Dawn of the Firebird by Sarah Mughal Rana Review

Khamilla Zahr-zad’s life has been built on a foundation of violence and vengeance. Every home she’s known has been destroyed by war. As the daughter of an emperor’s clan, she spent her childhood training to maintain his throne. But when her clansmen are assassinated by another rival empire, plans change. With her heavenly magic of nur, Khamilla is a weapon even enemies would wield—especially those in the magical, scholarly city of Za’skar. Hiding her identity, Khamilla joins the enemy’s army school full of jinn, magic and martial arts, risking it all to topple her adversaries, avenge her clan and reclaim their throne.
 

To survive, she studies under cutthroat mystic monks and battles in a series of contests to outmaneuver her fellow soldiers. She must win at all costs, even if it means embracing the darkness lurking inside her. But the more she excels, the more she is faced with history that contradicts her father’s teachings. With a war brewing among the kingdoms and a new twisted magic overtaking the land, Khamilla is torn between two impossible vengeance or salvation.

From the nomadic village plains, to opulent palaces, to soldier training grounds, Sarah Mughal Rana’s Dawn of the Firebird is a Middle Eastern inspired high fantasy story based around one’s loyalties, self-identity, and vengeful rage. With inspired folklore, distinctive magic system and strong conceptual ideas, this book has all the hallmark traits to be a sweeping epic tale and a start to a planned trilogy series. Unfortunately, despite having a lot of potential, numerous storytelling shortcomings and crucial plotting issues make this a potentially difficult book to enjoy.

There appeared to have been some mild controversy or discussion surrounding this book and its author which resulted in quite polarizing early reviews, particularly the negative opinions that can be quite extra and dramatic. Though I wouldn’t have picked this book to read on my own if I hadn’t received it via FairyLoot’s adult fantasy book box subscription (also featured in Goldsboro’s Fellowship which I also am subscribed to but skipped), I went into this book with an open mind, expecting a more positive experience as I am generally more analytical and detailed reader/reviewer than the Goodreads norm who can be overly sensitive. Unfortunately despite its good ideas, I found myself unexpectedly agreeing with many of the other negative opinions and finding Dawn of the Firebird to be a very underwhelming, messy, and trying read despite being frustratingly close to being good.

Starting with the positives, Dawn of the Firebird features strong themes that focus on an individual’s place, loyalty, and home in a land of conflicting political entities, warlords, and magical powers. Faced with repeated destruction, death, and hardship, Khamilla’s journey takes her from her role as a storyteller in her nomadic village, to the court politics in Capital, a soldier undercover training in enemy territory, and finally a fierce soldier in the heat of war. The element that the book does the best job with is its portrayal of different political entities that are all flawed, with no clear “good guy”. Partly for survival and for revenge, Khamilla’s preconceived notions and movement across country and territorial boundaries are tested with conflicted loyalties and uncertainty over who she’s truly fighting for at the end of the day. When her life is irrevocably changed, her fellow villagers who are lost as casualties within larger conflicts are seen as forgotten fodder resources. A strong character motivation that is explored nicely, this point is hammered home with the book’s bittersweet ending that shows the complexities of large-scale destruction vs the micro-level pain at the individual level. Additionally, Rana has good literary flair, albeit inconsistent in quality and execution, and is clearly a good writer, the book featuring some excellent passages and remarks that are often used to close out each chapter.

While the book’s concept and general plotting appear solid on paper, unfortunately the actual reading experience is a different story due to numerous storytelling shortcomings. First and foremost, this book is one of simmering revenge and rage while strongly incorporating Middle Eastern culture and folklore. For better or for worse, rage stories live or die by their main character’s narration and require the reader to connect with and support their revenge pursuits unless the book is purposely channeling a Shakespearean style tragedy or satirical commentary. I personally found Khamilla to be a very difficult character to support and enjoy for a variety of reasons. The book attempts to portray her as a cold, calculated, and distant character who is resourceful and measured, keeping her emotions behind a protective wall. However, the plot and story have her repeatedly doing brash, wild, and crazy long-shot tactics followed by her frequent disappointment and pain when the results don’t pan out. While not necessarily a huge issue, this book features a lot of vomiting as one of her go-to reactions in graphic and disturbing scenes which gets repetitive and tiring quickly.

Additionally, her character takes a high moral ground, judging everyone around her that’s out for power at the cost of others while simultaneously being hypocritical and doing the same herself through her undercover infiltrations and deceit. To Rana’s credit, part of that is by design where the book’s ending highlights Khamilla’s shortsighted approach and oversight of the nuance and consequences of decisions with large-scale repercussions in moments of important clarity and realization, but it takes so long for the story to get there. Khamilla suffers from the unfortunately common “chosen one” mentality that is tiring to read about especially for how confident and bold she is where the results don’t back it up and she fails repeatedly. Additionally, the aforementioned thematic points about conflicting loyalties, nuanced situations, and moral complexities while good in theory are quite simple and incredibly obvious to everyone except Khamilla. Particularly in the back half of the book, I found myself constantly wincing at her character cycling between raging and shock at the inevitable consequences. A book can absolutely work with a heavily flawed protagonist which I generally enjoy, but the combination of character work, limited development, and way the plot was crafted simply did not work for me and was consistently unpleasant and underwhelming to read.

Outside of Khamilla’s character, Dawn of the Firebird also features an aggressively conceptualized plot that’s meant to be sweeping, but it is constantly held back from reaching its lofty ambitions by weaknesses in the details. My chief complaint while reading this book was that the book doesn’t ever suggest or indicate what the story is meant to be. The blurb mentions escalating war and tension while the book’s introduction covers Khamilla’s childhood in her nomadic village, touching on interesting folklore involving three heavenly birds, their powers granted to different magical practices/theories, and historic events that shaped the land. However, apart from introducing Khamilla as a rare child born with special light powers bestowed on her by one of the heavenly birds, there’s no indication or sign of where the story is going or what the premise is supposed to be. With a large cast of characters, factions, powers, and twists, big epic fantasy books or really just adventurous books in general need a clear call to action, conflict and direction to give the reader something to care about. Dawn of the Firebird‘s call to action is the destruction of her village but beyond that it’s incredibly vague and muddy. Especially when Khamilla moves from place to place, the premise and narrative increasingly feel like it lost the point it was trying to make where the story is just throwing disturbing and violent scenes at the reader with little rhyme or reason. The material can be quite upsetting for sensitive readers covering on-page depictions of torture, death of children, mutilation of the dead, self-harm/death, etc. Ironically though, by filling the story with so much shocking material without proper context, each scene has diminishing return value. The book constantly feels like it’s trying to be edgy and mature while failing and doing the opposite.

When looking at the book as a whole, the story is divided into several distinctive arcs that include Khamilla’s nomadic childhood, her stay with the emperor at his palace, an academy training arc and series of trials in the enemy territory and traveling warfare in her home country. However, each of these arcs often feel like completely different books and a distinctive lack of transitions between them. Particularly the poison-heavy training at the palace and the abrupt shift into trials, these narrative elements feel like they come out of left field or attempt to channel elements of other popular high fantasy books whether they fit the narrative or not. The concepts do make sense when the full scope of the story is revealed at the end, however in the moment they feel random or an attempt to hop on to popular fantasy tropes. On a smaller scale, the same lack of details also affects the scene-by-scene narration and storytelling. I often found myself re-reading pages due to abrupt shifts in topics, conversation, or setting, the story often jumping ahead without providing crucial context, framework, or connections. During the training arc at the soldier academy, a mock command and conquer trial repeatedly references the rules and strategy of a board game called saktab but baffling, the book doesn’t even explain what it even is or has Khamilla play the game itself until over a hundred pages later at which point it’s never referenced again after. The pain and suffering she experienced is explored through a rough concept equating to PTSD and loss of memories, but she will reference experiences that she shouldn’t remember due to mental blocking and is incredibly inconsistent with no narrative explanation or acknowledgement of how these gaps in memory are suddenly filled.

Another area that I felt could’ve used some tweaking is the jinn element and their source of power. I assume this will likely be covered more in subsequent sequel books given the way the Dawn of the Firebird ends, however I felt like the jinn fantasy concepts were a lot more interesting than Khamillah and her fellow magic users. The two types of powers and their limitations were likely meant to contrast each other in a heavenly light vs shadow, life vs death motif but the jinn elements felt like they were introduced in passing early-on and then forgotten about until the last quarter of the book where all of their mechanics were info dumped on the reader. While I generally found the character work, dialogue, and interactions to be one of the weaker aspects of the book, Khamillah’s shadow was consistently one of the most compelling and mysterious unknown elements that felt underutilized. The shadow’s abilities, and omnipresence throughout her adventures felt like a missed opportunity for externalized reflections, opportunities for character growth, or even merely providing more familiarity to allow late plot twists to have more dramatic impact. As currently presented, I felt the jinn powers are presented in chaotic and messy fashion on top of an already rushed, confusing arc of the book.

Particularly when the book gets into more epic fantasy territory involving strategic power plays, movements, and leadership commands, everything feels very convoluted and difficult to follow due to poor explanations or presentations. Action scenes and fights initially seem good at a glance, but upon a closer look are difficult to visualize with fight choreography that doesn’t seem to make sense physically speaking or have odd jumps. There’s a notable scene at the end of the book where Khamilla fights someone in the palace, then suddenly is falling outside and looks up to the exposed sky with no transition at all. I fully believe that Rana had fully imagined and visualized these scenes and power play strategies, but they simply did not make the jump onto paper very well. The book has an interesting and unique magic system with diverse powers, but the technique, terminology, and system aren’t explained well. A glossary is provided for reference, but a well-written high fantasy book should not require the reader to heavily use it as a necessary crutch to figure out what is happening vs an occasional reference check for clarity.

Additionally, while Rana invokes a writing style and tone on-brand and very appropriate for an adult high/epic fantasy book, the prose is often unnecessarily clunky and quite convoluted, further exacerbating the frustrating reading experience. The style is right, but the execution feels quite muddy, awkwardly phrased, and the underlying substance basic despite the attempts for literary flair. The descriptions and narration also feel inconsistent in their style with certain parts having serviceable yet pedestrian writing while other sections going off the deep end in terms of metaphorical references or in-lore mythology mess. The dialogue also occasionally breaks the high fantasy illusion with modern gen Z phrasing such as “*random statement here, no?” which is jarring.

While I usually don’t review or negatively critique a book’s cultural inspirations from a subjective standpoint, it’s worth noting that I personally felt peeved with the way the book presented and incorporated its influences. The book has honorifics like Khan which are common knowledge but also uses numerous cultural titles, items, weapons, visuals, mythological creatures, or concepts that are less well-known. Ordinarily that’s not a problem and can be a positive aspect that gives the book narrative flavor, but Rana doesn’t provide enough context clues or an introduction for the average reader unfamiliar with Middle Eastern/Persian/Mongolian region culture and history to follow. If the book doesn’t provide enough context, usually they will include common terms in the glossary. Considering how long this book’s glossary for its fantasy elements and original topics are, it seems like a purposeful omission not to also include even a limited list of cultural terms used. I acknowledge this is very much an issue with myself as the reader and not a requirement that the book caters to my limited knowledge, but it appears to be a recurring point for many other readers. Other recent books I’ve read that have strong cultural identity and topics like Dave Rudden’s Sister Wake or Marvelous Michael Anson’s Firstborn of the Sun did a great job at balancing their cultural topics and terminology in a way that is appealing and accessible for those both those familiar and unfamiliar with Irish and Yuruban culture respectively, on top of provided a useful glossary. Meanwhile Dawn of the Firebird just assumes the reader should know or have a dictionary on-hand while reading which is fine if the book is intended for specific readership but rather pretentious for a mass-marketed book and one picked for book box subscriber base.

Featuring an ambitious story, strong thematic ideas, and the right intention, Dawn of the Firebird is a book that’s frustratingly close to being amazing. Conceptually solid, unfortunately this book has so many weaknesses that affect the enjoyment and presentation, resulting in a very disjointed, convoluted, and potentially off-putting reading experience. Though I ultimately ended up rating this a 2.0 based on the merits of its narrative concepts and potential, from a subject standpoint this was more of a 1 star read for me and one I should have DNF-ed if not for my determination to have a complete read to formulate my review on and curiosity around its polarizing reception. While heavily flawed, this could be an interesting book and series worth exploring for those who are interested in a Middle Eastern inspired high fantasy series which is an underrepresented sub genre. However, for most veteran high/epic fantasy fans or especially for romantasy/fantasy romance fans, this is not one I can positively recommend.