Reviews

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

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jeanbigurra's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-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

4.25

siria's review against another edition

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2.75

You know that analogy that's sometimes used to explain gravity and space-time and such: dropping a ball onto a rubber sheet to see how it distorts things? I thought of it while reading Siren Queen.

Nghi Vo's novel takes place in a fantastical version of 1930s Hollywood, where the studio system is as abusive and controlling as it actually was historically, but ghosts walk, actors aspire to literally become stars, and studio bosses double as inhuman leaders of the Wild Hunt. It's a world different enough from our own that you'd expect the presence of all that magic to be like the ball on a rubber sheet, changing things, making it different from "our" world in a way that's more than aesthetic, but I didn't find that here. I don't need to know all the ins and outs of how the magic system works in Siren Queen, but I needed to feel like it had heft to it—like it shaped the world around it.

That, coupled with an emotionally flat/detached POV character and no real narrative direction, meant that I struggled to get invested at all in the book. I liked some of the visuals, I respect Vo's commitment to queer narratives, but I felt like she was trying so hard to convey theme (Queer Monstrosity, capitalisation intentional) that she forgot about telling a story.

kgharvison's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

mbenzz's review

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DNF at 56%...

This is my first Nghi Vo book, and I do believe it will be my last. I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me early access to this book, but unfortunately, it was not one I enjoyed.

I THOUGHT I would be reading about an ambitious young Asian woman who would stop at nothing to make it big in pre-code Hollywood while refusing to be typecast as the 'Fainting Flower' or the Asian Maid always relegated to the background. I'm not particularly familiar with the pre-code Hollywood era, but given my love of Old Hollywood, I figured I would enjoy this time period.

Instead, I got a confusing story sprinkled with unexplained monsters and magic, which moseys along at a snail's pace.

Now, I don't mind monsters and magic or fantasy stories when I KNOW that's what I'm going to get, but that's not what this book is packaged as. The book synopsis makes it sound like a Historical Fiction novel when it's actually a Fantasy/Historical Fantasy/SciFi story.

My biggest issue with this book, and why I opted to DNF it, is that none of the magic here is explained. Luli gives 20 years of her life to an old woman for information. Movie big-wigs shed layers of their skin to reveal their inner selves when tricked. Women are born with tails and led away from their homes by a rope, while others can change faces to resemble other people. There are Gods and Kings, and it was all so disjointed and baffling.

WHY did these things exist, and what are the rules of this world? Without setting boundaries and explaining to the reader a little about the world, it just comes off as confusing and takes the reader (well, me at least) out of an otherwise decent story. With no rules, the author can throw anything and everything into the story, and the reader never knows if this is normal or not. Because of this, I just couldn't continue. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the things that were happening, and after eight days of reading and only getting 54% of the way through a 288-page book, I decided to call it.

Even though I DNF'd this, I gave it two stars over one because I did like the underlying story of Luli and her journey to be a star, but everything just happens so slowly, and I spent a lot of my time wondering if the author was being literal or metaphorical in her descriptions, which gets frustrating.

Overall, while I didn't enjoy this, that doesn't mean you won't. Just know that this is a pre-code Hollywood FANTASY book. With actual magic and monsters. This is NOT a typical Historical Fiction story about old Hollywood.

jenhurst's review

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4.0

I absolutely loved this book. I loved the writing, the light magic realism elements. The protagonist I think fit the tone of the story very well. I liked seeing the golden era of Hollywood through the eyes of a queer, Chinese woman and the dark underside to the glittering lights. It’s very slow moving, where not a lot happens but I loved the vibes.

nogayourbroga's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

Read for my personal Jewish/AAPI readathon for May.

Well, I have no idea how to feel about this book.

I'm usually a sucker for trippy, atmospheric reads, and on the prose front, this mostly delivered. However, I fear that Siren Queen fails to work as a novel. Much of the prose was lyrical for lyricality's sake, rather than prettily describing things that were currently happening on the page. For most of the book, things would happen, and then the first person omniscient would reminisce with beautiful language for far, far too long, instead of letting us be immersed in the scene.

I do think that omniscient narration was a smart choice, but I don't think it was done well, if only because we got so lost in it that we forgot to see what was happening, and when we did... Well. When I saw the author's note about this initially being "three novellas in a trenchcoat," I had the sinking feeling that it still is, just hidden better. Really, this could have been a novella, or a collection of short stories, and saved us a lot of time.

The worst part might have been the epilogue, where events happen so quickly that the entirety of the past few pages grows to meet nothing.

In the book, we occasionally get flash-forwards to "Jane," implied to be Luli's girlfriend in the present. We only first meet her in this rushed epilogue, after following two different love interests, the last of whom feels like endgame until the narration lets us know that it's over. Tara and Jane should have been merged into the same character and not split up like this; as it stands, it significantly weakens the storytelling.

Really, the whole epilogue should have been cut. The last chapter already closes on a powerful moment; what does it add to the story seeing everything so neatly wrapped up, other than giving a morally gray protagonist a happy ending?

This is far from the worst book I've ever read, and I did find myself enjoying the fairyland atmosphere and the magical realism a lot. But all the glamour in the world can't save your novel if it's just a novella you've padded half to death.