Reviews

Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story by William Andrews

rinarw's review

adventurous dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

alliey's review against another edition

1.0

How do I give this book zero stars?! What is wrong with people that they all love this book?! It’s an old white dude’s wet dream!!!!
He took something disgusting, horrible, and as unimaginable as the Japanese turning young, virgin Korean girls into sex slaves and turned it into an opportunity to write as if it’s some sort of porno or trashy romance novel.
I didn’t read the fine print on the title about comfort women- nor did I even know this had happened. I saw a book in prime reading that had a ton of reviews and high ratings and I downloaded with a small glance at the description. Like how bad could it be? It’ll pass the time. As I started reading I was like okay the writing isn’t great but let’s keep going, read about the two little girls/sisters. And at some point in that now looked at who wrote this?! And saw an old white dude that I guess adopted a Korean baby and decided- hey...Korea’s cool, let me do some research and write a book. Came across comfort women in history and was like ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT. Please god let this be erased from my brain. I saw the writer and said ugh but was interested in what would happen to the sisters and gave it a chance anyway(at this point they had not been sent to “the boot factory” yet- I suspected that there would be some horrible stuff once I read leaving home to go to the boot factory; but, I could never have ever believed that something so highly rated by so many people would be written in such a horrible way. Please save yourself from reading the disgusting fantasy abusive rape trash that this book is.

thisiszoerose's review against another edition

4.0

Struggled to get into this at first because I felt that the initial narrator (the granddaughter, Anna) was written clumsily. However, once the story shifted to the grandmother's character, I was hooked. I'm not usually one for historical fiction but I really liked learning more about Korea's history, including the horrific role of comfort women at the hands of the Japanese during WWII (which I had absolutely no idea about) and the subsequent political chaos that ensued with the north/south divide of the country.

rpmiller's review against another edition

4.0

A very powerful story filled with emotion and grandeur. I learned so much of twentieth century Korean history and now want to know much more, going back as far as possible in the 4500 year story of these honorable people. Weaving the story of comfort women with a modern fairy tale, the author's remarkable achievement will open the reader's eyes to traditions we dare not loose and to issues that we should strive to resolve before another generation of Koreans north and south are lost in conflict.

pepper1133's review against another edition

4.0

I had heard of the Korean comfort women of WWII once before, but very briefly and from that introduction I had imagined their circumstances to be something along the lines of Kim’s in “Miss Saigon.” I was very much mistaken. The comfort women were more sex slaves, forced by the occupying Japanese to be raped over and over again by their military. The sections of the book at the comfort station are not easy to read, and there was a moment where the book could have delved into torture porn. Thankfully the author pulled back at that point but god, those descriptions create a very visceral experience of a little talked about historical fact. The parts of the book dealing with the dragon comb are somewhat contrived; as a reader I would have been fine with sticking to the story of how Ja-hee and the other comfort women survived their post-war lives. Lastly, I have to address my discomfort with the story being written by a white American male. Clearly Andrews has done his research, and clearly he has so much respect for the comfort women. But it’s not his history and so to a certain extent it is exploitive. I wonder why there aren’t more/any books about the comfort that are published by mainstream printing houses. I had to search a bit to find this book on the subject from an independent press. The use of rape as an instrument of war needs to be talked about more, in all of its forms.

*read for The 52nd Book Club Challenge, #28--Includes a historical event you know little about--Daughters of the Dragon by William Andrews*

mccorfj's review against another edition

5.0

Great read.

If you are like me who's into history, Korea and reading, then this is the perfect book for you. I personally love this book because I have always been fascinated with Korea. I love the richness of history told on this book and the strong woman protagonist.

pip94's review against another edition

4.0

Wow - that was not an easy read, but it is a book that needs to be read. It deals with a part of history that I knew very little about and what these women went through is horrific - I think it is shocking that it hasn't really been acknowledge. It was written well and is very accessible - I thought the structure of it was well done. It was a very interesting book - I know very little about the regions history - and it was engaging throughout. I finished this in a few sittings - I just needed to know what happened. I highly recommend this book.

pandorasbookmark's review against another edition

5.0

Mir war vorher nicht bewusst, welche abscheulichen Kriegsverbrechen in Asien stattgefunden haben aber nach dem Lesen dieses Romans, hatte ich definitiv einen kleinen Einblick in die koreanische Geschichte um den zweiten Weltkrieg gewonnen.
Ich persönlich empfinde dieses Buch als keine leichte Kost, dennoch kann ich es jedem empfehlen der ein klein wenig mehr - zusammengefasst in einer absolut bewegenden Geschichte - über Trostfrauen erfahren möchte.

hankab's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

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

3.75

kitsune's review against another edition

5.0

I don't think anyone would call this a "nice" book, but I definitely think it's an important one.

I knew nothing about the awful things the Japanese did in WW2 prior to reading this, and I'd bet there's a lot of other people that don't know either. It was a real eye opener and a very tragic story.

The book isn't a million miles away from Memoirs of a Geisha, in my opinion, and I feel if you liked that you will like this.