Sneak Peek for When They Burned the Butterfly
43 pages · Released Aug 12, 2025 · Tor Books
Content report card
Sneak Peek for When They Burned the Butterfly parent’s guide: what’s inside
Language
Sexual content
Substance use
What it offers
A note for parents
This is a sneak peek (43 pages) of an adult fantasy debut set in 1970s Singapore, so the full book's content cannot be fully assessed. The excerpt introduces gang violence, a mother's death by fire, and supernatural themes involving a fire goddess and revenge-focused girl gang members. While the premise includes found-family and LGBTQ+ undertones (Adeline's connection with Tian), the violence and mature themes suggest this is marketed for adult readers, not teens. The limited sample makes full confidence difficult, but the comparisons to R.F. Kuang's Poppy War (known for graphic content) and the description of "vengeance" and bodies in red light districts indicate dark, adult content.
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From the publisher
In this fierce, glamorous adult fantasy debut, Silvia Moreno-Garcia meets Fonda Lee, with the feverish intensity of R.F. Kuang's Poppy War trilogy. Download a FREE sneak peek today! Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are th... In this fierce, glamorous adult fantasy debut, Silvia Moreno-Garcia meets Fonda Lee, with the feverish intensity of R.F. Kuang's Poppy War trilogy. Download a FREE sneak peek today! Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are the last conduits of their ancestors' migrant gods, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place magic has not been assimilated and legislated away. Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight—a girl with a butterfly tattoo—she discovers she’s far from alone. Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian. But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Shelved under
- Fiction
- Sneak Peek
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ISBN 9781250446503 · Tor Books