The Phoenix and the Firebird - Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford - ★★★.½

AUTHORS: Alexis Kossiakoff & Scott Forbes Crawford

GENRE: Middle-grade Fantasy-Adventure

PUBLICATION DATE: August 20, 2024

RATING: 3.5 stars

In a Nutshell: A middle-grade fantasy-adventure combining elements from Chinese and Slavic mythology. As an adult, I’d have preferred some plot points and the characters to be further developed, but a child would mostly enjoy this story. Some scary sequences, so might not be for sensitive or younger tweens.

Plot Preview:

1920. Peking (modern-day Beijing), China. Twelve-year-old Lucy has spent the last three years away from her father, who was serving in the Russian army. But now, he is on his way to Peking. When Lucy goes to receive him at the station, she discovers that the train has been attacked and her father kidnapped by a notorious ganglord. The only clue left is a mysterious firebird feather. With the help of her best friend Su and a local Russian club owner, Lucy goes on a quest to rescue her father. Along the way, she learns that reality as she knew it was not actually accurate.

The story comes to us in Lucy’s first-person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

💐 The lead characters of Lucy and Su: Lovely examples of friendship, bravery, intelligence, and supportiveness. Though Lucy is the main lead, I liked Su better for her honesty and her spunkiness. Lucy is also good but she takes time to grow on you.

💐 The amazing combination of Slavic plus Chinese lore characters. Very few books combine mythological characters from multiple folklores, and when the lores are as rich as Russian and Chinese, the task is humongous. I enjoyed revisiting some old favourite mythical beings and learning about some new ones.

💐 Lyrical descriptions that make it easy to visualise the scene and the characters.

💐 The somewhat episodic adventure, which, though not my favourite kind of writing, works well in children’s books. It is interesting to see a mix of riddles and prophetic clues with mythical appearances on Lucy’s quest.

💐 I adored the four appendices at the end: one for Chinese mythological animals, one for the beings from Slavic folklore , a third explaining China's situation at the time of the story, and the final one talking about Russia's circumstances at the same time. A great way of understanding the story better! There’s also an additional section where the author talks about her great grandfather, and how certain events and people in his life inspired her to pen this story.

💐 The cover and the title are excellent.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

🌹 Trivial point, but this always makes a big difference in my reading experience – I like knowing the ages of the key characters early in the book. Lucy’s age is revealed only at the 20% mark. Until then, I was struggling to understand how old she was as she seemed to be anywhere between 10 to 18 in her behaviour. Su’s age is not revealed throughout, though we know that she is slightly older than Lucy. I wish there had been a better detailing of the character’s backgrounds.

🌹 Somehow, the book doesn’t feel historical except for a couple of minor points. As the main plot is fantastical, it is anyway timeless. But Lucy and Su’s conversational style and their behaviour with each other and other adults seem slightly atypical of the era. This might still work for kids as they would anyway prefer English they can vibe with.

🌹 There are some impossible situations and convenient coincidences. Most of the troubles the girls face on the quest are sorted out almost immediately without much conflict. Certain character decisions are questionable. For instance, the Russian club owner Vlad doesn't take his henchmen along on the quest, saying that they would slow him down. Yet he is readily willing to take two inexperienced young girls along. Again, this might not be an issue for tweens.

🌹 As this is a debut work, it suffers from a minor version of the ‘kitchen sink syndrome’, not in terms of themes but in terms of mythical beings. Many mystical and mythological beings from both folklores make an appearance in the book, but most get only a passing mention, creating a rushed feel. (The biggest disappointment to me was the rusalka’s blind-and-you-miss appearance.) Moreover, situations are sometimes created just for an opportunity to educate the reader about some trivia connected to China or Russia, even if it isn’t needed for the main plot. These offered really interesting facts, but they broke the flow of the narrative.

Bookish Nays:

🌵 Certain events at the climax were too farfetched, even for a middle-grade fantasy adventure.

🌵 Some things are left unexplained. I know the fantasy parts don’t need to be clarified, but the human characters and their decisions and actions needed to be more fleshed out.

All in all, this can be an entertaining and adventurous book for children as it is filled with many exciting moments. Most of my issues spring from my perspective as an adult. Children might not bother so much about the technicalities of plot and character development.

Some scenes might be too scary for younger middle graders. The content has mentions of casinos and gambling, bloodshed, revolution, war, kidnap, parental death (prior to book events), kidnapping, imprisonment, and cannibalistic creatures. So take a call based on your child’s comfort level with darkish plot points.

Recommended to older middle-graders and younger teens who would enjoy a fantasy-adventure in an unusual historical setting.

3.5 stars, rounding up wherever applicable for the appendices and for the fact that it ought to work better for the right age group.

My thanks to author Scott Forbes Crawford and Earnshaw Books for providing the DRC of “The Phoenix and the Firebird” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.