Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

23 reviews

adhdru's review against another edition

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lighthearted 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? No

3.25

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lilifane's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

3.0

This was 100% a cover buy and I didn't care if I would like the book or not. Also, it's a novella so a very quick read. And I actually liked it. I loved the humor and banter and queer representation, as well as identity discussions. Also liked the setting, but the plot was a little underwhelming and I didn't care for it that much. Maybe because there was a lot of tell and almost no show, especially when it comes to the twists and relevations. Also the Wuxia elements were kind of boring? I love Wuxia and the action scenes just didn't feel much like it. But it was still a nice read.

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bluejayreads's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is a confusing little book. Not so much in the story, but in the details and context that aren’t actually in the story and that I only found while researching for this review. So there’s two parts to this review: What I thought of what’s contained between the covers, and the context that somehow didn’t end up in the book itself.

The Book

This book is very short – just under 4 hours in audiobook form, 176 pages according to The StoryGraph. It reads a lot more like a long fairy tale or folktale than a novel or novella. There is no urgency to the plot, the story is straightforward with only two minor events that could even be possibly considered twists (only one of which actually affects anything), and the characters are brief sketches more than fully realized people.

I think part of the problem was trying to pack so much into so little. This book is so short that there isn’t a lot of space for developing anything, and yet there is some kind of East Asian vaguely-fantasy setting, Guet Imm the nun and 4-6 bandit characters (I can’t remember how many exactly), and a journey plot that takes the group from where they met Guet Imm to a town to sell some goods and then to a third town to meet with a person. None of it gets fleshed out because there just isn’t time.

That said, I did actually enjoy this book. I’ve read a fair number of folktales, and reading it like a folktale – without the modern novel expectations of worldbuilding and character development and such – it was fairly enjoyable. It deals with a lot of heavy topics but doesn’t have enough development to get too serious, and the characters are fine to follow around without getting invested enough to feel too upset when they get hurt. It’s not the kind of book that becomes a favorite, but it was a perfectly acceptable reading experience.

Things I Learned While Researching For This Review

When doing my usual preliminary research for this review, I discovered Zen Cho’s website, where I learned there is some depth and context to the story that somehow didn’t make it into the book itself.

To start with, the back cover describes it as a “wuxia fantasy.” Wuxia is a Chinese fiction genre, so I assumed that the story was set in China, despite Gwet Imm not being a Chinese name. However, according to the author, the book is actually set in Malaysia – specifically during the Malaysian Emergency, a guerrilla war between the British and Malaysian independence fighters between 1948 and 1960. Which explains several things:

The jungles that they keep walking through, as there are a lot more jungles in Malaysia than China.
The “secret war” (obviously guerrilla warfare now that I have the context) that is mentioned but never encountered.
The soldiers who are a different ethnicity from the native people and do things like destroy temples and genocide people.
The “bandits” who are native people and part of the secret war by hiding in the jungles and attacking the soldiers.

I wish this book had been longer. With this context, there is so much that could have been done with the story that just didn’t happen. I didn’t even put together that there was a guerilla war going on in the background, let alone that this was a people fighting for their independence from a colonial power. Heck, I didn’t even work out that this was set in Southeast Asia and not some fantasy version of China. The limited length of this story did it a disservice, and there could have been so much more depth and interest to this story if it had been allowed to expand beyond sketches of characters on a simple delivery quest. I liked the story for itself, but now that I have the context and see what it could have been, I find myself disappointed by the lost potential.

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sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

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adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

3.5

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benediction's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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mar's review

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adventurous lighthearted fast-paced

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

2.0

this book started off pretty fun, but. i Really didn't enjoy the way the transmasc character was handled. the hints that he was trans made me excited at first, but the not-really-consensual coming out that's kinda treated like a Big Reveal/Plot Twist and the language used to talk abt it just... made my skin crawl. like

"brother, does everyone know you’re a woman?" or "I live the life of a man, but my heart hasn't changed from when I was a woman. This is the body of a woman. But it carries the sins of a man".... Feels Bad. especially the "body of a woman" part like UGH god...

it was very messy and genuinely not something i'd have expected from a book published in 2020, especially one i've seen praised for its LGBT representation. left a bad taste in my mouth :/

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bookishbutch's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

What a fun book! I'm a sucker for found family, so I knew I had to read this, and I was not disappointed. I love how gentle this book was in comparison to other fantasy books. It felt more intimate in a way, since the book mainly centers on just the core group of main characters. All in all, a very nice read.

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