So, on my novel’s publication day something fearful happened in my city, something that suddenly made fiction unimportant. I am hosting our recently formed book group and having loved The Other Hand, I suggested we read Incendiary. from the trailers and reviews, it seems they took the sensational aspects of the story and missed the essence.

The power of this novel lies in its extraordinary momentum, which sweeps us along a concatenation of events that follow the bombing. Rebel spying in the palace seems like it should be a fun story, but in reality, it’s mostly Ren wandering aimlessly around the palace hoping that clues will land in her lap.The entire time I thought I was reading some middle schooler's attempt to be a dark and gruesome author.

This is my absolute favourite kind of fantasy book – one with captivating characters, fascinating worldbuilding and fast-paced, heart-in-your-mouth action. It's hard to believe she wouldn't have gotten psychiatric help along the way; she certainly needs it. Indeed I feel that our lives rarely end happily, although that doesn’t exclude the possibility of their being graceful or inspiring. Between the authors world building, that has you travelling the Kingdom of Andalucia effortlessly, and her descriptive writing in general it was hard not to fall into the pages, getting a little more lost in the world she built every time until it was nearly unbearable to pull myself out.

I’m a very fussy reader who takes months to get through books, especially since I have 2 young children. I’m still interested in reading the second book in this duology, but I reckon my expectations for it will probably be lower than they were for this one. Instead I’m simply proud of Incendiary because I think my heroine is riotous and unforgettable, and if you read it I hope you’ll like her too. Yet her past as a collaborator, however naive and unwitting she was, means she’s never truly accepted by her own people, even as she fights and struggles alongside them. Incendiary works not only as a furiously taut evocation of grieving, unhinged mother love but as a sly political cautionary tale.