Booksprout Review • Fantasy • Mythology Reimagined • Celestial Chaos
LILITH’S FIRSTBORN
★★★★☆
Lilith’s immortal daughter. God as “Grandpop.” Fallen angels, fairies, demons, magical science, family secrets, the Second Coming and one water dragon I would protect with my life.
Lilith’s Firstborn was absolutely not the mythology-heavy fantasy I expected, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Talli is Lilith’s immortal daughter: powerful, spoiled, brilliant, chaotic, and very sure she is usually the smartest person in the room.
Add God as “Grandpop,” a water dragon named Slippy, fallen angels, fairies, demons, magical science, family secrets and the Second Coming, and you get one very unusual fantasy.
What I enjoyed most was how original the world-building felt.
Rachel Teo takes the familiar mythology surrounding Lilith, Heaven, Hell, angels and the Forbidden Fruit and completely rebuilds it into something playful, strange and surprisingly thoughtful.
Underneath all the humour and celestial chaos, the story explores free will, good and evil, responsibility, family, and whether someone should be judged for what they were born as before they are ever given the chance to choose who they want to become.
The book is funny, but the questions underneath the jokes are not small ones.
At times, a LOT is happening, and the humour rarely takes a break, so I occasionally wished some emotional scenes had been allowed to breathe a little more.
Talli is also extremely powerful, although her lack of experience and emotional maturity helps balance that.
Still, this was funny, imaginative and completely different from anything I expected.
And yes, I would protect Slippy at all costs.
For me, 4 stars.
Familiar mythology, rebuilt into something wonderfully weird.
The strongest part of Lilith’s Firstborn is its refusal to behave like the mythology-heavy fantasy I thought I was opening.
Rachel Teo takes enormous mythological ideas and lets them become funny, scientific, domestic, celestial and emotionally complicated all at once.
I only wanted a little more breathing room when the story moved into its more emotional moments. Otherwise, the originality carried me happily through the chaos.
The Reinvention
Lilith, Heaven, Hell, angels and the Forbidden Fruit are recognisable foundations, but the world built around them feels completely its own.
Free Will
The story keeps asking whether birth, ancestry or expectation should decide who someone is before they ever make a choice.
Breathing Room
Because the humour and action rarely stop, I sometimes wanted the emotional scenes to be given a little more silence.
Protect Slippy
There are many complicated celestial beings in this book. My position remains extremely simple: nobody touches the water dragon.
Book & review details
Mythology turned sideways, Lilith stories, angels and demons, irreverent celestial humour, magical science, powerful chaotic heroines, family secrets, big questions about free will and fantasy that is unafraid to be strange.
More reviews from Lupe Farkas
I review ARCs and independently discovered books across fantasy, psychological fiction, literary fiction, romance, memoir and the wonderfully difficult-to-classify books that make the reading pile more interesting.
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Reviews on LupeFarkas.com are independent. I do not promise positive ratings, but I do promise that if I review a book, I will try to understand what it is doing, who it may be right for and where my own reading taste fits into that.
What would you call God if he were your grandfather?
And, more importantly, are we all agreed that Slippy receives permanent protection?