Review by starrysteph - The Phoenix Pencil Company

starrysteph 's review for:

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King

4.0

emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-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

The Phoenix Pencil Company is a magical investigation of family history, the power of your personal story, and how even pure intentions around community and connection can be warped. And it’s all explored through family pencils - and the women who have the power to bring their words back to life.

Who has the right to your story? How can stories reshape personal, national, and political narratives? Whose stories are broadcast and whose are hidden or restructured?

Monica lives a quiet life, splitting her time between studying and coding for a program called EMBRS that connects strangers with shared data through digital journals. But she’s worried about her elderly grandparents. They’re the ones who raised her, but they now live alone in Boston, and her grandmother Yun was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Yun has a heart-wrenching history, having lived through two wars in China and disconnected from her cousin and once-closest friend Meng. When Monica’s program connects them once again, Monica’s story is interwoven with Yun’s fading memories of her childhood. Yun worked for the Phoenix Pencil Company and the women in her family have the power to Reforge a pencil’s words, but what was once used for connection and love quickly becomes abused by their government for espionage and betrayal.

I was gripped by the family saga, maybe more so by Yun’s memory chapters than Monica’s present day. But both women are richly characterized with compelling stories. Monica is a bit more anxious and isolated, and Yun is sometimes harsh and stubborn. They make decisions they aren’t proud of, forgive and seek forgiveness from others, and burn things to the ground once or twice.

It’s striking to read about how the stories we love so dearly can be used to harm instead of connect. Everything can be exploited. It’s especially poignant when Monica learns to reframe these ethical questions and apply them to her digital program and the data it collects (something we should all really be thinking about!).

I thought the concept of Reforging was fascinating, especially how you can Reforge both through pleasure or pain - and how pleasure isn’t always framed as the best option by the end. It’s important to not look away from harm and hurt, and sometimes stories do cut you like knives.

I liked the threads of romance and the stepping out of loneliness that binds Yun and Monica, but I didn’t adore Monica’s relationship. I thought their supportiveness of each other was lovely, but it turned a bit cheesy and superfluous and eventually started to detract from the other parts of this story that I much more wanted to read. But what really rocked me was there was a betrayal that I thought was forgiven far too easily (and reframed their entire relationship very negatively for me). I did appreciate the arc with Monica feeling nervous to share her queerness with her grandparents and how that resolved.

There’s a highlight here on the stories that might embarrass us, but also how only some stories are preserved in history. It’s a gorgeous reminder to investigate all truths and not accept words at face value, to turn towards our pasts, and to protect our stories however best. Many of these characters have fierce desires to preserve all stories, but you don’t have the right to anyone else’s but your own.

Overall, this was a touching family saga and I was drawn in immediately by the magical elements. I would recommend this to anyone who loves record-keeping, generational storytelling, and the ethics of preserving history (digitally and physically).

CW: self harm, fire, war, injury, death, unintentional outing, abandonment, racism, xenophobia, dementia, grief, bullying

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Content Warnings