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A review by opheliapo
The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards
1.0
This book has been sitting on my TBR for far too long. I think I was gifted it by a relative, and for some reason there was just an air about it that made me sure it was not going to be to my taste. But hey, never judge a book by its cover, right? Or its blurb. Or its reviews.
Maybe I have a sixth sense about bad books then, because every negative assumption I had about this one turned out to be true.
My main criticism, that to some extent encompasses all of my criticisms, is that Kim Edwards utilises what I have been calling ‘aesthetic apathy’.
The overall tone of the book is clearly supposed to be that of some mysterious ‘eastern wisdom’ (from a Texan writer, I might add). One of the reviews on the back of the book even describes it as being ‘like the work of a wise traveller’. It may have been intended that way, but the result is a thinly veiled style that barely disguises its own ignorance.
The flowery writing is clumsy to say the least. It gave me PTSD flashbacks to The Book Thief, it was so misplaced.
For example, in the first story, ‘The Great Chain of Being’, Edwards describes her protagonist’s wrists and ankles as being ‘as delicate as bone’. Ah yes. Wrists and ankles. Made of skin, and flesh, and muscle, and... bone. Does comparing something to itself really class as a simile? After reading that my eyes were as startled as two round organs located in my sockets.
Later, in ‘Spring, Mountain, Sea’ Edwards describes the children’s language skills, explaining that they spoke ‘imperfectly but fluently.’ I think that she may have meant ‘fluidly’ here, or else she needs to get a hold of a dictionary, as you cannot be both imperfect at a language and fluent.
Finally, in ‘The Way it Felt to be Falling’ Edwards writes about how a young man threatens the protagonist, aggressively seizing her to the point of bruising. I was expecting the male character to be condemned at this point, but instead, when the bruises themselves are described, they are ‘delicate, shaped like a fan.’ EW. That is truly the definition of aesthetics over empathy. You do not describe the wounds of an abuser as beautiful, especially when the story is told from a third person perspective.
My next quarrel is with the cultural elements of this book. Edwards travels a lot around the world throughout these stories, though you might miss it, as I often found myself wondering where the hell we were, what time period we were in, and why the author felt the need to keep that information from us, when it was clearly so relevant.
Not to mention, some of the cultural aspects were a little misplaced, to say the least. There is definitely some stereotyping involved that made me uncomfortable, like the Korean war bride ‘Jade Moon’ in ‘Spring, Mountain, Sea’ and Yukiko Santiago in ‘Aristotle’s Lantern’, who was the ‘daughter of a Japanese Samurai family’ and whose grandfather had ‘supported the imperial army and committed seppuku’. That last one is a bit of a pet peeve for me. If all I knew about Japanese culture was through modern, western literature, then I would think every Japanese person was a geisha-samurai who carried a katana and lived by their family’s ‘honour’.
Plus, almost every female protagonist or focal character was described, in some manner or another, as being pale and thin. Very multicultural.
Throughout it all, though, I just found the characters to be flat, and the plots to be underwhelming. There were ‘bad’ characters with surface level bigotry, and ‘misunderstood’ characters with no depth, and I just didn’t care for them or their journeys.
I will forget about this book.
Maybe I have a sixth sense about bad books then, because every negative assumption I had about this one turned out to be true.
My main criticism, that to some extent encompasses all of my criticisms, is that Kim Edwards utilises what I have been calling ‘aesthetic apathy’.
The overall tone of the book is clearly supposed to be that of some mysterious ‘eastern wisdom’ (from a Texan writer, I might add). One of the reviews on the back of the book even describes it as being ‘like the work of a wise traveller’. It may have been intended that way, but the result is a thinly veiled style that barely disguises its own ignorance.
The flowery writing is clumsy to say the least. It gave me PTSD flashbacks to The Book Thief, it was so misplaced.
For example, in the first story, ‘The Great Chain of Being’, Edwards describes her protagonist’s wrists and ankles as being ‘as delicate as bone’. Ah yes. Wrists and ankles. Made of skin, and flesh, and muscle, and... bone. Does comparing something to itself really class as a simile? After reading that my eyes were as startled as two round organs located in my sockets.
Later, in ‘Spring, Mountain, Sea’ Edwards describes the children’s language skills, explaining that they spoke ‘imperfectly but fluently.’ I think that she may have meant ‘fluidly’ here, or else she needs to get a hold of a dictionary, as you cannot be both imperfect at a language and fluent.
Finally, in ‘The Way it Felt to be Falling’ Edwards writes about how a young man threatens the protagonist, aggressively seizing her to the point of bruising. I was expecting the male character to be condemned at this point, but instead, when the bruises themselves are described, they are ‘delicate, shaped like a fan.’ EW. That is truly the definition of aesthetics over empathy. You do not describe the wounds of an abuser as beautiful, especially when the story is told from a third person perspective.
My next quarrel is with the cultural elements of this book. Edwards travels a lot around the world throughout these stories, though you might miss it, as I often found myself wondering where the hell we were, what time period we were in, and why the author felt the need to keep that information from us, when it was clearly so relevant.
Not to mention, some of the cultural aspects were a little misplaced, to say the least. There is definitely some stereotyping involved that made me uncomfortable, like the Korean war bride ‘Jade Moon’ in ‘Spring, Mountain, Sea’ and Yukiko Santiago in ‘Aristotle’s Lantern’, who was the ‘daughter of a Japanese Samurai family’ and whose grandfather had ‘supported the imperial army and committed seppuku’. That last one is a bit of a pet peeve for me. If all I knew about Japanese culture was through modern, western literature, then I would think every Japanese person was a geisha-samurai who carried a katana and lived by their family’s ‘honour’.
Plus, almost every female protagonist or focal character was described, in some manner or another, as being pale and thin. Very multicultural.
Throughout it all, though, I just found the characters to be flat, and the plots to be underwhelming. There were ‘bad’ characters with surface level bigotry, and ‘misunderstood’ characters with no depth, and I just didn’t care for them or their journeys.
I will forget about this book.