Flame in the Mist by Renée Ahdieh

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and the Dawn, comes a sweeping, action-packed YA adventure set against the backdrop of Feudal Japan where Mulan meets Tamora Pierce.The daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko has long known her place--she may be an accomplished alchemist, whose cunning rivals that of her brother Kenshin, but because she is not a boy, her future has always been out of her hands. At just seventeen years old, Mariko is promised to Minamoto Raiden, the son of the emperor's favorite consort--a political marriage that will elevate her family's standing. But en route to the imperial city of Inako, Mariko narrowly escapes a bloody ambush by a dangerous gang of bandits known as the Black Clan, who she learns has been hired to kill her before she reaches the palace. Dressed as a peasant boy, Mariko sets out to infiltrate the ranks of the Black Clan, determined to track down the person responsible for the target on her back. But she's quickly captured and taken to the Black Clan's secret hideout, where she meets their leader, the rebel ronin Takeda Ranmaru, and his second-in-command, his best friend Okami. Still believing her to be a boy, Ranmaru and Okami eventually warm to Mariko, impressed by her intellect and ingenuity. As Mariko gets closer to the Black Clan, she uncovers a dark history of secrets, of betrayal and murder, which will force her to question everything she's ever known.

Flame in the Mist most closely resembles Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction, except for some samurai anime I didn't watch.
Mariko is the super special Mary Sue. Her twin is an awesome samurai, her betrothed is an awesome samurai, and the two hot guys she ends up hanging out with are awesome ronin. In a story of samurai, she single handedly invents the ninja. Seriously, she invents the shuriken and smoke bomb in the span of a month.Pigeon Japanese is sprinkled throughout the dialog along with cultural trivia like what kind of socks they're wearing or tea ceremony in excruciating detail. The sort of thing you'd expect from fanfic.

4/5 stars “Be as swift as the wind. As silent as the forest. As fierce as the fire. As unshakable as the mountain.” You might be saying to yourself, “Wow? A review for Mist in the Flame? Didn't you promise to post this three weeks ago?” Actually, you aren't, but I'm going to pretend you actually care and are. Which I reply to you. Yes. I was. But I got lazy. It happens. But better late than never. First just a huge thank you for Penguin Teen sending me an arc of this book. You guys are the coolest. If there's any other arc you wanna send my way, please don't hold back. So now that I got all that out of the way. I just wanna say that this review isn't just a review. It's also my eulogy. Because this book actually killed me. R.I.P EmiJune 1998-May 2017.She died doing what she loves. Crying over fictional characters. I've been dead for three weeks and y'all didn't even notice. Rude. But I'm gonna forgive you if you pick up this book and join me here in the afterlife. This book is just so awesome? It makes me wanna run into the forest and join a group outlaws. Do they even exist anymore? Do they accept emotionally unstable introverts? If you like action, beautiful covers, girls who are better than you, and some other stuff, this book is just what you are looking for. It's also really informational? Before reading this, all I knew about Samurai is pretty much nothing and I learned so much about their history. obviously, I will never be an expert, but it's nice to read about a topic that isn't taught in schools very often. The writing is also so beautiful. [a:Renee Ahdieh 4600197 Renee Ahdieh https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1487663209p2/4600197.jpg] is establishing herself as a very consistent author which is great and all but she's also incredibly gorgeous so I'm very much intimidated by her entire life. [b:The Wrath & the Dawn 18798983 The Wrath & the Dawn (The Wrath & the Dawn, #1) Renee Ahdieh https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1417956963s/18798983.jpg 26724902] is still higher on my favorites list then this one, but this was a great follow-up to that series. So if you didn't know what this book is about. It's marketed as a Mulan meets 47 Ronin. I am unfamiliar on 47 Ronin, so I don't know how accurate that is. But the Mulan part. It's a pretty good comparison. However, if you are going into this book expecting the entire plot of Mulan conveyed using the English alphabet and paper, you are wrong. It's there, but this book is its own separate entity. At the beginning of this book, Mariko, who's father is this big bad Samurai, is being sent off to marry some dude she doesn't love. Pretty stereotypical. But when she was traveling to go get married off, her party is attacked and everyone dies. But she manages to get away. Mariko figures that this group called the Black Clan was responsible because they wanted to kill her. So, instead of running the opposite direction like any sane person would, she disguises herself as a boy and goes undercover in the Black Clan to figure out why the hell they wanted to assassinate her.I'll be honest. The first part of this book is kinda slow. There is just a lot of haning around, not doing much in the woods. But once you prevail into the last part, everything becomes worth it. Let's talk characters. Shall we? It's been awhile since I finished this book, so I don't remember too many details. But I'll try. Markio. Can I be her? I want to be her. She's better than you. My only complaint is that she's supposed to be like this mastermind with scientific stuff, but we don't get to see that a lot. Okami. I wasn't paying any attention to his character, to be honest. I didn't think he would be important. Then Ahdieh went in a direction I didn't expect with him and I regretted barely giving him a second glance. Don't be me. Appreciate him throughout the entire novel. Ranmaru. I'm gonna be honest with you. I kinda don't remember his character very much? He reminded me of Robin Hood though. Kenshin. He's Markio brother and he's kind of an asshole. But I'm not really surprised. But I did really love how much he loved his sister? But would your brother work as hard as he did to find you? He set the brotherly love bar really high. I'm thinking about disappearing to see if mine would. He probably wouldn't even know I was gone. In conclusion. This book is amazing and you should read it. Honestly, I don't know how you are reading this and just ignoring the beautiful cover. Except, is it a peacock or a phoenix on the cover? I just can't figure it out.

I've waited to write this review to give myself time to digest the story and really decided what my thoughts were. Hopefully I'm able to accurately portray them now. Going into this book I had a whole lot of expectations. The two most prominent were the writing style and the retelling aspect. Renee Ahdieh has a unique writing style that was apparent in [b:The Wrath & the Dawn 18798983 The Wrath & the Dawn (The Wrath & the Dawn, #1) Renee Ahdieh https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1417956963s/18798983.jpg 26724902]. If you remember, I had a slight problem with what I would call her obsession with describing eyes of the characters. Now this book did not have the problem for me (now it is very possible it was still there, I just did not notice it with this book). As for the retelling, this was touted as a Mulan retelling. Now Mulan is my favorite Disney movie, both now and growing up, and I did not want to be disappointed with this book. Spoiler: I was not. As for the actual book it was incredibly enjoyable and I loved the pace and how the story progressed. I never felt like we were spending too much time going through backstory or world building. I loved watching Mariko's views on her family, the empire, and the Black Clan change and evolve and she learned more and became more independent. We got to see her grow as a person both physically as well as growing in her understanding of why people do some of the things they do and the motivation behind every person's actions and choices. For me the strength of this book was its characters. I loved Mariko and her band of “friends”. They each had a vital part to play in her journey through the forest as well as her personal journey learning who she truly is. The banter between Mariko, Okami, and Ranmaru was spot on and I loved how they relationships all came to fruition and we learned why past decisions had been made.That being said, this book left so many unanswered questions, is struggle to see how this can all be answered in only one more book. But I'm sure Renee has something up her sleeve. I cannot wait to see what happens with Mariko and the Black Clan going forward and how her family reacts to the decisions she made in this book.

All great opportunities in life follow some form of struggle.

I enjoyed this book. It had a bit of everything needed in a YA novel. It wasn't heavy on fantasy or romance, but had a mix of everything. The one thing that was mentioned over and over again was the way women were treated and how they were expected to conform to the norms set by the society. This did not just hold true for the Feudal Era setting of the book, but works for the current time period too. So everytime Mariko mentioned the way people expected her to behave because she was a girl, really made my blood boil because I've heard all of those things myself.

So 5/5 for the plot since it's about a woman trying to break free of the mold that society expects her to fit into.

Characters were good. I liked the main trio. The writing was good because I liked the way the author changed the POV whenever needed to show another part of the story to give us a bigger picture of all the scheming behind the plot.

I especially enjoyed how much this book made me want to watch anime again because of the Japanese setting and the terms used throughout the story.

But like, could it have ended on any more of a cliffhanger?!