Natasha Ngan said: “I’m gonna give the gays everything they want.” And then she wrote Girls of Paper and Fire, a YA fantasy with sorely-needed representation wrapped up in an excellent story about hope in standing up to your abusers.
Each year, eight girls from Ikhara’s lowest and most oppressed caste, the Paper caste, are chosen to serve as the Demon King’s concubines. This year, however, there is a ninth: Lei, a girl with golden eyes who was stolen from her family as a gift to the king. Lei is prepared to accept her fate until she does the unthinkable— she falls in love. She eventually becomes wrapped up in a plot that could turn Ikhara on its head, and must find strength in the face of impossible odds.
Before winter break started, I wrote about the books I was most looking forward to reading since I would finally have the time, and Girls made that list. “I’ll probably just like cry or something if I’ve been baited and Lei ends up falling in love with some boring, angsty straight dude instead,” I wrote. If I could, I’d travel back in time and tell myself to chill out a little bit. This book actually really, really delivered. Not only does it give us lesbians, but it gives us compelling lesbians. Girls reminded me a lot of Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst because of how warm and soft and good the romance was. Considering the heavy subject matter of the rest of the book, the mutual support and love between the protagonist and her partner was very, very welcome.
That’s honestly kind of the point, I think. A major theme in the book is about how rape isn’t about sexual desire, but power. The king has eight girls as his consorts every year because he gets off on exerting power over them, and thus the rest of their caste. But Lei starts to find a home among the other girls who are going through the same thing, and it’s all about them finding the strength to cope with it in their own ways. Lei’s forbidden romance gets her through because it helps her along on the path to reclaiming her body. A major motif in the book is how feelings, especially love, cannot be taken from you no matter what adversity you face.
There’s a lot of other cool things about this book! The world of Ikhara, inspired by Ngan’s Chinese-Malaysian culture, is really neat— and so not only do we have lesbians, but we have lesbians of color. Its side characters have a surprising amount of depth. There were some pacing issues in the first half of the book, but once Lei found her motivation, I found myself reading as fast as I could to see what would happen next.
If you are planning to read this, be warned that there are depictions of violence, sexual assault, and graphic animal death. The sexual assault scenes are written as sensitively as possible (Ngan herself is a sexual assault survivor). If you’re interested, check out this spoiler-free interview by Goodreads with Ngan, which gives insight into her influences in the book.