Dear Reader,
I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I was a little girl, and it still doesn’t feel real that you are holding my first fantasy novel in your hands.
Dawn of the Firebird follows a vengeful, nomadic daughter of a fallen emperor who infiltrates the magical military academy of a rival empire. It’s a place where humans and jinn train side by side, Heavenly magick is weaponised, and power always demands a price.
At its heart, though, this is a story about a young woman burning with rage after watching her people slaughtered — one who learns that the sharpest weapon isn’t always a sword, but strategy, patience, and the will to outthink an empire.
That is the reality of war.
The seed of this story was planted years ago, when I first read Ender’s Game, my introduction to the military academy genre, and the idea that war stories could interrogate morality, leadership, and the cost of victory rather than glorify it. From there, the idea turned into a book that asks difficult questions: Who gets labeled a monster? How does propaganda dehumanise people into targets? And what does resistance look like in all of its ugliest forms?
Though this book has deep themes, I interjected lighter moments, fun fantasy elements because I am a lifelong epic SFF fan. My inspirations from Sanderson are written directly into this world. My magic system was inspired in part by my dagger collection, from the idea that weapons carry history, intention, and consequences. Anime like Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist shaped my approach to powers, especially the concept of costs and chakra-like points called bonds in the book. My own traditional martial arts training influenced how combat works on the page: movement, discipline, adrenaline, and the reality that every fight is written to be visualised.
I also wanted to write the fantasy I’d never been able to find growing up. Too often, mythologies like jinn appear in fantasy stripped of their spiritual and philosophical roots, written through Western European, Biblically-derived frameworks. I wanted to approach this lore through a different lens — one informed by Islamicate traditions of Biblical stories, to bring a fresh setting to the fantasy genre.
This was not an easy book to write. My characters are violent — deliberately so. Rather than sanitising that violence, I wanted to confront it, to examine who is allowed to wield power and who is condemned for it.
Fantasy, to me, is not escapism alone. It’s a veil that lets us stare directly at the ugliest questions about power, war, and human nature, without looking away.
With that, welcome to the dark world of Dawn of the Firebird.
With love,
Sarah Mughal Rana
