Girls of Fate and Fury

Girls of Fate and Fury Book Review by Natasha Ngan 

*Spoiler warning for the entire Girls of Paper and Fire Trilogy*

I wanted to like this book more than I did. 

I also wish I had more to say about this book and the ending of a trilogy, but I really…don’t. Which is not a favorable opinion. 

A while back, I read the first book of the installment titled Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan, and while by no means was it a perfect book, I really enjoyed it. 

I enjoyed the Chinese and Malaysian influences, I enjoyed the focus of a primarily female cast, I enjoyed the F/F romance, the attention and sensitivity given to sexual assault and the trauma and coping that comes with it, the mental state of people in positions of lower power, the complexities of a world with a caste system of people with animal-demon features, and the fight for one’s freedom and willpower. 

After the first book, it kinda just went…downhill. 

The second book, aptly called Girls of Storm and Shadow, was already a letdown from the first, where Ngan takes us away from the political world of the King’s Palace and sends the characters on a wild goose-chase to different parts of Ikhara. 

This book already took a nose-dive due to the mediocrity of the side-characters, the nonsensical nature of the plot, and the roller-coaster of a relationship between Wren and Leh-zhi. 

The third book is irrevocably worse. 

The book begins with Lei and Wren separated from each other, which, after the less than unfortunate tumult of their relationship in the second book, starts less than ideal for the reader, who honestly just wants them to be reunited. 

Also, someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is the first book that switches POV’s between Wren and Lei? A change that I didn’t like even if I understood why Ngan did it. The first two books we only see Lei’s perspective and we get used to seeing Ikhara through her world view and also her feelings for Wren. 

The tension of Lei and Wren’s relationship is nullified when we understand both sides. Lei whines and misses Wren but isn’t sure if Wren can forgive her for the things she said in the Jana Desert. 

But then the POV’s switch and we see that Wren certainly loves Lei and hopes that Lei can forgive her for murdering a Lady Dunya’s daughter and hiding it, amongst a slew of other deeds. 

Maybe the goal was to build more tension as the reader is aware of both sides, but it just made me frustrated beyond belief. In addition to this, switching POV’s between the two girls really slowed down the pace of the novel and made it really boring at times. 

We would be in Lei’s position at the Little Palace dealing with the Demon King and being reunited with some of the Paper Girls and them bam! We’d switch to Wren who was dealing with Lova’s flirting, the draining of her magic, and sitting on her father’s war council. 

It just didn’t flow or work for me at all. 

Honestly, we didn’t need Wren’s perspective whatsoever and I don’t understand the switch to include it in the first place. Perhaps that would have made the book too short. Perhaps that was a sign in the first place. 

There’s just…nothing happens in this book. 

I can summarize it in four sentences. Ready? Here it is:

Lei and Wren are separated, Wren is preparing for war, and Lei is back at the Palace. No other characters really matter. A war happens and they kill the Demon King and the caste system breaks. The end.  

That’s genuinely it. 

I personally feel that Ngan sort of lost the mark after the first book. The world of Ikhara is so interesting and the caste system so intriguing and by focusing on two paper girls, I just felt like it was an abysmally boring story in the face of a much cooler universe. 

The Demon King is laughably evil and Lei is a remarkably good soldier for a human in a world ruled by demons and half-demons who are undeniably stronger and bigger than her. It doesn’t make any sense. 

I get that the message is that they’re strong in number, blah, blah, blah, but that isn’t even true half of the time as Leh-zhi is fighting people alone. And even when she is with the other Paper Girls, most of them dislike her, and they’re stupidly bad at fighting. 

Urgh. 

Lei-zhi’s and Wren’s relationship also just fell apart for me after the first book. In the first book, it made sense to me. They were both Paper Girls. There was mutual attraction, affection and chemistry.

 But starting in book two, all they do is argue, Lei develops a drinking problem and an impossible altruistic conscience, and Wren just murders people for the sake of the “war”. 

But the series continues to tell us that Lei is Wren’s whole world and Wren is the other half of Lei’s soul. It just became really superficial and cheesy for me. 

Additionally, Wren and Lei don’t even meet up until the last third of Girls of Fate and Fury and then we as readers don’t even get a moment of solace to see them reunite and rekindle their relationship because there’s a giant war happening. 

The payoff was not worth nearly two book’s full of Lei and Wren being on the brink in their relationship. 

The other characters are negligent. Ngan wants you to care when people die, but I really didn’t. Not any of them. When Chenna and Mistress Azami died? Didn’t care. I was supposed to, I know I was, but the build-up of their characters were too superficial and too late for me for their deaths to matter. 

In the words of JoJo, 

“It's just too little too late

A little too long

And I can't wait”

You’re right, JoJo. I couldn’t wait until the end of the book so I could read something else that was better and more interesting. 

The book isn’t terrible, but it was completely unnecessary, as was the second book. Honestly, Ngan could have combined books 2 and 3 in about 50,000 words, added it to the end of Girls of Paper and Fire and called it a day. 

Or, at the very least, combined books two and three to make it a duology. It didn’t need to be a trilogy and by making it so, the plot and the characters got watered down until they were nothing but soggy messes. 

I still appreciate things that Ngan has done. Her representation is amazing, both culturally and of people with different sexual preferences, her attention specifically to the trauma of sexual assault is really well done, and her inclusion in this book of a character with a physical disability was really great to see. 

Her world is still impressive to me, with the three castes, the demon-features of these castes, and the inherent political and socio-economic influences that come with it, but somewhere along the way Ngan stopped focusing on these elements and instead focused too much on a predictable romance and a magical war that I’ve seen done a million times before. 

Recommendation: Read Girls of Paper and Fire and then just stop. You don’t need to read anymore after that. Still want more? Go read fanfiction for it, it would probably be better. Or better yet, make up your own ending using Ngan’s rich world and interesting ideas. 

Score: 4/10