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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
I love it. I almost overran my lunch break finishing the story. I wish the author had a huge back catalogue of books I could pick up. Since this is her first novel, I will just have to wait and hope she produces a huge catalogue of work in future.
At first I was caught off-guard by the narrative voice, and wasn't sure I liked it. By about page 30 I'd gotten used to it. By about page 50 I loved the main character and wouldn't change a thing about her. In fact, all of the characters were brilliant; there was a fairly sizable cast for a relatively short book, but each character felt distinct. I felt affection for the more likeable characters, and the cruel ones stirred up real resentment from me. Their exchanges were often funny, and the language they used helped build a sense of the world. Similarly, the settings were vivid, so the whole world felt immersive.
I'm sure the book isn't perfect, but right now I can't think of any flaws.
At first I was caught off-guard by the narrative voice, and wasn't sure I liked it. By about page 30 I'd gotten used to it. By about page 50 I loved the main character and wouldn't change a thing about her. In fact, all of the characters were brilliant; there was a fairly sizable cast for a relatively short book, but each character felt distinct. I felt affection for the more likeable characters, and the cruel ones stirred up real resentment from me. Their exchanges were often funny, and the language they used helped build a sense of the world. Similarly, the settings were vivid, so the whole world felt immersive.
I'm sure the book isn't perfect, but right now I can't think of any flaws.
Such an enjoyable plot, a funny and interesting cast of characters and fascinating world-building. I can’t wait for the sequel.
dark
funny
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was looking for something with folklore and fantasy, and since I started learning Mandarin I can’t help but be interested in as much of Chinese culture as I can find. This book made me laugh and cry and clutch my heart, it was a delicious read that I couldn’t put down.
This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and sadly it just didn't quite hit the mark for me! I LOVED the setting and the overall concept of the book itself was very interesting, but that's kind of were it all ended for me in terms of positives.
My main gripe about the book is it is marketed as an adult fantasy however it reads very VERY YA. Our main character Jing is an immortal 100year old vampire/kitsune hybrid but acts like she is 16 (at best). She stomps her feet, calls people piss-farts (A LOT) along with a plethora of other ridiculous names and continuously references her 'ta-ta's, now, I am all for an unlikable MC but she really pushed this.
I think the book was trying to go for quirky humour? but it just fell a little flat. The 'romance' is also very underwhelming (and I don't need romance in every book!) it could maybe have done with not even bothering with this addition as it was not believable at all given the context of everything else happening in the book.
Despite not enjoying this book this is just my personal opinion and I am sure others out there will absolutely love it!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!
My main gripe about the book is it is marketed as an adult fantasy however it reads very VERY YA. Our main character Jing is an immortal 100year old vampire/kitsune hybrid but acts like she is 16 (at best). She stomps her feet, calls people piss-farts (A LOT) along with a plethora of other ridiculous names and continuously references her 'ta-ta's, now, I am all for an unlikable MC but she really pushed this.
I think the book was trying to go for quirky humour? but it just fell a little flat. The 'romance' is also very underwhelming (and I don't need romance in every book!) it could maybe have done with not even bothering with this addition as it was not believable at all given the context of everything else happening in the book.
Despite not enjoying this book this is just my personal opinion and I am sure others out there will absolutely love it!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!
DNF: 25%
Il libro non aveva niente di male, ma la storia non mi interessava. Sono arrivata fino al 25% per cercare di capire se c’era qualcosa che solo minimamente mi prendesse, ma sfortunatamente non c’era niente. Ci sono troppi libri interessanti e poco tempo, per questo ho deciso di abbandonarlo.
L’unica domanda che mi pongo è perché la protagonista continua a dire la parola scoregge?!
Il libro non aveva niente di male, ma la storia non mi interessava. Sono arrivata fino al 25% per cercare di capire se c’era qualcosa che solo minimamente mi prendesse, ma sfortunatamente non c’era niente. Ci sono troppi libri interessanti e poco tempo, per questo ho deciso di abbandonarlo.
L’unica domanda che mi pongo è perché la protagonista continua a dire la parola scoregge?!
adventurous
emotional
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Having been immersing myself in Asian (Chinese especially) historical media and literature for the past eight years, I was so excited to grab this vivid, cheerfully irreverent homage to Chinese mythology, especially the fantastical tales. This is A.Y. Chao's debut, first of a series, and I am so looking forward to more!
Our narrator is Lady Jing, ward of Big Wang, the King of Hell--who rules the mythic world that overlies thirties Shanghai. I've now seen enough series and films (including film clips from the actual period) set in thirties Shanghai, to salute the research that went into evoking an amazing period in China's very long history. Thirties Shanghai was a meeting and amalgam of different cultures, each gleefully borrowing from the others to try them on, resulting in an exhilarating period that, unfortunately was all too soon overshadowed by world war.
This is a perfect setting for a story that borders the mythic world with a trip across the river.
Lady Jing is nearly 100 years old, and, typical for Xianxia, that means she's a young thing teetering on the verge of adulthood. In Xianxia, a cosmos full of gods and demons and weird spirits, time measure is in centuries and millennia. She's a "mongrel," or so her horrible relations insist, which is why she's the ward of the King of Hell. She's half huli, or nine-tailed-fox, and half vampire. She's been raised by a couple of venerable mythic figures in Big Wang's Court. ("Wang" by the way, means "king") She's feisty and mischievous and burgeoning with nascent power, but like many adolescents on the verge of adulthood, she's too impatient to sit for lessons. Especially as it seems everyone in Hell's court hates her guts, and there are powerful figures related to her who go out of their way to be cruel. With the emotional fallout you'd expect.
Lady Jing is requested by Big Wang to meet a mortal who is proposing a bank for the undead. Big Wang is interested in modernizing Hell, which means creating a bank. So Jing meets Tony Lee, a mortal who is clearly (except to inexperienced Jing) smitten with her, pretty much from the start.
Adventures ensue, with plenty of earthy observations by Jing, as she painfully comes to terms with aspects of her birth and early years. Perhaps symbolic, she fights hard against wearing the qipao, the gorgeous silk gown of the period--skin-tight, it looks spectacular on the right body, at the cost of moving. Or even breathing freely. And Jing, trained in martial arts, needs to be able to move.
I won't say any more than that. I galloped through the book, delighting in Jing and her adventures, and her slow, wary approach to growing up and into her powers. Along the way we get a thorough grounding in Chinese myth; what I loved most, I think, was Mr. Lee's reason for coming to Big Wang in the first place. That resonated with so many of the Chinese stories I've been inhaling over these past few years. Likewise, I loved the scattering of Chinese vocabulary through the story, exulting in the fact that I recognized all these words.
The result was a satisfying immersion in a world I want to revisit, leaving me looking very much forward to Lady Jing's further adventures.
Our narrator is Lady Jing, ward of Big Wang, the King of Hell--who rules the mythic world that overlies thirties Shanghai. I've now seen enough series and films (including film clips from the actual period) set in thirties Shanghai, to salute the research that went into evoking an amazing period in China's very long history. Thirties Shanghai was a meeting and amalgam of different cultures, each gleefully borrowing from the others to try them on, resulting in an exhilarating period that, unfortunately was all too soon overshadowed by world war.
This is a perfect setting for a story that borders the mythic world with a trip across the river.
Lady Jing is nearly 100 years old, and, typical for Xianxia, that means she's a young thing teetering on the verge of adulthood. In Xianxia, a cosmos full of gods and demons and weird spirits, time measure is in centuries and millennia. She's a "mongrel," or so her horrible relations insist, which is why she's the ward of the King of Hell. She's half huli, or nine-tailed-fox, and half vampire. She's been raised by a couple of venerable mythic figures in Big Wang's Court. ("Wang" by the way, means "king") She's feisty and mischievous and burgeoning with nascent power, but like many adolescents on the verge of adulthood, she's too impatient to sit for lessons. Especially as it seems everyone in Hell's court hates her guts, and there are powerful figures related to her who go out of their way to be cruel. With the emotional fallout you'd expect.
Lady Jing is requested by Big Wang to meet a mortal who is proposing a bank for the undead. Big Wang is interested in modernizing Hell, which means creating a bank. So Jing meets Tony Lee, a mortal who is clearly (except to inexperienced Jing) smitten with her, pretty much from the start.
Adventures ensue, with plenty of earthy observations by Jing, as she painfully comes to terms with aspects of her birth and early years. Perhaps symbolic, she fights hard against wearing the qipao, the gorgeous silk gown of the period--skin-tight, it looks spectacular on the right body, at the cost of moving. Or even breathing freely. And Jing, trained in martial arts, needs to be able to move.
I won't say any more than that. I galloped through the book, delighting in Jing and her adventures, and her slow, wary approach to growing up and into her powers. Along the way we get a thorough grounding in Chinese myth; what I loved most, I think, was Mr. Lee's reason for coming to Big Wang in the first place. That resonated with so many of the Chinese stories I've been inhaling over these past few years. Likewise, I loved the scattering of Chinese vocabulary through the story, exulting in the fact that I recognized all these words.
The result was a satisfying immersion in a world I want to revisit, leaving me looking very much forward to Lady Jing's further adventures.
Recommended: eh
for a very childish MC, for a bit of exploration, for some lore about Hell and demonic / mythical creatures in their world
Thoughts:
While I thought this would be a new favorite and really blow me away, it did not at all. If anything I was blown away by how unimpressed I was at the end of it. Let's run through the issues, and some of the good in it as well.
The first and main issue is that I did not like the main character (MC) from the start nor at any point during. She's childish, impulsive, careless, selfish... just... pretty annoying really. She reads like a spoiled child who hasn't learned to think of anything besides herself. Also the constant insults and the amount of times "pissfart" was said just, god, it was really like being with a small grumpy child the whole time and I generally don't like children. I was turned off immediately.
That was followed up by a shocking lack of anything happening. Even after finishing it I'm trying to think back on key moments and what they did, but really like... they went on a short vacation and shopped and that was most of the story. It did pick up a bit at the end into some interesting stuff, but it was short-lived and easily resolved. The whole time, those characters had been built up as these Big Bads who were terrifying and had absolute control over everything, and then it felt like it was over with barely a sweat broken, which made it all much less impressive or scary.
Usually a world of magic and demons and cool creatures can fill some of the gaps for this, but that wasn't really a strength here either. They were mentioned for sure, but they didn't feel like they mattered. It felt like everything else in the world was a foil to this annoying childish MC I didn't like. I would love to know more about the others but all they got were some insults from MC and then like a line of some sort of stereotype about their race.
Oh, and romance? Not really. Just, no. There ends up being a relationship and there are some little stepping stones along the way but I didn't really care. It was small things that built up, which is a nice way to write it, but in this kind of nothing story it just felt like more nothing.
So... yeah I wasn't a fan. I can't believe it because this sounds exactly like something I'd love, but it just fell so flat for me in the execution. I thought it would be dark, and exciting, and full of magic and lore and tension, but it was derailed immediately. If you can tolerate the MC then you may have a better time with it, but it's still pretty slow until the last quarter of the book when things start happening. I see this is a series so maybe later books will pick up, but you'll have to really decide to commit to potentially get a payoff.
for a very childish MC, for a bit of exploration, for some lore about Hell and demonic / mythical creatures in their world
Thoughts:
While I thought this would be a new favorite and really blow me away, it did not at all. If anything I was blown away by how unimpressed I was at the end of it. Let's run through the issues, and some of the good in it as well.
The first and main issue is that I did not like the main character (MC) from the start nor at any point during. She's childish, impulsive, careless, selfish... just... pretty annoying really. She reads like a spoiled child who hasn't learned to think of anything besides herself. Also the constant insults and the amount of times "pissfart" was said just, god, it was really like being with a small grumpy child the whole time and I generally don't like children. I was turned off immediately.
That was followed up by a shocking lack of anything happening. Even after finishing it I'm trying to think back on key moments and what they did, but really like... they went on a short vacation and shopped and that was most of the story. It did pick up a bit at the end into some interesting stuff, but it was short-lived and easily resolved. The whole time, those characters had been built up as these Big Bads who were terrifying and had absolute control over everything, and then it felt like it was over with barely a sweat broken, which made it all much less impressive or scary.
Usually a world of magic and demons and cool creatures can fill some of the gaps for this, but that wasn't really a strength here either. They were mentioned for sure, but they didn't feel like they mattered. It felt like everything else in the world was a foil to this annoying childish MC I didn't like. I would love to know more about the others but all they got were some insults from MC and then like a line of some sort of stereotype about their race.
Oh, and romance? Not really. Just, no. There ends up being a relationship and there are some little stepping stones along the way but I didn't really care. It was small things that built up, which is a nice way to write it, but in this kind of nothing story it just felt like more nothing.
So... yeah I wasn't a fan. I can't believe it because this sounds exactly like something I'd love, but it just fell so flat for me in the execution. I thought it would be dark, and exciting, and full of magic and lore and tension, but it was derailed immediately. If you can tolerate the MC then you may have a better time with it, but it's still pretty slow until the last quarter of the book when things start happening. I see this is a series so maybe later books will pick up, but you'll have to really decide to commit to potentially get a payoff.
slow-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