Review: Before She Ignites

Before She Ignites by Jodi Meadows
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I remember, Francina Simone, in her review of this book, said Mira Minkoba was something of a Hufflepuff.

After reading Before She Ignites, I'm pretty sure Francina was right on the money.

It was only after this book's cover was revealed (and the resulting controversy brought this author to my attention) that I read several of Jodi Meadows' other books to date, and was generally underwhelmed with them - largely due to poor world-building (in the case of the Incarnate trilogy) and/or a derivative nature (in the case of the Orphan Queen duology). This book, the start of the new Fallen Isles trilogy, has a bit of the former flaw, mostly in the form of a lack of a world map and most of the Fallen Isles - and the gods they're named after - being relegated to the background. The latter flaw? Not so much.

For all the talk I've heard about this book being slow and plodding and surprisingly lacking in dragons, I have to say that all of the above are wrong. Well, maybe not so much the "slow" part, though that's no surprise given the book is close to 500 pages long. But it's a real page-turner, uniquely smart and thought-provoking. Maybe a tad derivative, but not of what you'd expect. Sure, there's the obvious Shatter Me comparison owing to the book largely taking place in a prison setting and dealing with strange superpowers, but with the incorporation of themes of social justice and environmentalism and the condemnation of imperialism, I think Meadows owes a lot to the likes of Kate Elliott, Sabaa Tahir, and N.K. Jemisin.

With those themes in mind, it makes a lot of sense that Meadows chose to write Mira as a black girl. Sure, this is a fantasy world where the racial politics of ours need not necessarily apply, but knowing that Mira's black allows the reader to look at the book and its in-universe politics through a certain unsettling lens. Unsettling, but again, thought-provoking. Because though Mira finds herself incarcerated for doing the right thing (see, there's that Hufflepuff-ness in her, her sense of justice!), she draws on an inner bravery she never knew she had, pushing through the obstacles she has to face both without and within. The latter, of course, being her mental health issues - her compulsive counting and her propensity for panic.

#ownvoices is always desirable, of course, but if you know me, you know I won't knock a book for not being so in and of itself. Though I can't speak with authority on the racial rep, I'll say it was well-done in that while many characters' (dark) skin is mentioned in-text, I'll guess that this was Meadows' way of establishing a black default while having to contend with the fact that many readers, unfortunately, would probably have a white default in mind unless told otherwise. Race is actually something of a non-issue in this book - though, on a related front, nationalism is the major social ill rearing its ugly head behind the scenes in the Fallen Isles. I'm more qualified to talk about the mental health rep, undiagnosed though I am, because I do relate to some of Mira's symptoms. Especially her counting, which I think could be a symptom of autism in addition to the more clearly-coded OCD. On that front, I'll give this book my #ownvoices approval for sure.

Without a doubt, this is Jodi Meadows' best book to date, a vast improvement over her previous fantasy stories, and definitely better than I was expecting. Next order of business: get my bookstore to order and stock this book so I can hand-sell it!

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