Idolfire by Grace Curtis Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, historical fantasy
Pages: 480
Published by DAW on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Frontier and Floating Hotel
On one side of the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is desperate for a chance. Her family have written her off as a mistake, but she's determined to prove every last one of them wrong.
On the other, Kirby of Wall's End is searching for redemption. An ancient curse tore her life apart, but to fix it, she'll have to leave everything behind.
Fate sets them both on the path to Nivela, a city once poised to conquer the world with the power of a thousand stolen gods. Now the gates are closed and the old magic slumbers. Dead — or waiting for a spark to light it anew…
A character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slowburn romance, Idolfire delves into the vastness of history and the terrifying power of organized faith.
My Review:
In the world left behind centuries after the fall of a world-spanning empire, history has fallen into myth and legend on its far-flung fringes. Kirby of Wall’s End and Aleya Ana-Ulai might as well be from entirely separate worlds – because they are.
When the Empire of Nivela fell, or died, or imploded, or all of the above, the places that either resisted them or were conquered by them – or both – were left to struggle on without all the things and people the Empire stole at the height of their reach.
Including, in the case of Wall’s End, their god. And in the case of the Kingdom of Ash, one of their most important relics. Wall’s End NEEDS their god back, because their land is dying without the renewing power of Iona, the Goddess of Spring. And the people are dying with it, withering generation after generation.
Ash just wants their relic back, as they believe that no one should have the power of Idolfire, the power to consume the accumulated worship vested in a deity, except for their own royal house.
Then again, Wall’s End is the last remnant of a kingdom that Nivela thoroughly conquered, while Ash successfully resisted the might of the Nivelan Empire until that Empire fell. Of its own weight – or its own ‘Worldlord’s’ hubris.
Or both.
The story of Idolfire is a quest. It’s two quests. Kirby sets out for the ruins of fabled Nivela to get her village’s god back. Not because she’s a hero – but because she feels guilty that what was left of the god listened when she cursed her brother and not only killed him but blocked the water for the entire village.
Aleya, the reviled, disregarded, bastard princess of Ash, is sent by her Aunt the Queen on an actual, sanctioned quest to the ruins of Nivela to retrieve the other half of their sacred relic. Aleya knows she’s not expected to succeed, that she’s expected to either give up or die trying. But if she does succeed, she’ll be able to follow her Aunt as Queen, and make the reforms needed to save her city from dying from the weight of its own corruption and hubris – much like Nivela did.
The story is their journey, separately and together, over the whole of what was once the great Nivelan Empire. Along the way, they face death and danger and corruption and old gods and new kingdoms and desperate people and deranged leaders. They turn an enemy into a fast friend.
They find redemption for the sins they left behind. And they fall in love, even as they know that, as much as failure will doom them, success can only be bittersweet.
Escape Rating B: If you’re expecting something like the author’s previous work, Floating Hotel, you might want to check out some reviews (obv. Including this one) before continuing. Because Idolfire is not at all like Floating Hotel, and not just because that was SF and this is definitely fantasy.
Because I really did enjoy Idolfire, I’m trying to set expectations a bit better than either a quick reference to Floating Hotel or the bolded opening line of the book’s blurb. OTOH, that description, “Idolfire is an epic sapphic fantasy inspired by the fall of Rome from the author of the Frontier and Floating Hotel.” is 100 percent true.
But the emphasis isn’t quite in the same places in the blurb as they are in the book – leading back around to potentially disappointed expectations.
The emphasis in the story is on the epic fantasy parts of the description. It’s a quest story. Actually, it’s two quest stories combined with two heroines’ journeys that begin at literally opposite ends of the world as they know it. Those two heroines do eventually meet and there is a slowburn sapphic romance but the romance isn’t the driving force in the story.
Their separate quests drive the story, quests that begin as far apart as possible – as Kirby and Aleya themselves do – but have the same center point in more ways than one.
Which is where that reference to the fall of Rome comes in. The fall, the reasons for that fall, and what the world looks like at the fringes of what was once the empire so long after that fall that history has fallen into myth and legend.
The historical underpinnings of this story may remind readers of the way that Guy Gavriel Kay works history into fantasy. Because yes, Nivela is Rome – more or less – but it is also biblical Nineveh. Ash is Assyria and Wall’s End is post-Roman-occupation Britain. But their enemy-turned-companion Nylo is from someplace like the ancient Greek city-states, and these places did not all exist at the same time.
The romance between Kirby and Aleya is VERY slow burn. They do come to love each other, but it takes them a lot of time – and miles, definitely miles! – to get there. They are both aware that the BEST ending they can possibly get is that they each return to their opposite ends of the world. It’s realistic but it’s ultimately sad. The reader wants them to have an HEA and they both want it and KNOW they can’t have it.
As much as I loved their journey and enjoyed their long and winding tour of this quasi-ancient, slightly magical, somewhat historical world, theirs is not the only perspective on their quests. Someone is moving events behind the scenes, looking on from above – or underneath – or both, watching as history unfolds. And it has shades of the secret at the heart of the city of Kithamar in Daniel Abraham’s Age of Ash series. It’s something I’m not sure worked in either epic, but it’s left me thinking I’ll go back to Age of Ash and see.
Nevertheless, that extra perspective is one that kinda works and kinda doesn’t and your reading mileage may definitely vary. My enjoyment of and fascination with Aleya’s and Kirby’s world, their epic journey through it and their relationship within it was MORE than enough to carry me through this fascinating tale.
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