When They Burned The Butterfly is a dark, lyrical, and deeply affecting adult debut from Wen-yi Lee. The novel weaves together fantasy, folklore, and the lingering wounds of colonialism. At once mythic and intimate, it draws its strength from both the unsettling atmosphere it creates and the raw emotion at its core, cementing Lee’s voice in both fantasy and historical fiction. Let’s talk about it.
In When They Burned The Butterfly, we are transported to 1972 Singapore. The city of immigrants is newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. However, the gangsters that inhabit the city are the last conduits of the gods of their ancestors and the dark alleyways where they fight are the last place where magic has not been assimilated and legislated away. We follow Adeline Siow, a loner schoolgirl. She does not have much more company than the flames she can summon at her fingertips. Through a series of devastating events, Adeline hunts down a girl with a butterfly tattoo, one that matches a butterfly seared into her own mother’s skin, and soon finds out she is not as alone as she thinks.
Throughout When They Burned The Butterfly, we have images of fire, an element that seems to haunt every page. Fire consumes, destroys, purifies. It is through this cycle that Lee explores memory, family, and survival. The titular butterfly embodies fragility and transformation, carrying with it some echoes of the past and the idea of potential rebirth. But, as Lee demonstrates with striking precision, transformation has its cost, and often leaves scars that won’t ever fade.
Image courtesy of publisher
At its core, When They Burned The Butterfly is a tale about inheritance: the weight of history passed down through generations, the cost of keeping secrets, the burdens we carry without consent and those stories that survive despite anyone’s effort to end or erase them. Lee grounds the novel in a richly imagined world that feels timeless. Readers are drawn into a community scarred by violence, where rituals and traditions offer both protection and the danger. Where the supernatural seeps into everyday life with quiet inevitability.
One of When They Burned The Butterfly‘s most compelling qualities is the lyrical intensity that feels very poetic. The sentences twist and shimmer, much like a flame. The atmosphere is dreamlike yet precise. Passages draw attention to the smallest of details like the flicker of a wing, the singe of ash and the weight of silence. This careful attention to rhythm and imagery ensures that even the harrowing moments maintain a haunting beauty, unsettling in their resonance long after the story has ended.
The characters in When They Burned The Butterfly are rendered with care and display richness. Some emerge briefly then vanish, others stay in their key roles throughout but each leaves an impression, like shadows burned onto a wall. The central figures, Adeline in particular, are marked by contradictions. They are fragile but resilient, haunted yet unwilling to surrender. Characters move through the story with a sense of urgency and inevitability, their fates tied to something ungovernable and larger than themselves. Adeline navigates between her inherited role and desire for autonomy, one I feel will resonate with so many readers. These contradictions are where the novel finds its humanity.
Lee grounds the supernatural elements of When They Burned The Butterfly in real-world histories of oppression, particularly the silenced and brutalized voices of colonized peoples. This ensures that the events that transpire don’t feel gratuitous. They emerge naturally from this fantasy world terrorized by gangs with supernatural powers combined with the weight of historical traumas. The burning of the butterfly is not just a personal tragedy, but a collective one. Perhaps a nod to the oppression and violence inflicted upon cultures that were deemed expendable. Lee’s novel very much feels like a work of remembrance as much as it is a story of survival and evolution.
Ultimately, When They Burned The Butterfly is not a book that offers easy catharsis or comfort. It is a novel of the ghosts that haunt us, of flames no one can extinguish and of stories that demand to be remembered, even if they hurt. Lee’s achievement in conveying this message lies in the ability to balance heaviness with moments of beauty, reminding us that even in the midst of devastation, there is a persistence of life, beating steadily as wings fluttering under a dark, burning sky.
When They Burned The Butterfly is a fierce, glamorous sapphic fantasy, great for fans of the Jade City series, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy. Thank you to Tor Publishing Group for sending me a review copy. Fantasy is, admittedly, not my go to but I am so glad I had the opportunity to read this. This book publishes October 21st, 2025 and you can pick it up wherever you buy your books!
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!