SciFI/Fantasy Book Review: The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad: https://t.co/BtQBy4xncH Short Review: 8.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) June 14, 2019

Short Review (cont): A YA fantasy built on a really excellent multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Muslim/Hindu setting featuring several strong women whose lives are changed by power and a conflict between djinn and humans is excellent in its heroines, if not its villains. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) June 14, 2019

The Candle and the Flame is a YA Fantasy set in a very different world than what may be familiar to Western audiences.  It's a fantasy world in which Djinn of multiple types and persuasions and humans co-exist, but perhaps more interestingly, it's a world where its main city is not just modeled on a single Arab, Persian, or Muslim template (which is perfectly fine to be sure, don't get me wrong), but one which is a mix of multiple real world cultures - featuring Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists (and a reference to Jews) and their varying traditions and beliefs all together; featuring names and concepts from Arabic, Hindi, and other languages and cultures, etc.  And the result is a setting that is truly well done and fascinating, to say nothing of being different from what is the norm here in the States.

This is also a story about a set of Women, of various social and class backgrounds, struggling to assert themselves in a society that is at least on the surface patriarchal, and their stories are truly great to read.  Where the book is a little less effective is in the other areas: the main romance is solid but unspectacular and the major fantastical conflict is again merely solid, while the male characters, especially the main villain, are often paper thin in comparison to the wonderful women.  Still, for a debut novel, The Candle and the Flame is excellent, and I definitely recommend giving it a shot.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the reader is pretty good if you want to read the book in that format.  Still, as a result, my spelling of names and concepts in the below review may be way-off - so fair warning.  


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When she was four-years old, Fatima was rescued by an Ifrit from a convoy massacred by a group of the Shayateen, a seemingly evil type of djinn, and in the process, the Ifrit sacrificed herself for Fatima, leaving her with a hidden gift.  Six years later, after she was adopted into a human family - with loving parents and an older sister -  that gift is the only thing that saves Fatima, her sister Sunaina, and a woman named Laali when the Shayateen come to Fatima's new home city of Noor City, and massacre everyone else there.

Eight years later, Noor City has been restored with people populating it from the rest of the country of Qirat.  The Shayateen were repelled with help from the Ifrit, who in recompense for their help now control half of Qirat, an maintain a healthy presence in the City of Noor.  Noor now thrives, with the Maharajah the human half of Qirat ruling from the city, but as years have passed since the Shayateen were repelled, not everyone is happy with the Ifrit's continued presence in the country and may be willing to take extreme action to change it.

Fatima has grown up in this City, living together in a slum with her sister Sunaina, and works as a messenger transporting goods and messages throughout the city.  But she suffers from nightmares of the Shayateen attack 8 years ago, and rarely feels comfortable outside of her home and the bookstore of an Ifrit named Firdaus, who comforts Fatima with his books and wisdom.  But when something happens to Firdaus, he does something to Fatima, unleashing the hidden gift in her blood - Djinn Fire - and changing her identity to something new, a being not just named "Fatima," but "Fatima Ghazala."  And her new identity will cause her to come to the attention of both the ruling Ifrit and humans, drawing her and her family into a conflict that could change the city....and her once again....forever.
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The plot summary above, and the one on Amazon, is a bit of a problem for The Candle and the Flame, because it would be impossible to truly go into all the depths of this story without spending way too much time on it.  By this I don't mean the book is necessarily too complex to describe, but so much of it is about, as I mention before the jump, the struggles of not just Fatima Ghazala, but of several other women - her sister Sunaina, the Rajkumari (Princess) Bhavya, the Maharani (Quen) Aruna - in a human world that is not just patriarchal, but sometimes lacking respect for a woman's rights and authority.  This is not just their story of course, we have two male point of view characters - the love interest and Ifrit Emir Zulfikar and the Maharajah (King) Aarush) - a major romance plot, and of course a fantastical conflict driven by classism and racism that might feel very familiar to modern day readers.*  But the main focus of the story is on the women, mainly Fatima Ghazala, Sunaina, and Bhavya.

*You might think from the plot summary and the beginning of the book that we might have issues of colonization as well as a plot element (with the Ifrit as the colonizers), but the book never goes there, with the Ifrit having no interest in oppression or removing the humans at all in the country they've half-taken over.  So don't expect to find that here, which is fine, there's more than enough ideas as it is.*

And the three women main characters, as well as the Maharani, are fantastic in this regard, with each being different in personalities and growth/development throughout.  Fatima Ghazala is obviously the lead character, and she's a fantastic and believable character, even when she behaves a little alien in her initial appearances (for good reason).  Her reactions to grief, to being objectivized by men, to her changing relations with both Zulfikar and her sister make her a complex and very easy to root-for character, and she easily carries the bulk of her story.  But Fatima's sister Sunaina and the country's Rajkumari (princess) are also incredibly complex characters, with wants, desires, and conflicts of their own, and carry their own subplots as well.  I wound up loving them all.  And the minor women characters, like the Maharani - who is almost a major character in her subplot involving her place as the Queen who married into the royal family - or Fatima's friends, the Alif sisters, are fantastic as well to complement all of the above.

The rest of the characters are a bit more hit or miss.  The other two POV characters are certainly solid with their own plot-arcs, but those arcs are less interesting when they diverge from the women's arcs.  Zulfikar is probably the better of the two, as the love interest and Ifrit Emir of Noor City, dealing with the conflict between his responsibility to his people and his feelings towards Fatima Ghazala driving a very solid conflict and story as he deals with potential human and magical insurgency in the city.  The Maharajah Aarush, the King of Noor City, is a bit less effective: it's clear from the start that he's way too passive and unwilling to do the things necessary to ensure the safety of his people, even if his heart is in the right place, and hearing him find out things and do nothing about them repeatedly gets a bit old.  Then there's the antagonists, who are both major misogynists and assholes and might as well hang signs on themselves saying "Most Definitely the Villain."  They work for the purpose of providing a conflict for the women to deal with, but other than that they're almost caricatures.  Believable caricatures, given what we see these days, but still.

Other than the characters, the setting of Noor City is fantastic, with Azad doing a wonderful job showing and describing this city of many peoples come together to the reader.  It's a wondrous place, though Azad might perhaps go a tad overboard with her descriptions of clothing and food - especially food (this story needs a glossary for all the desserts mentioned, seriously).  The plot itself is not quite as effective, with the story having some pacing issues: it moves rather slowly for the first 80%, before speeding up into the major conflict and then resolving it quickly in the final fifth of the book.  Still, it works quite well because the characters are fantastic, with the actions of Fatima Ghazala, Sunaina, and Bhavya all taking surprising but effective turns, leading to a very satisfying ending.  I should point out that it's not a happy ending necessarily for everyone involved, but it's a progression that very nicely ties up the story.

In short, the wonderful women, the phenomenal setting, and the very solid ending make The Candle and the Flame a very excellent debut novel, and really worth your time.  Give it a shot.