Reviews

Forbidden City by Vanessa Hua

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ewayne's review

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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garanciels's review

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adventurous emotional informative fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This book and its premise initially sucked me in and I had high hopes for it after reading a sample of it - so much so that I actually bought myself a copy because I didn't want to wait in the library queue to read it (which I almost never do).

However, the book dragged. The majority of the book is spent with Mei Xiang, our MC, sequestered in a musty bedroom with the Chairman... that setting took up way too much of the book. As you can guess given the huge age difference and power imbalance (Mei is a 16 year old peasant girl, Mao is in his 60s), it started giving Lolita vibes. Of course I expected this dynamic, but did not expect it to make up so much of the book. After all, the blurb also promised to cover the Cultural Revolution! I thought that would be a good chunk of the story but what we got was only a rather superficial glimpse of the events of the Cultural Revolution towards the end.

I will give Hua credit for her characterization of Mei... she did feel like a realistic teenager: inflated sense of self-importance, idealistic, petty, both adoring of the Chairman while also being repulsed by him because, well, he's old and gross. The foreshadowing in the book is pretty heavy handed and throughout the book, Mei's narration alludes to her eventual disillusionment. I kept waiting for that pay off in her character development because frankly, I did not like her. Let's just say that when I posted my ~70% progress update, I was still waiting.

Rating this a 2.5, rounded up to a 3. Although I didn't hate the book, it was rather disappointing.

sim1blanket's review

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dark hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I don't think this book knows what it's trying to convey. The plot really wanders for the majority of it and when the main character isn't immediately around Mao Zedong it basically loses all direction. I was overall pretty disappointed by the ending because of that. I feel like this could have had more of a point, it just didn't.

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salemnities's review

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adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

tara_pikachu's review

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3.0

Excellent premise…but the story faltered after a few chapters.

sirlantzalot's review

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dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Read this as part of a book club, it was dark but pretty good, it loses points for the first half/three quarters of the book having a bland protagonist whose internal thoughts only seem to be about how much she loves Mao Zedong & occasionally her family. Still would recommend to pretty much anybody, as long as they’re comfortable reading scenes containing SA and CSA.

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