THEIR DIVINE FIRES is a gorgeously written, multi-generational story about a family enduring and surviving hardship from the Chinese Revolution to the present day. It reminded me of everything I loved in books like Pachinko, with haunting, poetic prose exploring the ripples of trauma passed from mother to daughter from generation to generation. Without sharing any spoilers, it's heartbreaking, achingly beautiful, and inspiring all at once, culminating in a final scene that had me tearing up. Its pacing is slow but intentional, with sudden bursts of violence, devastation, and loss that leave you reeling.

I'm not a big fan of myth and folktale retellings. With that in mind, I liked this a lot more than I though I would!

I am a sucker for multigenerational stories so this was a perfect choice for me. Very hard topics to read as the family dealt with the changing political landscape of China, but I gained a greater appreciation for the history.

Upon first glance, I immediately jumped at the chance to read "Their Divine Fires"; a multi-generational novel focused on a family of Chinese women at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries? As a Chinese-American female myself, I was excited to read a novel that might mirror my family's and my own experiences from a perspective that isn't widely written about.

The novel is told chronologically across different perspectives, beginning with Yunhong, a young girl who grows up at the precipice of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the countryside of Liuyang. With her father as a respected doctor and two older brothers on the path to being respected scholars, her life should be a peaceful one - especially after she saves the life of a wealthy merchant's son and is promised that he'll return for her. Her life is altered though, when her oldest brother destroys her future plans, and Yunhong raises her daughter Yuexin without a father - and Yuexin later gives birth to two twin girls named Yonghong and Hongxin. The middle portion is told primarily from Yonghong's perspective; she envies her twin for her aptitude towards dance and music and struggles to find her own footing. The policies of the Cultural Revolution also alter her path in life, eventually causing her to leave for America to build a new life for her own daughter Emily outside of Boston, while her sister Hongxin remains in China and rises as a budding celebrity. Emily grows up straddling two worlds, never quite understanding the truth behind her family story and the complex relationship the women in her family have with each other.

There is a lot in this deceptively short novel that I appreciated - highlighting just how deeply the policies of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong's actions changed the lives for Chinese people; the deep-seated generational trauma that can carry through many years; and the difficult decisions women have had to make over the years to survive. Yunhong's story was the most captivating for me, and I deeply connected with her desire to make her own path for herself.

However, there were definitely things I struggled with in this novel as well; for readers who have little to no background on the Cultural Revolution, much of the events and policies will be confusing and make little sense, especially as there isn't much context given to the earlier conflict between the Kuomintang and Mao's Communist Party as well as the forced "send downs" of city/urban dwellers to the countryside. I also found that there were just too many characters in this novel - four generations of women the relevant side characters in each of their storylines - is a lot to pack in, and made it difficult to keep each one separate from the others. Because of this, there isn't sufficient attention paid to each of them, as Yuexin barely makes an appearance in this novel and feels skipped over, and Hongxin's and Emily's perspectives feel overlooked. The pacing is inconsistent as well, and I struggled to get through the middle of this novel as it felt sluggish and uneventful. I think this novel will be promising to those who are intrigued by this time period and setting, but found that the execution of the writing detracted from the overall storyline.