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Streets of Flame #3
Heatstroke Heartbeat
Zaya Shearwater has found a dragon, a partner, and a cause.
Her dragon is Bandit’s Breath, stolen from her former employers in a moment of desperation, now her inseparable ally. Her partner in racing Bandit is her daughter, Vanako, as fierce and proud as ever but now committed to the family. And her cause is the legalization of yliaster, the substance that will protect her son — and tens of thousands of others like him, who are being slowly hunted by voracious entities that can’t be killed.
But the fight isn’t going well. Captains of industry want to see yliaster regulated for their own profit; everyday people are afraid of some of the things it can do. The police are dead set against it, and even Zaya’s political allies are inconstant. And as she’s throwing all her cash and time at a better world for the hunted tomorrow, every today could be her son’s last.
That’s where Zaya begins. But, as the election draws near, where will she go?
Her dragon is Bandit’s Breath, stolen from her former employers in a moment of desperation, now her inseparable ally. Her partner in racing Bandit is her daughter, Vanako, as fierce and proud as ever but now committed to the family. And her cause is the legalization of yliaster, the substance that will protect her son — and tens of thousands of others like him, who are being slowly hunted by voracious entities that can’t be killed.
But the fight isn’t going well. Captains of industry want to see yliaster regulated for their own profit; everyday people are afraid of some of the things it can do. The police are dead set against it, and even Zaya’s political allies are inconstant. And as she’s throwing all her cash and time at a better world for the hunted tomorrow, every today could be her son’s last.
That’s where Zaya begins. But, as the election draws near, where will she go?
- GenresFantasy
541 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 14, 2024
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
About the author
Matt Weber
11 books16 followersFor a free copy of my post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy,
The Dandelion Knight
, subscribe to my mailing list! Or, for a ton of free-to-read short fiction, check me out on Wattpad.
My epic wuxia fantasy, The Eighth King , is now available on Kindle! I've published short fiction in Nature , Cosmos, and The Nassau Literary Review; I've been anthologized in Futures from Nature and twice won Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest.
I’m a data scientist by trade, a neuroscientist by training, a father and husband by love and grit and happenstance, a coffee junkie by necessity. I have three small children who are better than all of you stacked on top of one another.
My epic wuxia fantasy, The Eighth King , is now available on Kindle! I've published short fiction in Nature , Cosmos, and The Nassau Literary Review; I've been anthologized in Futures from Nature and twice won Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest.
I’m a data scientist by trade, a neuroscientist by training, a father and husband by love and grit and happenstance, a coffee junkie by necessity. I have three small children who are better than all of you stacked on top of one another.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 20, 2024
HOW LITERALLY DARE YOU
I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS
BRB GOING TO GO SCREAM INTO A PILLOW
rtc, if i can ever stop SHRIEKING
REVIEW
I AM NOT FREAKING OKAY.
*piteous wailing*
Heatstroke Heartbeat is fairly different from the previous book, Windburn Whiplash, in that this one, alas, has significantly less dragon-racing in it. I can imagine some readers being disappointed.
I WAS NOT. And not because I don’t love the dragon-racing – I do!!! Extremely much!!! But I am here for a lot more than the dragon-racing, at this point: I’m here for Zaya and her incredible family, for Jaliki and the treatment he needs to survive his ker, for the amazing worldbuilding and the massively addictive prose. I am in love with the city of Yemareir, with its colour-coded districts and its dragon broodspires, and I am happy to read any story set in it – even if some, perhaps, might have less dragon-racing.
I AM GOOD WITH THAT!
And after Zaya discovered what yliaster is and what it can do at the end of the previous book, it’s not at all strange that she immediately dedicates her every waking moment to getting it legalised so it can save, not just her son Jaliki, but the tens of thousands of other people with kers. Heatstroke Heartbeat, then, is a book about Yemareir’s politics, about campaigning to get supporters of legalisation elected and convincing more candidates to be those supporters, using Zaya’s fame/notoriety to get eyes and ears on the issue.
Not one single second of it is boring. The stakes are too damned high for it to be dull; and besides the politics meaning we’re digging even further into the setting (which as previously mentioned I adore utterly and will read anything at all about) this is such a character-rich book. Maybe even more so than Windburn Whiplash was. House Shearwater is as vividly real as ever, and the growing secondary and tertiary casts leap off the page as well, every last one of them. Weber just has a gift for crafting characters you forget are fictional – characters you can’t not care about. Even if you think community campaigning sounds like a yawnfest, I don’t know how anyone could fail to be invested, when the force of how much Zaya cares emanates from the pages like light from the sun. How are you supposed to avoid getting swept up in that? Especially since we’re walking in after having read the previous books; walking in already loving this cast.
It makes me think that even readers who are here for the dragon-racing will find themselves turning pages as fast as they can.
And then frantically trying to slow down, because damn it the ending is coming too fast I DON’T WANT THIS TO END!
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS
BRB GOING TO GO SCREAM INTO A PILLOW
rtc, if i can ever stop SHRIEKING
REVIEW
I AM NOT FREAKING OKAY.
*piteous wailing*
Heatstroke Heartbeat is fairly different from the previous book, Windburn Whiplash, in that this one, alas, has significantly less dragon-racing in it. I can imagine some readers being disappointed.
I WAS NOT. And not because I don’t love the dragon-racing – I do!!! Extremely much!!! But I am here for a lot more than the dragon-racing, at this point: I’m here for Zaya and her incredible family, for Jaliki and the treatment he needs to survive his ker, for the amazing worldbuilding and the massively addictive prose. I am in love with the city of Yemareir, with its colour-coded districts and its dragon broodspires, and I am happy to read any story set in it – even if some, perhaps, might have less dragon-racing.
I AM GOOD WITH THAT!
And after Zaya discovered what yliaster is and what it can do at the end of the previous book, it’s not at all strange that she immediately dedicates her every waking moment to getting it legalised so it can save, not just her son Jaliki, but the tens of thousands of other people with kers. Heatstroke Heartbeat, then, is a book about Yemareir’s politics, about campaigning to get supporters of legalisation elected and convincing more candidates to be those supporters, using Zaya’s fame/notoriety to get eyes and ears on the issue.
Not one single second of it is boring. The stakes are too damned high for it to be dull; and besides the politics meaning we’re digging even further into the setting (which as previously mentioned I adore utterly and will read anything at all about) this is such a character-rich book. Maybe even more so than Windburn Whiplash was. House Shearwater is as vividly real as ever, and the growing secondary and tertiary casts leap off the page as well, every last one of them. Weber just has a gift for crafting characters you forget are fictional – characters you can’t not care about. Even if you think community campaigning sounds like a yawnfest, I don’t know how anyone could fail to be invested, when the force of how much Zaya cares emanates from the pages like light from the sun. How are you supposed to avoid getting swept up in that? Especially since we’re walking in after having read the previous books; walking in already loving this cast.
It makes me think that even readers who are here for the dragon-racing will find themselves turning pages as fast as they can.
And then frantically trying to slow down, because damn it the ending is coming too fast I DON’T WANT THIS TO END!
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
April 2, 2025
4.5 stars
Notes: the author is a friend of mine. This review also appears on Amazon. I initially *edit: started reading this in hard copy (was given it as a gift, by someone other than the author),* but since I’m visually impaired and the font is a bit small (though it was a bit easier to read than the print in the first book in the series, which I also got in hard copy) I finished reading on Kindle.
As in the two previous volumes in the series, the writing, character development, and worldbuilding are all first rate here. I especially appreciated seeing how the younger characters have grown and developed since the previous book. The increased political intrigue was a great way to do both small and larger-scale worldbuilding and introduce more characters beyond the central family. Electoral politics is something I find actively unpleasant in real life, so it’s a real testament to the strength of Weber’s crafting of characters and alliances and fleshing out of the stakes that I found myself becoming very invested in fictional politics. The introduction of new magic elements was very nicely done, both for the information itself and for how effectively it raised the stakes for the characters.
My few issues with the book were stylistic or organizational. First, while I think the nonlinear narrative ultimately worked well for the story. Weber was telling, i found it to be a bit clumsily executed (I had to flip back to the beginnings of prior chapters to check when something I’d read about earlier had happened on more than a couple of occasions), so I would’ve organized sections or signposted times a bit differently. I also found myself wanting a character list and name pronunciation guide somewhere, as the unusual spellings and multiple characters with similar names sometimes made it hard to keep everyone straight. Overall these were minor annoyances in an otherwise excellent book. I’m definitely excited for more of the series.
Notes: the author is a friend of mine. This review also appears on Amazon. I initially *edit: started reading this in hard copy (was given it as a gift, by someone other than the author),* but since I’m visually impaired and the font is a bit small (though it was a bit easier to read than the print in the first book in the series, which I also got in hard copy) I finished reading on Kindle.
As in the two previous volumes in the series, the writing, character development, and worldbuilding are all first rate here. I especially appreciated seeing how the younger characters have grown and developed since the previous book. The increased political intrigue was a great way to do both small and larger-scale worldbuilding and introduce more characters beyond the central family. Electoral politics is something I find actively unpleasant in real life, so it’s a real testament to the strength of Weber’s crafting of characters and alliances and fleshing out of the stakes that I found myself becoming very invested in fictional politics. The introduction of new magic elements was very nicely done, both for the information itself and for how effectively it raised the stakes for the characters.
My few issues with the book were stylistic or organizational. First, while I think the nonlinear narrative ultimately worked well for the story. Weber was telling, i found it to be a bit clumsily executed (I had to flip back to the beginnings of prior chapters to check when something I’d read about earlier had happened on more than a couple of occasions), so I would’ve organized sections or signposted times a bit differently. I also found myself wanting a character list and name pronunciation guide somewhere, as the unusual spellings and multiple characters with similar names sometimes made it hard to keep everyone straight. Overall these were minor annoyances in an otherwise excellent book. I’m definitely excited for more of the series.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews