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eve_polvay11 's review for:
Boxers
by Gene Luen Yang
✨book #91 for the every country challenge: read a book set in china
After having Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and loving it, I was ready to dive into this graphic novel full throtle. I was more than excited to pcik up his other works and fall in love all over again. But upon sitting down to write this review, I found I didn't have nearly as many positive things to discuss as I'd hoped.
Set in 1898 China, Boxers follows bands or foreign missionaries and soldiers as they roam the countryside, bullying and robbing Chinese peasants. Little Bao has had enough. Harnessing the power of the ancient Chinese Gods, he recruits an army of Boxers- commoners trained in Kung Fu- who fight to free China from "foreign devils.
Against all odds, this grass-roots rebellion is violently successful. But nothing is simple. Little Bao is fighting for the glory of China, but at what cost? Countless are dying, including thousands of "secondary evils"- Chinese people who have converted to Christianity.
Boxers has a rich setting with complex characters that made me compulsively turn page after page to find out what would happen next. However, I was more than once dissappointed to find that personal growth and over all character development in general was severely lacking. A contributing factor of this was how often people were being killed off. Yes, I do agree that some authors get to attached to their character and never kill them off, but to much of the other extreme is bad too. I saw most of the characters so infrequently that I couldn't bring myself to care for them or their situation.
But I did love Bao's dreams, even if they weren't really well explained as to why they were suddenly happening... I ended up flowing with it because Gene Luen Yang's storytelling skills are phenomenal.
Boxers was an unexpected read that I thought for sure was going to blow my socks off. However, it left me leaving underwhelmed in most respects. This being said- I do want to continue with Boxer's companion novel, Saints, and hopefully I will feel more attached.
After having Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and loving it, I was ready to dive into this graphic novel full throtle. I was more than excited to pcik up his other works and fall in love all over again. But upon sitting down to write this review, I found I didn't have nearly as many positive things to discuss as I'd hoped.
Set in 1898 China, Boxers follows bands or foreign missionaries and soldiers as they roam the countryside, bullying and robbing Chinese peasants. Little Bao has had enough. Harnessing the power of the ancient Chinese Gods, he recruits an army of Boxers- commoners trained in Kung Fu- who fight to free China from "foreign devils.
Against all odds, this grass-roots rebellion is violently successful. But nothing is simple. Little Bao is fighting for the glory of China, but at what cost? Countless are dying, including thousands of "secondary evils"- Chinese people who have converted to Christianity.
Boxers has a rich setting with complex characters that made me compulsively turn page after page to find out what would happen next. However, I was more than once dissappointed to find that personal growth and over all character development in general was severely lacking. A contributing factor of this was how often people were being killed off. Yes, I do agree that some authors get to attached to their character and never kill them off, but to much of the other extreme is bad too. I saw most of the characters so infrequently that I couldn't bring myself to care for them or their situation.
But I did love Bao's dreams, even if they weren't really well explained as to why they were suddenly happening... I ended up flowing with it because Gene Luen Yang's storytelling skills are phenomenal.
Boxers was an unexpected read that I thought for sure was going to blow my socks off. However, it left me leaving underwhelmed in most respects. This being said- I do want to continue with Boxer's companion novel, Saints, and hopefully I will feel more attached.