you for reading and please share your thoughts on the comments or in my dms!
✨📖✨