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3.5 

Kindling

By Traci Chee
Kindling by Traci Chee digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From bestselling and award-winning author Traci Chee comes a stand-alone fantasy set against a war-ravaged world where kindling warfare—the use of elite, magic-wielding teenage soldiers—has been outlawed. In this rich and evocative novel, seven kindlings search for purpose and identity as they prepare for one final battle. For fans of the classic films Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist

A Kirkus Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)

An ALA Rainbow Round Table Top Ten Title for Teens

An SLJ Best Book

A Booklist Editor’s Choice

Four starred reviews!

Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives. Now the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift.

Violence still plagues the countryside, though, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their grim fates to come together again—or none of them will make it out alive.

Traci Chee brilliantly crafts a gut-wrenching, introspective fantasy about seven lost soldiers searching for the peace they once fought for and the future in which they’re finally daring to believe.

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Kindling Reviews

3.5
“even though it has rare but well-written action sequences, kindling took me months to read. my buddy reader and i soft-dnf'ed it for a while to read other books because this would have put us in a reading slump had we kept going. i hybrid read this physically with the audiobook and i think traci chee is an experimental writer as opposed to having a distinct writing style. i loved a thousand steps into night and this book was a complete departure from that. the use of em dashes as ending punctuation, the choppy pacing, the enormous list of 14 characters (7 pov's, all of whom felt the same), and children having sex were not my cup of tea. the writing and the giant cast of 7 performers weren't able to make the characters sound distinguishable due to how little dialogue there was compared to the reader being trapped in the character's heads. writing in second-person can work but the second-pov put the writing at a disadvantage because there was a lot of telling readers what the characters were seeing, feeling, doing, saying, etc. i also don't like that this book is categorized as "young adult" when there are more adult themes than anything. lastly, authors need to number their chapters or have some kind of tracking system because the fact that there were no chapter numbers to help with our conversations made me wish i didn't make it a buddy read pick. ---- buddy read with my book bestie, melissa cover artist: kiuyan ran”
Loudly Crying Face“Seven samurai, but make it about femme and queer children. It's young adult because the characters are teens, not because it holds any punches. Tragic and realistic in showing just how much innocence is lost in conflict.”
“Was actually considering to dnf this like 100 pages in😬 having seven povs was just really confusing and also the whole second person pov just really threw me off! So glad i pished through though”

About Traci Chee

Traci Chee’s novels include the New York Times bestselling Reader Trilogy and the National Book Award finalist and Printz honoree We Are Not Free. An all-around word geek, she loves book arts and art books, poetry and paper crafts, though she also dabbles at egg painting, gardening, and hosting game nights for family and friends. She lives in California.

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