Fireborn – A Review by Bryony – Blog Tour

“I pledge my life to the Hunting Lodge, I vow to serve all seven clans as my own…”

Rating: 4 stars

Release date: 30th September 2021

Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books

Author: Aisling Fowler

Set in the snowy northern forests of an imagined prehistoric world, Fireborn is the middle-grade debut of the decade. At turns exciting, funny and heart wrenchingly sad, it marks the introduction of an unstoppable new voice in children’s storytelling.

Twelve has spoken the Pledge and now she is a Huntling. She has given up her name to train in the art of fighting monsters and keeping the peace, and she won’t get to choose a new one until she has earned it.

But when the Lodge’s walls are breached for the first time, and a little girl is taken, Twelve is the only one interested in going after a child…

Teaming up with Dog, the Stone Guardian of the Lodge, Twelve ends up on an epic adventure that will change her life, her name – and her entire world.

CW: Death of family (before events of the book)

I adored reading Fireborn. As soon as I started reading it, I thought, ‘Yes, younger Bryony would have loved this’. Fortunately, it turned out older Bryony did too.

Twelve was a really interesting main character. She was brilliant and brave and driven, but she was also incredibly stubborn. She’s fixed in her way at the start of the book and almost punishes herself for diverging from her “path” towards the middle, but I liked that she’d really grown by the end so we could follow her journey. She will be such a fierce main character for young girls (and boys) to look up to.

I think the side characters were really fun too. They allowed Twelve’s character to come out by gradually breaking down her protective shell. They challenged, but also offered her glimpses of friendships – if she was brave enough to take them.

The world building in this was magical. I think it was really interesting that the creatures in it were unique to the story – Twelve’s textbook to help them deal with each creature was a really clever way of introducing them to us. I liked the lore and history of the world, but would have been happier to see some more of it too. The characters’ adventures took them through a variety of settings, with magic available in different options.

The plot was a lot of fun in this. I found it really easy to keep reading and I wanted to know what was going to happen next. It was quite high stakes and there were a lot of surprises towards the end I hadn’t predicted. There was definitely some shock value.

I do feel like Twelve deserved more light and joy in her life. She was certainly getting hints of it by the end, but through the rest of the book, she seemed to prevent herself from it. I can’t wait to see her friendships (and the rest of the left open parts) develop in the sequel.

I will 100% be recommending this and checking out future books when they come out!

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Aisling was born in 1985 and wishes that she had grown up in a magical, mountainous kingdom, but was actually raised in Surrey on a diet of books and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her early ‘adventure’ stories involved surprisingly little action and her first novel (3 pages long) was politely declined by publishers at age 11. After earning a BSc in Biology and working as a support worker and then a nurse, the idea for her debut novel, Fireborn, came to her as she moved back and forth between London and the US. Now based in Hackney, when she is not reading or writing, Aisling loves cooking and plotting adventures (for herself as well as her fictional characters). Fireborn will be published by HarperCollins in 2021.