Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by heather4994
Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
5.0
I'll just say right now, this is a book I've been waiting almost nine months to read. It had a lot to live up to and I can say not only did it not disappoint me but if far exceeded my expectations. I expected good writing, I've been following Jay Kristoff's blog for awhile and knew he was capable of it. I got exceptionally descriptive prose so artistic that it painted a picture of the world he was describing. Yes, it was intricate and detailed to a fault, but once described, I knew what an Irezumi from each of the Zaibatsu clans looked like. I knew that Docktown was crawling with all types of people peasant to beggar to merchant. And the color of the sky, the color of a person's skin, and the color of Shima under the Shogun's rule. I was never in doubt. And this was what I always thought steampunk looked like, streets and air clogged with pollution and smoke from too many machines, people choking on the air, wearing goggles because they had to, not as a fashion statement. Too many people in too small a space. Not revolutionary ideas, but excess of machines. So yes, there is a lot of description, but like any painter, he must lay down the foundations, the base colors before the finer colors, the plot, the characters can be painted.
And the characters oh, so unforgettable. Yukiko, the 16 yr old main character is has hard as any substance on this planet. She is not without feeling, her heart is big and she loves, but she does what must be done. I thought I had seen tough characters in the past in the books I've read. All of them put together do not equal Yukiko. It's not just her skill at killing or her friendship with Buruu the "thundertiger" or the proper name arashitora. It's her ability to make decisions, the hard ones. To separate feeling from her mission. She is ruthless in her quest to restore Shima to it's former glory, when the sky was blue, when there were animals, and green plants. When the sun didn't burn everything up. When the water was clean and the air was safe to breathe. How she'll do this, she's not sure, but in this novel, she takes the first steps.
The other characters whether minor or major, were never ignored or forgotten. From Hiro, the samurai with the sea green eyes, to Masaru, Yukiko's father and the Master Hunter of the Shogun called "The Black Fox", no one was forgotten, each given rich detail and motivation. I was afraid I'd get hung up on foreign names and nicknames with "san" and "chan" added after the names and everything being so different. But it's as if Jay Kristoff leads you by the hand until you're comfortable with the world and then let's go. So I was never lost, I knew what every Yukiko-san meant and what Bushido was (of course the glossary in the back was very helpful and I read it a few times before I started reading). But the depth of what honor is and sacrifice for something bigger than herself-Yukiko taught me that lesson better than anything I've ever read, classics, adult comtemporaries, anything else in YA.
To say Stormdancer left an impression on me would be a huge understatement. To say that it is a good novel is an understatement. And to say that Yukiko and Buruu are just two characters in a book is an understatement. Nothing in Stormdancer is an understatement. I was there. I lived it. I felt it. That's what a great novel is. Stormdancer.
Heather
And the characters oh, so unforgettable. Yukiko, the 16 yr old main character is has hard as any substance on this planet. She is not without feeling, her heart is big and she loves, but she does what must be done. I thought I had seen tough characters in the past in the books I've read. All of them put together do not equal Yukiko. It's not just her skill at killing or her friendship with Buruu the "thundertiger" or the proper name arashitora. It's her ability to make decisions, the hard ones. To separate feeling from her mission. She is ruthless in her quest to restore Shima to it's former glory, when the sky was blue, when there were animals, and green plants. When the sun didn't burn everything up. When the water was clean and the air was safe to breathe. How she'll do this, she's not sure, but in this novel, she takes the first steps.
The other characters whether minor or major, were never ignored or forgotten. From Hiro, the samurai with the sea green eyes, to Masaru, Yukiko's father and the Master Hunter of the Shogun called "The Black Fox", no one was forgotten, each given rich detail and motivation. I was afraid I'd get hung up on foreign names and nicknames with "san" and "chan" added after the names and everything being so different. But it's as if Jay Kristoff leads you by the hand until you're comfortable with the world and then let's go. So I was never lost, I knew what every Yukiko-san meant and what Bushido was (of course the glossary in the back was very helpful and I read it a few times before I started reading). But the depth of what honor is and sacrifice for something bigger than herself-Yukiko taught me that lesson better than anything I've ever read, classics, adult comtemporaries, anything else in YA.
To say Stormdancer left an impression on me would be a huge understatement. To say that it is a good novel is an understatement. And to say that Yukiko and Buruu are just two characters in a book is an understatement. Nothing in Stormdancer is an understatement. I was there. I lived it. I felt it. That's what a great novel is. Stormdancer.
Heather