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A review by fruitcd
Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee
A weirdly similar plot setup to Ninefox Gambit: a girl from a minority ethnic group becomes a soldier for an uncaring empire and gains power by forming a connection with a voice in her head. Oh, and there's weird techmagic that works based off people's belief in it (but because it's YA they don't torture people, they just pray). I thought there were a couple interesting things in here (her clone mom being called her "heart-mother" was very fun) but overall I just 1) don't like YA that much so I was not super interested in the teen drama stuff which is a LARGE portion of this book and 2) there were significant aspects of the worldbuilding and plotting that frustrated me.
Hwajin having a horrible childhood as a ward of the empire makes it so confusing that she genuinely is bought into the empire's propaganda and doesn't want to rejoin the clanners. I get that she wants to be a lancer pilot but why isn't her goal to steal a lancer and use it to escape back to the clanners? (Also why are they even called clanners in the first place?) I also thought the mechs were woefully underused and wish we had more of them influencing their pilots and unlocking their powers. The pacing of this is also bizarre, it feels like there were like 5 inciting instances where I thought war or SOMETHING was actually going to start happening, but then they just go right back to being in high school, just in a slightly different location.
I probably won't continue on with this series, but it's a fine YA book and I could imagine liking it more if I was in the age demographic or hadn't already read Machineries of Empire!
Hwajin having a horrible childhood as a ward of the empire makes it so confusing that she genuinely is bought into the empire's propaganda and doesn't want to rejoin the clanners. I get that she wants to be a lancer pilot but why isn't her goal to steal a lancer and use it to escape back to the clanners? (Also why are they even called clanners in the first place?) I also thought the mechs were woefully underused and wish we had more of them influencing their pilots and unlocking their powers. The pacing of this is also bizarre, it feels like there were like 5 inciting instances where I thought war or SOMETHING was actually going to start happening, but then they just go right back to being in high school, just in a slightly different location.
I probably won't continue on with this series, but it's a fine YA book and I could imagine liking it more if I was in the age demographic or hadn't already read Machineries of Empire!