Book Review: Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

Lan, a song girl in a tea house, knows what it’s like to lose everything. She lost her mother, her home, her culture. When she meets Zen, she loses everything again. However, this time is different. Zen not only saves her, he introduces her to a world of magic and excitement. He might even be able to lead her to answers about her past.

Amélie Wen Zhao’s book Song of Silver, Flame Like Night is an epic adventure fantasy novel. It focuses on a girl, who goes by Lan, and she has a strange looking scar on her arm that appeared the day her mother died. One day, she finds herself being hunted by the man who killed her mom. She is saved by a Hin practitioner who promises to take her to his school to learn the art of magic. She vows to learn about her mother, find the reason she was killed, and to gain the strength to protect those around her. She never wants to lose another person again.

This book is not a casual read. Zhao drops her readers into the world of this book during a very complicated and political time. There are many events that must be explained to the reader in order to understand the world’s current political climate. This leads the opening of this story to be a bit dry and confusing at times. Zhao focuses on explaining how the Elantians are in power and are subjugating and assimilating the Hin people into their culture. The reader must focus on learning the world’s background in order to understand the story’s events and the characters’ thoughts and emotions.

Once the story starts moving along, the characters really start to become more of the focus on this book. Both Lan and Zen, the main characters of the novel, are strong deep characters. They both go through a lot of changes throughout their journey and experiences. I really enjoy how Zhao has written them both as complete opposites in their personalities. Lan is strong willed, casual, down to earth, and realistic in personality. Zen is much more proper, strait-laced, and scholarly. The two of them as a pair, create a really nice contrast to each other. There are many moments in the book where their contrasts balance each other out to cover each of their weaknesses and enhance their strengths. In fact, many of the characters in this novel help to enhance each other. Zhao created many interesting characters that come in and out of Zen and Lan’s adventures. Some help and some hinder, but all of them are well done and add to the story.

Zhao also did an excellent job creating the world this story is set in. It is obvious that she took her time to create a complex world with many nuances to it. This is shown in the complexity of the political situations as well as the cultural heritage the characters have. Throughout the story, we learn many different things about the Hin people as well as the subjugating Elantians. There are many interesting places Zen and Lan visit to provide depth to the world and believability to the setting. Even the fantasy elements add depth as magic and demons are introduced into the story. It is clear that Zhao took the time to craft this world and create a rich and powerful history to it.