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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Was a pretty good read, got through half of it in one sitting but then struggled with the pacing in the middle, but that pace picks up 3/4 in until the end.
I like the story itself. Gotta say though…not a huge fan of the massive age gap but it is a bit refreshing to see the male character lose his power instead of the FMC . Felt bad for Maia most of the book. This girl cannot catch a break fr 😭
Gonna read the sequel soon because now I need to know what happens next.
I like the story itself. Gotta say though…not a huge fan of the
Gonna read the sequel soon because now I need to know what happens next.
#NEWTsReadathon2019
Charms (A): Read a book that you think has a gorgeous cover
Disney Readathon 2019 - Team Tangled
The Snuggly Duckling Crew: Read a book with a dreamy cover
2.5 stars
This review contains spoiler. You have been warned.
I was hook because this was advertised as a Mulan retelling. I love Mulan, and of course, that's why I choose to pick this up. After reading it, I never felt so pissed of this false advertising. Here's the thing; it’s true that Mulan disguises herself as a boy to take her father's place in the war. But she saves the whole country. After reading this book, I don't think that Maia did anything to save the country except maybe pleasing Lady Sarnai. Just because of a character disguises herself as a boy that doesn't mean that this is a Mulan retelling.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's move into the review.
Maia takes her father's place to work as a tailor for the emperor because her father was too weak to travel to the palace, and her brother was hurt in the war and couldn't even sew. But of course, only males are allowed to be the great tailor for the emperor, and so she disguises herself as her brother, Keton, and went into the palace. Upon arrival at the palace, she was shocked to realize that she needs to compete with the other 12 tailors in a competition to see which one of them is fit to be the emperor's tailor.
Side note, I really like Maia’s brother, Keton.
Keton is such a great brother. He was supportive of letting Maia go even when he knows that this is super dangerous and might cause him to lose his sister.
The first part of the book was more onto the competition. I will say that I love this part the most because it is very interesting to see how Maia works around the challenges that were given by Lady Sarnai, the emperor's fiancée. However, I wasn’t really happy about the side character. They were not fully developed, and everyone was brushed off very quickly as the story progress — for example, the emperor, Lady Sarnai, the other tailors and the demon. I feel that the author has a lot of opportunities to dwell more into these characters instead of focusing too much on the main protagonist and her love interest. I was disappointed that we don’t get a lot of backstories or character development of Lady Sarnai. Because I feel that she either be a very significant or strong character, she might even be the one that is assisting Maia or maybe the antagonist in the story with whatever she is going through in the book. The emperor was brought up quite often in the book, but he doesn’t have any personality at all. All we know that he is second in line for the throne, but after his father and brother were dead in the war, he became the emperor.
Move on to the second part of the book. This part is where I started to lose interest in the story, and also focuses more on Maia’s quest in acquiring the materials in making the dress requested by Lady Sarnai. She was asked to make three dresses that made of the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. I’m not going to lie, but I was pretty excited about her quest because damn this is a very hard one. But then the romance came in. Now, I’m not someone who’s super against romance in fantasy book, but the romance of Maia and Edan, the emperor’s enchanter felt forced and unrealistic. Now the enchanter is 500+ years old and to tell me that he never once fall in love with someone until he saw Maia is just bullshit to me. I admit that in the beginning, I do like the chemistry between them, but man these two need to slow down a bit. They were on a journey together and all of a sudden they can’t stop touching each other, talking about the future together, proposing to each other and even talking about making babies and how many babies they want. There isn’t much time left to acquire all those materials, but they kept kissing and making out. WOAH! I guess you guys need to sort out your priority. It is still a mystery to me on how are they still able to maintain their posture and not fall while they are riding their horses or camels. I find it quite hard to believe that Maia can sew while riding, but I still accept for what it is. But kissing while riding is just too much, come on!
Both of them start to open up to each other during their journey, and we got some backstories of Edan and why is he always by the emperor’s side. So apparently, Edan has magic in him hence he was the Enchanter. But the main reason why he was always beside the emperor is that he was bound to the emperor and the emperor needed his magic to maintain his health.
Don't get me to start on the magic, it was not really explained well in the plot. Whenever Edan said that he needed to preserve some of his magic while they were on the quest but then later use it. It was really confusing because I do not know the extent of his magic and what is he able to do. He claims that not all Enchanter know how to heal, but he is one of a kind that can do so. So is the author trying to tell me that he is very powerful? Besides, this might only be me, but I think the magical scissor is kind of silly. I can’t help but imagine how does one do embroidery with a scissors. Why not a needle, a thread or something else. With that being said, I do get what the author is trying to do here. I will not talk about the demon or ghost here, because I just don't get the magic system here.
The last part of the book is after acquiring the materials and the dressmaking. At this point, Maia completed the three dresses, and there was a tale that said that whoever completed the dresses the God Amana will granted a wish to that person. Out from all the wishes that she could wish for, of course, she chooses to free her one true love, Edan, from the emperor. I scream at this part. She can wish for her father’s happiness, she can wish for her brother’s health, she can wish for the peace of her country, there were so many things she could wish for, and yet she decided to free Edan. WOW!
Like I mentioned earlier, the emperor relies on Edan’s magic, and now he is in great risk. I thought the whole purpose of the marriage of the emperor and Lady Sarnai is to maintain the peace of both countries. So imagine if the emperor gets weak and die, the Shanshen will be in advantage and how is that keeping the people safe? And you tell me that this is a Mulan retelling? Mulan saves her country, not making it worse.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on this book. By all means, I don’t personally think this is a bad book. I do enjoy some parts of it. However, if you are someone who reads a lot of YA fantasy you might not enjoy this much. You can see the patterns of most YA fantasy here. I wasn't too harsh on this book because there is a sequel coming out next year and hopefully, it gets better and more development of Lady Sarnai, the emperor and more explanation on the magic system.
Quotes that I like:
"My whole life, I'd been told what I couldn't do because I was a girl. Well, this was my chance to find out. The only thing I could do was take it."
"I'm tired of being told I'm not worthy."
Charms (A): Read a book that you think has a gorgeous cover
Disney Readathon 2019 - Team Tangled
The Snuggly Duckling Crew: Read a book with a dreamy cover
2.5 stars
This review contains spoiler. You have been warned.
"I couldn't sing or recite poetry. I couldn't dance. I didn't have grace, or charm or wiles. But I could sew. Heavens, I could sew."
I was hook because this was advertised as a Mulan retelling. I love Mulan, and of course, that's why I choose to pick this up. After reading it, I never felt so pissed of this false advertising. Here's the thing; it’s true that Mulan disguises herself as a boy to take her father's place in the war. But she saves the whole country. After reading this book, I don't think that Maia did anything to save the country except maybe pleasing Lady Sarnai. Just because of a character disguises herself as a boy that doesn't mean that this is a Mulan retelling.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's move into the review.
Maia takes her father's place to work as a tailor for the emperor because her father was too weak to travel to the palace, and her brother was hurt in the war and couldn't even sew. But of course, only males are allowed to be the great tailor for the emperor, and so she disguises herself as her brother, Keton, and went into the palace. Upon arrival at the palace, she was shocked to realize that she needs to compete with the other 12 tailors in a competition to see which one of them is fit to be the emperor's tailor.
Side note, I really like Maia’s brother, Keton.
Keton sighed. "I can't believe I'm telling you this, but be careful."
"While Baba slept, Keton drilled me on how to act like a boy. How to laugh deeply from my stomach, how to grunt with satisfaction after a good meal, how to grimace after drinking a strong cup of wine. He taught me not to apologize for burping, not to hide when I was passing wind, and to spit whenever someone dared insult my honor."
Keton is such a great brother. He was supportive of letting Maia go even when he knows that this is super dangerous and might cause him to lose his sister.
The first part of the book was more onto the competition. I will say that I love this part the most because it is very interesting to see how Maia works around the challenges that were given by Lady Sarnai, the emperor's fiancée. However, I wasn’t really happy about the side character. They were not fully developed, and everyone was brushed off very quickly as the story progress — for example, the emperor, Lady Sarnai, the other tailors and the demon. I feel that the author has a lot of opportunities to dwell more into these characters instead of focusing too much on the main protagonist and her love interest. I was disappointed that we don’t get a lot of backstories or character development of Lady Sarnai. Because I feel that she either be a very significant or strong character, she might even be the one that is assisting Maia or maybe the antagonist in the story with whatever she is going through in the book. The emperor was brought up quite often in the book, but he doesn’t have any personality at all. All we know that he is second in line for the throne, but after his father and brother were dead in the war, he became the emperor.
Move on to the second part of the book. This part is where I started to lose interest in the story, and also focuses more on Maia’s quest in acquiring the materials in making the dress requested by Lady Sarnai. She was asked to make three dresses that made of the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. I’m not going to lie, but I was pretty excited about her quest because damn this is a very hard one. But then the romance came in. Now, I’m not someone who’s super against romance in fantasy book, but the romance of Maia and Edan, the emperor’s enchanter felt forced and unrealistic. Now the enchanter is 500+ years old and to tell me that he never once fall in love with someone until he saw Maia is just bullshit to me. I admit that in the beginning, I do like the chemistry between them, but man these two need to slow down a bit. They were on a journey together and all of a sudden they can’t stop touching each other, talking about the future together, proposing to each other and even talking about making babies and how many babies they want. There isn’t much time left to acquire all those materials, but they kept kissing and making out. WOAH! I guess you guys need to sort out your priority. It is still a mystery to me on how are they still able to maintain their posture and not fall while they are riding their horses or camels. I find it quite hard to believe that Maia can sew while riding, but I still accept for what it is. But kissing while riding is just too much, come on!
Both of them start to open up to each other during their journey, and we got some backstories of Edan and why is he always by the emperor’s side. So apparently, Edan has magic in him hence he was the Enchanter. But the main reason why he was always beside the emperor is that he was bound to the emperor and the emperor needed his magic to maintain his health.
Don't get me to start on the magic, it was not really explained well in the plot. Whenever Edan said that he needed to preserve some of his magic while they were on the quest but then later use it. It was really confusing because I do not know the extent of his magic and what is he able to do. He claims that not all Enchanter know how to heal, but he is one of a kind that can do so. So is the author trying to tell me that he is very powerful? Besides, this might only be me, but I think the magical scissor is kind of silly. I can’t help but imagine how does one do embroidery with a scissors. Why not a needle, a thread or something else. With that being said, I do get what the author is trying to do here. I will not talk about the demon or ghost here, because I just don't get the magic system here.
The last part of the book is after acquiring the materials and the dressmaking. At this point, Maia completed the three dresses, and there was a tale that said that whoever completed the dresses the God Amana will granted a wish to that person. Out from all the wishes that she could wish for, of course, she chooses to free her one true love, Edan, from the emperor. I scream at this part. She can wish for her father’s happiness, she can wish for her brother’s health, she can wish for the peace of her country, there were so many things she could wish for, and yet she decided to free Edan. WOW!
Like I mentioned earlier, the emperor relies on Edan’s magic, and now he is in great risk. I thought the whole purpose of the marriage of the emperor and Lady Sarnai is to maintain the peace of both countries. So imagine if the emperor gets weak and die, the Shanshen will be in advantage and how is that keeping the people safe? And you tell me that this is a Mulan retelling? Mulan saves her country, not making it worse.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on this book. By all means, I don’t personally think this is a bad book. I do enjoy some parts of it. However, if you are someone who reads a lot of YA fantasy you might not enjoy this much. You can see the patterns of most YA fantasy here. I wasn't too harsh on this book because there is a sequel coming out next year and hopefully, it gets better and more development of Lady Sarnai, the emperor and more explanation on the magic system.
Quotes that I like:
"My whole life, I'd been told what I couldn't do because I was a girl. Well, this was my chance to find out. The only thing I could do was take it."
"I'm tired of being told I'm not worthy."
adventurous
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
All opinions are entirely my own. I am in no way affiliated with the author or publisher. Remember to support your local indie bookstore and library!
⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨ ᰔ ୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹
"I knew then that we were like two pieces of cloth, sewn together for life. Our stitches couldn't be undone."
- Discovery: Author
- Reading Format: Physical
- Read Time: 4 Hours
Maia Tamarin decided dressing as a boy and traveling to the Summer Palace is worth the risk. She knows she could lose her life if she is discovered, she needs to save her family from ruin and achieve her own dream of becoming tailor to the emperor. Things get complicated when she is thrown into a tailoring showdown with only one winner. As more tailors become eliminated the challenges get more impossible until Maia is given one final impossible task. She must make three magic gowns. One with the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. Accompanied by the court enchanter with his own secrets, will Maia ever be recognised as master tailor.
Such a lovely show burn relationship but I'm hoping they expand on magic system in the second book.
Reserving the sequel book as we speak!
3.5/5⭐️ i cannot tell you how much i loved the first part of this book. it was so amazing. but after that, the adventure was pretty average, and the romance…excuse me while i vomit. and can we pLeAsE get rid of the whole 1000 year old love interest trope. its kind of creepy.
edit (may 2022)
this has been bothering me. cause i don’t feel like 4 stars expresses how i feel about this book. i just…the romance was so so so so so so so soooooooo bad. and the way the entire book did a full 180 from competition with stakes to dragged out quest with weird romance was just not my thing. (ok to be completely transparent here, i kinda maybe sorta most definitely skim read the last two thirds of this book)
ok now i feel a lot better
3/5 ⭐️
edit (may 2022)
this has been bothering me. cause i don’t feel like 4 stars expresses how i feel about this book. i just…the romance was so so so so so so so soooooooo bad. and the way the entire book did a full 180 from competition with stakes to dragged out quest with weird romance was just not my thing. (ok to be completely transparent here, i kinda maybe sorta most definitely skim read the last two thirds of this book)
ok now i feel a lot better
3/5 ⭐️
Magical like a fairy tale. I really enjoyed this one!
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
*2.75 stars*
i ... was really not happy being unsatisfied with this book. at first, it started off interesting enough, with the family aspect being shown in an endearing way, Finlei, Sendo, and Keton being the 3 brothers i *wished* I've had in life. the introduction of the imperial palace, and then people inside it aka the emperor, Lady Sarnai , all of the competitor tailors, and so on.
what really bummed me out of my experience reading this book, was there was no suspense. tension? don't know her. I felt that the plot was also super rushed, and being a reader with preference to very fast paced books, I thought this novel was unnecessarily fast paced, if that's a thing. It almost felt like reading a Mulan x Twilight fanfiction (to be honest), except Maia is actually 100 times better than Bella, and Edan was at least more vocal and had emotion, unlike Edward, and also, no Jacob.
the insta-love. they didn't even bother to make them stay as a couple no more than 2 pages, after saying I love yous and doing the devil's tango, TWICE, in the outside, before suddenly Edan's like, "I love you, but I want you to be free and forget about me". in Part 1, I can't help myself but see Maia and Edan to be no more than platonic. I see very limited chemistry, communication, not even a twinge of "oh, they are so going to end up together" but my mind knows from the prologue that he's the "boy that I love" that Maia mentioned in the beginning of the book. I am picky, I think, when it comes to how insta-love happen in books. Everything comes back to how it's delivered, in terms of emotion and dialogue. And this book did a very minimal amount of executing it.
I am thrilled to find out, if Lady Sarnai is going to be a part of the characters more shown in the sequel. I feel that i need to see her in action, so that I won't think of her whole arc of being "detained and kept in a cage" scenario was just BS and wasn't a signal that she's getting her own arc/story being told.
so many more that I wanted to say, sorry to say that I didn't really like this book. I like and was intrigue with the world-building of this universe, it was short but had explained so many things at once, too bad the pacing was off to me (way too many time skips between scenes, it felt like wattpad,), but i hope this story will wrap up nicely in the sequel (both of the covers for these books are STUNNING. just wanted to say that).
i ... was really not happy being unsatisfied with this book. at first, it started off interesting enough, with the family aspect being shown in an endearing way, Finlei, Sendo, and Keton being the 3 brothers i *wished* I've had in life. the introduction of the imperial palace, and then people inside it aka the emperor, Lady Sarnai , all of the competitor tailors, and so on.
what really bummed me out of my experience reading this book, was there was no suspense. tension? don't know her. I felt that the plot was also super rushed, and being a reader with preference to very fast paced books, I thought this novel was unnecessarily fast paced, if that's a thing. It almost felt like reading a Mulan x Twilight fanfiction (to be honest), except Maia is actually 100 times better than Bella, and Edan was at least more vocal and had emotion, unlike Edward, and also, no Jacob.
the insta-love. they didn't even bother to make them stay as a couple no more than 2 pages, after saying I love yous and doing the devil's tango, TWICE, in the outside, before suddenly Edan's like, "I love you, but I want you to be free and forget about me". in Part 1, I can't help myself but see Maia and Edan to be no more than platonic. I see very limited chemistry, communication, not even a twinge of "oh, they are so going to end up together" but my mind knows from the prologue that he's the "boy that I love" that Maia mentioned in the beginning of the book. I am picky, I think, when it comes to how insta-love happen in books. Everything comes back to how it's delivered, in terms of emotion and dialogue. And this book did a very minimal amount of executing it.
I am thrilled to find out, if Lady Sarnai is going to be a part of the characters more shown in the sequel. I feel that i need to see her in action, so that I won't think of her whole arc of being "detained and kept in a cage" scenario was just BS and wasn't a signal that she's getting her own arc/story being told.
so many more that I wanted to say, sorry to say that I didn't really like this book. I like and was intrigue with the world-building of this universe, it was short but had explained so many things at once, too bad the pacing was off to me (way too many time skips between scenes, it felt like wattpad,
Spoiler
e.g. one scene happened and I was so excited on how it will continue, but then it cuts to like "the next day" like, what?
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No