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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
Originally reviewed on A Reader of Fictions. There's also a giveaway running until September. Hurry!
Holy epicness Batman. Stormdancer is, perhaps, the most talked about book of this summer, and, having now finished, I can tell you that all of that anticipation and expectation is well-deserved. However, Stormdancer is also not what I was expecting. Not at ALL. Partly, this was my fault, but partly this was because of the way books are marketed.
What I didn't find in Stormdancer was the sort of Joss Whedon-esque humor that I was anticipating from communicating with Jay on Twitter and Goodreads. There is humor of a sort, but that's not a driving force by any means. That was my incorrect expectation. I was also expecting, from the way this book was marketed, a young adult dystopia about Yukiko. Well, sorry, guys, but that's not what this book is.
Jay Kristoff actually wrote an incredibly insightful post that got me thinking about the distinctions between young adult fiction and adult fiction, and how, much of the time, the lines are entirely arbitrary. In fact, there have been several books recently that I never would have guessed were 'young adult, and this most definitely falls into that category. I wonder whether some readers will be disappointed and dislike this book because it's so unlike most of the other novels published under that unclear heading.
Although Yukiko is undoubtedly the heroine of our piece, Stormdancer is definitively not just about her. Told in third person, the narrative does not even follow her alone. Many important characters left their teens behind years before. This book does not tackle issues that face a teenage girl. The scope of Stormdancer is broad, and I think that, were this not a dystopia and were YA not so popular, this book would be marketed as epic fantasy, where I personally feel it belongs (if we feel the need to push labels onto our books).
Moving on from that rant, let's actually talk about Stormdancer. You may have noticed that this book (or at least the ARC version) is but 313 pages. Don't let this fool you. Stormdancer is not a short book. The ARC is larger than a traditional trade paperback, the font is not large, and the margins are small. Published in an ordinary fashion, Stormdancer would probably be somewhere from 500-700 pages. If published the same way Divergent was, it would be IMMENSE.
All of those words to read are not a struggle, though, or were not for me. Jay Kristoff can write. His language is ornate and complex, with some of the best diction I've seen from a modern writer, yet all quite natural. Seriously, this man is a genius.
The best part of the book, most definitely, is the world building. Jay Kristoff has built a truly epic world, a steampunk Japan full of demons and fantastic creatures. A young, merciless shogun, Yoritomo, rules as tyrant over Shima, allowing the country to fall to ruin. In this steampunk world, machines run on lotus (think opium...only with the ability to power machinery and to pollute the environment). The mass of the populace is dying from the lotus, breathing the smoke of the polluted air into their lungs. Shima's soldiers (Iron Samurai) and priests (The Guild) are encased in metalwork, safe from the environment.
Set within this dying world, addicted, one way or another, to lotus, Masaru, Yoritomo's master hunter, receives orders to capture and deliver to the shogun an arashitora, a thunder tiger (half eagle, half tiger, as seen on the cover). Though they are believed to be extinct, Masaru and his crew, including Yukiko, set out on the fruitless search. What could, in a lesser book, be the whole of the first volume, this quest takes only the first third or so of the novel. Once they find the arashitora, Buruu, that is when the book really (pardon the pun...or, actually, don't) took off.
At first, I was appreciating the language and the mastery of the world building, but I wasn't particularly involved yet. This is a big part of why I would call this epic fantasy: good epic fantasy takes some time, because there's so much that has to be set up since the world is so different. Once Yukiko and Buruu began to bond, I really became attached to their characters and caught up in their fates. Yukiko is, as the cover promises, a BADASS, with the all-caps completely necessary to convey the degree of her ability to be awesome. However, Buruu totally stole the show from her, I thought. He is definitely my favorite character, because he's funny and loyal and A FRACKING THUNDER TIGER! It does not get more hardcore than that.
The other characters are also fascinating, interesting in how unclear they are. I really don't know how to feel about most of them, unable to figure out whether they're trustworthy or not. Pretty much by the time you figure that out, it's too late. This is not a world where good and evil are always bathed in black and white, and both are generally bathed in red, either from blood or from lotus.
So yeah, Stormdancer is just as crazy cool and full of action and steampunkery (like chainkatanas...think chainsaw + katana and accept the fact that Kay Kristoff is better than you) as you could possibly want. I advise you not to get to hung up on what Stormdancer is, and just to sit back and enjoy the ride through the storms.
Holy epicness Batman. Stormdancer is, perhaps, the most talked about book of this summer, and, having now finished, I can tell you that all of that anticipation and expectation is well-deserved. However, Stormdancer is also not what I was expecting. Not at ALL. Partly, this was my fault, but partly this was because of the way books are marketed.
What I didn't find in Stormdancer was the sort of Joss Whedon-esque humor that I was anticipating from communicating with Jay on Twitter and Goodreads. There is humor of a sort, but that's not a driving force by any means. That was my incorrect expectation. I was also expecting, from the way this book was marketed, a young adult dystopia about Yukiko. Well, sorry, guys, but that's not what this book is.
Jay Kristoff actually wrote an incredibly insightful post that got me thinking about the distinctions between young adult fiction and adult fiction, and how, much of the time, the lines are entirely arbitrary. In fact, there have been several books recently that I never would have guessed were 'young adult, and this most definitely falls into that category. I wonder whether some readers will be disappointed and dislike this book because it's so unlike most of the other novels published under that unclear heading.
Although Yukiko is undoubtedly the heroine of our piece, Stormdancer is definitively not just about her. Told in third person, the narrative does not even follow her alone. Many important characters left their teens behind years before. This book does not tackle issues that face a teenage girl. The scope of Stormdancer is broad, and I think that, were this not a dystopia and were YA not so popular, this book would be marketed as epic fantasy, where I personally feel it belongs (if we feel the need to push labels onto our books).
Moving on from that rant, let's actually talk about Stormdancer. You may have noticed that this book (or at least the ARC version) is but 313 pages. Don't let this fool you. Stormdancer is not a short book. The ARC is larger than a traditional trade paperback, the font is not large, and the margins are small. Published in an ordinary fashion, Stormdancer would probably be somewhere from 500-700 pages. If published the same way Divergent was, it would be IMMENSE.
All of those words to read are not a struggle, though, or were not for me. Jay Kristoff can write. His language is ornate and complex, with some of the best diction I've seen from a modern writer, yet all quite natural. Seriously, this man is a genius.
The best part of the book, most definitely, is the world building. Jay Kristoff has built a truly epic world, a steampunk Japan full of demons and fantastic creatures. A young, merciless shogun, Yoritomo, rules as tyrant over Shima, allowing the country to fall to ruin. In this steampunk world, machines run on lotus (think opium...only with the ability to power machinery and to pollute the environment). The mass of the populace is dying from the lotus, breathing the smoke of the polluted air into their lungs. Shima's soldiers (Iron Samurai) and priests (The Guild) are encased in metalwork, safe from the environment.
Set within this dying world, addicted, one way or another, to lotus, Masaru, Yoritomo's master hunter, receives orders to capture and deliver to the shogun an arashitora, a thunder tiger (half eagle, half tiger, as seen on the cover). Though they are believed to be extinct, Masaru and his crew, including Yukiko, set out on the fruitless search. What could, in a lesser book, be the whole of the first volume, this quest takes only the first third or so of the novel. Once they find the arashitora, Buruu, that is when the book really (pardon the pun...or, actually, don't) took off.
At first, I was appreciating the language and the mastery of the world building, but I wasn't particularly involved yet. This is a big part of why I would call this epic fantasy: good epic fantasy takes some time, because there's so much that has to be set up since the world is so different. Once Yukiko and Buruu began to bond, I really became attached to their characters and caught up in their fates. Yukiko is, as the cover promises, a BADASS, with the all-caps completely necessary to convey the degree of her ability to be awesome. However, Buruu totally stole the show from her, I thought. He is definitely my favorite character, because he's funny and loyal and A FRACKING THUNDER TIGER! It does not get more hardcore than that.
The other characters are also fascinating, interesting in how unclear they are. I really don't know how to feel about most of them, unable to figure out whether they're trustworthy or not. Pretty much by the time you figure that out, it's too late. This is not a world where good and evil are always bathed in black and white, and both are generally bathed in red, either from blood or from lotus.
So yeah, Stormdancer is just as crazy cool and full of action and steampunkery (like chainkatanas...think chainsaw + katana and accept the fact that Kay Kristoff is better than you) as you could possibly want. I advise you not to get to hung up on what Stormdancer is, and just to sit back and enjoy the ride through the storms.
I liked it and would recommend it for a YA reader, but not wholly satisfying for me personally.
meh. the story was pretty formulaic, and the world never managed to suck me in like i wanted it to.
Actual rating 2.7 stars. I didn't like this book very much. Too much description, confusing and a lot of info dumping. The ending was the only interesting part and I did like Buruu a lot. But that was it.
Reading from: physical book; library borrowing
Plot: 7/10
Character: 6.7/10
Writing: 6.9/10
Font: 6.5/10
Buy it? Still considering...
This book is Japanese Steampunk but the japanese elements is still stands strong. I love how its beautifully writing. Our female character is kick-ass but severely flawed. I will continue on this series
*Big thumbs-up!*
Plot: 7/10
Character: 6.7/10
Writing: 6.9/10
Font: 6.5/10
Buy it? Still considering...
This book is Japanese Steampunk but the japanese elements is still stands strong. I love how its beautifully writing. Our female character is kick-ass but severely flawed. I will continue on this series
*Big thumbs-up!*
I actually DNF'd the Kindle sample I got to check this book out. In the first few chapters, there are already too many things bugging me, I can't image paying to get the whole book. And I feel I have to write a review, even though I'm not much of a review writer...
The story being set in Japan is what caught my attention in the first place. Now I do not pretend to be an expert in all things Japanese, but I've been studying the language, for nearly 3 years in the classes of a native Japanese who loved to add all sorts of tidbits of knowledge during class. Thus I am not a complete ignorant regarding Japan. So by the time I'd finished the first half of the sample, I already had the following things bugging me:
Geishas: the shogun calling for geishas, as if he were asking for prostitutes. That geishas are simply prostitutes is a tale made up by the Americans after WWII, asfar as I've been informed by my Japanese Sensei, mostly. Japan had and has prostitutes, and they're not geishas. Geishas are highly educated entertainers which would be called to add value to meetings that took place only between men. They can play at least one music instrument, dance (traditional highly formalised Japanese dances), can talk about nearly every subject. So they would be called to add a feminine touch to those meetings. Not the kind of "celebration" you'd do on your own just before breakfast, as the shogun is planning to do.
"sama": "sama" is indeed a term of respect, but it is not an independent word per se. It's an added suffix, like "-san" or "-chan". As such, it is not used alone, but only at the end of a name or a noun (like okyaku-sama, esteemed guest/client).
"Hai": "hai" does mean yes, but it's regular use is in answering a question or as a marker of attention. It is not used for something like "it's enough for today, yes?". Definitely not. If at all, something like "ne" would be used.
Obi + hakama: the way the obi Yukiko is wearing in chapter 3 is described, it obviously is supposed to be like the obi worn with a kimono or yukata. Honestly, such an obi, no matter type of knot, and a hakama together? The only belt I've ever seen worn with a hakama is a thin belt tied at the front, like in karate for instance. It's the only thing that makes sense to wear with a hakama. An obi not only does not go well with that piece of clothing, because why would you wear such a wide belt over something that has a rigid plate over the lower back (so making the obi unnecessary as posture keeping accessoire) and a belt tied up on the front, making a knot that would destroy the obi's line? I don't think anyone would do that. Also, if Yukiko is wearing a hakama for practical reasons as a fighter, then she would not wear such a highly unpractical piece of clothing as a kimono obi is. First, the kimono obi is a rather large and rigid belt. The obi is about 20-25cm wide, and even if it's folded in 2 in those parts that are wound around the waist, it's still some 10cm wide or more. And the fabric is rather rigid, as it is meant to stay in shape for hours. As a result, bending as a major hassle. I know it personally, because I wore one for a whole day at a friend's wedding. I sure kept a very good posture that day, but it does definitely not help with the mobility and flexibility required in a fight. The second reason would be safety. I would not want to be in a fight and have that belt come undone. It's wound twice around the body, and as I mentioned, the fabric is not meant to be nice and flowing, which would make it easier to get rid of it. So if it would come undone, I'd have a double coil of fabric, somewhere between 10 and 20cm in width (no idea if it would stay folded in 2 in such a case) wrapped around my legs and tripping me. In a fight, that would be pretty much a death sentence.
Anyway, so far it sounded to me like not much research had been done about the country the story is set in, which has greatly disappointed me, as I was really interested in this book.
Edit: I didn't mention this part, though it also disturbed me, because I had to check a few facts first. But now I've checked them, I definitely have to add it too. And it's the fact that the shogun is tattooed, and not with a small tattoo, but a large one depicting the griffon he wants to own. The thing is, tattoos are just not done in Japan, at least not by the regular population. Tattoos nowadays are pretty much only worn by Yakuzas, and the stigma that comes with being tattooed goes to the point that any Japanese wearing a tattoo is forbidden entrance to public bath establishments and onsens, for instance. Tattoos were used for centuries to mark criminals (small tattoos on the forehead for instance) and were officially forbidden by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the one who finished uniting Japan and took the power as shogun from the emperor. So since the 17th century, tattoos are not used in Japan except by criminal organisations. Thus, having the shogun wear a typical yakuza tattoo, coupled with his behaviour, makes him feel more like a thug than a ruler to me, and frustrated me no end. Especially since yakuza, as far as I heard, for all they're considered criminals, are well educated and don't behave like western thugs (if I am to believe my first Japanese language teacher, who is acquainted with a yakuza boss, and about 12 pupils from his class, who actually got to meet said yakuza boss and have dinner with him and some of his men....).
The story being set in Japan is what caught my attention in the first place. Now I do not pretend to be an expert in all things Japanese, but I've been studying the language, for nearly 3 years in the classes of a native Japanese who loved to add all sorts of tidbits of knowledge during class. Thus I am not a complete ignorant regarding Japan. So by the time I'd finished the first half of the sample, I already had the following things bugging me:
Geishas: the shogun calling for geishas, as if he were asking for prostitutes. That geishas are simply prostitutes is a tale made up by the Americans after WWII, asfar as I've been informed by my Japanese Sensei, mostly. Japan had and has prostitutes, and they're not geishas. Geishas are highly educated entertainers which would be called to add value to meetings that took place only between men. They can play at least one music instrument, dance (traditional highly formalised Japanese dances), can talk about nearly every subject. So they would be called to add a feminine touch to those meetings. Not the kind of "celebration" you'd do on your own just before breakfast, as the shogun is planning to do.
"sama": "sama" is indeed a term of respect, but it is not an independent word per se. It's an added suffix, like "-san" or "-chan". As such, it is not used alone, but only at the end of a name or a noun (like okyaku-sama, esteemed guest/client).
"Hai": "hai" does mean yes, but it's regular use is in answering a question or as a marker of attention. It is not used for something like "it's enough for today, yes?". Definitely not. If at all, something like "ne" would be used.
Obi + hakama: the way the obi Yukiko is wearing in chapter 3 is described, it obviously is supposed to be like the obi worn with a kimono or yukata. Honestly, such an obi, no matter type of knot, and a hakama together? The only belt I've ever seen worn with a hakama is a thin belt tied at the front, like in karate for instance. It's the only thing that makes sense to wear with a hakama. An obi not only does not go well with that piece of clothing, because why would you wear such a wide belt over something that has a rigid plate over the lower back (so making the obi unnecessary as posture keeping accessoire) and a belt tied up on the front, making a knot that would destroy the obi's line? I don't think anyone would do that. Also, if Yukiko is wearing a hakama for practical reasons as a fighter, then she would not wear such a highly unpractical piece of clothing as a kimono obi is. First, the kimono obi is a rather large and rigid belt. The obi is about 20-25cm wide, and even if it's folded in 2 in those parts that are wound around the waist, it's still some 10cm wide or more. And the fabric is rather rigid, as it is meant to stay in shape for hours. As a result, bending as a major hassle. I know it personally, because I wore one for a whole day at a friend's wedding. I sure kept a very good posture that day, but it does definitely not help with the mobility and flexibility required in a fight. The second reason would be safety. I would not want to be in a fight and have that belt come undone. It's wound twice around the body, and as I mentioned, the fabric is not meant to be nice and flowing, which would make it easier to get rid of it. So if it would come undone, I'd have a double coil of fabric, somewhere between 10 and 20cm in width (no idea if it would stay folded in 2 in such a case) wrapped around my legs and tripping me. In a fight, that would be pretty much a death sentence.
Anyway, so far it sounded to me like not much research had been done about the country the story is set in, which has greatly disappointed me, as I was really interested in this book.
Edit: I didn't mention this part, though it also disturbed me, because I had to check a few facts first. But now I've checked them, I definitely have to add it too. And it's the fact that the shogun is tattooed, and not with a small tattoo, but a large one depicting the griffon he wants to own. The thing is, tattoos are just not done in Japan, at least not by the regular population. Tattoos nowadays are pretty much only worn by Yakuzas, and the stigma that comes with being tattooed goes to the point that any Japanese wearing a tattoo is forbidden entrance to public bath establishments and onsens, for instance. Tattoos were used for centuries to mark criminals (small tattoos on the forehead for instance) and were officially forbidden by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the one who finished uniting Japan and took the power as shogun from the emperor. So since the 17th century, tattoos are not used in Japan except by criminal organisations. Thus, having the shogun wear a typical yakuza tattoo, coupled with his behaviour, makes him feel more like a thug than a ruler to me, and frustrated me no end. Especially since yakuza, as far as I heard, for all they're considered criminals, are well educated and don't behave like western thugs (if I am to believe my first Japanese language teacher, who is acquainted with a yakuza boss, and about 12 pupils from his class, who actually got to meet said yakuza boss and have dinner with him and some of his men....).
3.5
This book was so unique and rich with Japanese mythology and ugh I just loved it.
Loved the plot. Loved the characters especially Buruu. HE. IS. HILARIOUS.
I enjoyed the banter between him and Yukiko and how their relationship grew so deep. They make my heart melt.
This book was so unique and rich with Japanese mythology and ugh I just loved it.
Loved the plot. Loved the characters especially Buruu. HE. IS. HILARIOUS.
I enjoyed the banter between him and Yukiko and how their relationship grew so deep. They make my heart melt.
Wow. What a read. Part 1 was hard to get through. The world and pace building took a while but it is so good once everything started to gain momentum.