Sarah Mughal Rana's first adult fantasy in a projected trilogy, Dawn of the Firebird, is a striking and evocative epic about power, revenge, and the price of freedom, both for individuals and those caught up in the games of empires. Khamilla Zahr-zad has wanted nothing more than to be claimed and named by her father, a distant emperor who has never visited her where she lives with her mother's nomadic tribe, despite the portents of fortune at her birth. Instead, she becomes the apprentice to the tribe's folkteller, set apart from the rest of her people. But when tragedy strikes in the form of a raid and the vast majority of her kin are slaughtered, a heavenly magic awakens in her--the nūr, the power to wield light.
Khamilla and her mother return to the emperor's court, where her status as one of the rare Eajīz, or magic users, to be born in her father's empire makes her useful to him. Thrown into the viper pit of court affairs, Khamilla has to learn to navigate politics and what it means to be strong as she fights for the emperor's attention and approval. But just as she feels like she might have earned her place and found her purpose, it is ripped away from her again.
In the aftermath, Khamilla finds herself behind the enemy empire's lines, a spy infiltrating their training city for Eajīz. As she remakes herself into a different kind of weapon yet again for another force, she nurses her desire for vengeance. The more she learns to fight, the more Khamilla learns the cost of conflict, and her perceptions of the world rub against each other until they fracture. As myths and magic remake her and the world around her, and she learns more and more about her potentials as an Eajīz, she discovers a power and destiny far beyond what she could have imagined. Along with that, she uncovers darker truths than she expected about her past and what she was born to do.
With dynamic worldbuilding and a cast of complex characters, Rana (Hope Ablaze) has created a remarkable saga that will not just capture the imagination but expand it as Rana draws from Islamic culture in both her world's texture and its magic systems. Dawn of the Firebird is a provocative epic that asks questions about the cost of war and power struggles on the people swept up in their machinations. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Sarah Mughal Rana returns with the first installment of a projected fantasy trilogy that probes power, loss, grief, and what we will do to find out who we are in the face of brutality.