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A review by mikarala
Tangled Spirits by Kate Shanahan
adventurous
informative
mysterious
1.5
This book was uh...not good. Really not good.
I stuck with this novel and finished it because I thought the idea of a modern American girl's spirit possessing an 11th century Japanese priestess/oracle/medium sounded really entertaining, even if that premise and the writing style really reminded me of some incredibly mediocre fanfiction I've read. I was willing to look past that if the story was good, because as a white North American girl who's always been a little weirdly interested in East Asian culture, I kind of thought this was the book for me.
Unfortunately, the execution just sucked. My rating for this book just got worse and worse as I kept reading. I think the main reason is that the plot felt extremely...lost, for lack of a better word. The main idea is that Mina, our 21st century American girl, wants to get back to her own body and time. You'd think that would be a pretty straight-forward goal for the story to focus on, right? Wrong. So much of this book is just a series of loosely connected events taking place in the Japanese Imperial Court at the turn of the 11th century. Instead of exploring the fun spiritual wackiness that's a part of the story, the story mainly centers around dull court machinations. (And not like, interesting court machinations. There's not enough depth to them for that.)
There are also just random plot threads and characters that kind of randomly pop up and seem like they'll be important, only to fade from the narrative. For example, at one point the Emperor asks Masako/Mina to interpret his dream, she says she needs a day, and then it's just...not mentioned again? What on earth.
When this novel really lost me, though, was the fact that Mina described Sei Shonagon, author of The Pillow Book and her personal idol, as "shallow and conceited", like it was funny but true? But Mina had previously gone on and on about how meaningful she found Sei's observations and the impact they'd supposedly had on her life, so the fact that Sei the character is described as a bit obsessed with aesthetics shouldn't change how deep and insightful Mina finds Sei's poems and observations and stuff. Unless Mina is admitting she's also shallow, I guess.
Finally, I just don't believe in the "bond" between Mina and Masako. They spent pretty much the whole novel barely cooperating together, and at the end had this big heart-to-heart about how much they had learned from their experience inhabiting the same body. Bull. Shit.
I stuck with this novel and finished it because I thought the idea of a modern American girl's spirit possessing an 11th century Japanese priestess/oracle/medium sounded really entertaining, even if that premise and the writing style really reminded me of some incredibly mediocre fanfiction I've read. I was willing to look past that if the story was good, because as a white North American girl who's always been a little weirdly interested in East Asian culture, I kind of thought this was the book for me.
Unfortunately, the execution just sucked. My rating for this book just got worse and worse as I kept reading. I think the main reason is that the plot felt extremely...lost, for lack of a better word. The main idea is that Mina, our 21st century American girl, wants to get back to her own body and time. You'd think that would be a pretty straight-forward goal for the story to focus on, right? Wrong. So much of this book is just a series of loosely connected events taking place in the Japanese Imperial Court at the turn of the 11th century. Instead of exploring the fun spiritual wackiness that's a part of the story, the story mainly centers around dull court machinations. (And not like, interesting court machinations. There's not enough depth to them for that.)
There are also just random plot threads and characters that kind of randomly pop up and seem like they'll be important, only to fade from the narrative. For example, at one point the Emperor asks Masako/Mina to interpret his dream, she says she needs a day, and then it's just...not mentioned again? What on earth.
When this novel really lost me, though, was the fact that Mina described Sei Shonagon, author of The Pillow Book and her personal idol, as "shallow and conceited", like it was funny but true? But Mina had previously gone on and on about how meaningful she found Sei's observations and the impact they'd supposedly had on her life, so the fact that Sei the character is described as a bit obsessed with aesthetics shouldn't change how deep and insightful Mina finds Sei's poems and observations and stuff. Unless Mina is admitting she's also shallow, I guess.
Finally, I just don't believe in the "bond" between Mina and Masako. They spent pretty much the whole novel barely cooperating together, and at the end had this big heart-to-heart about how much they had learned from their experience inhabiting the same body. Bull. Shit.