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A review by alexan13
Descendant of the Crane by Joan He
4.0
Well, despite the fact that this book took me an entire three months to actually read (which essentially never happens for me), it's turned out to be one of my favorites of the year! It's a twisty, emotionally gripping and heart-wrenching novel about power, how to navigate it, and what happens when you can't.
My main issue with this book -- and the reason it doesn't get a full five stars -- is how slow the beginning is. And by the beginning, I mean the entire first half of the book. For the first half of the book the stakes feel low and uninteresting, the characters are interesting, but not necessarily enough to drive me to keep reading as we get to know them very slowly, and while the world is richly drawn and interesting from the beginning, it also didn't grip me. Frankly, I put this book down at the halfway after taking three weeks to get there, and struggled to motivate myself to pick it up again until this morning. And then couldn't put it down.
The second half of the book, if the reader makes it that far, is completely worthwhile and the payoff is immense. The first half of the novel builds up a world, builds up a plot, builds up stakes that our main character, the kingdom's new queen Hesina, thinks she understands. And then the second half of the novel, twist by twist by twist, undoes and questions everything the first half built up, revealing a depth to world, to stakes, to characters previously hidden by Hesina's own ignorance about the court, about her kingdom, and about where she stands in it all.
I recommend this -- and recommend pushing through it -- without reserve and really really hope that (although the author has said this is at this point a stand alone book) we get a sequel because, despite the certain kind of poetry of this novel ending where it did, I am dying to see what happens next.
My main issue with this book -- and the reason it doesn't get a full five stars -- is how slow the beginning is. And by the beginning, I mean the entire first half of the book. For the first half of the book the stakes feel low and uninteresting, the characters are interesting, but not necessarily enough to drive me to keep reading as we get to know them very slowly, and while the world is richly drawn and interesting from the beginning, it also didn't grip me. Frankly, I put this book down at the halfway after taking three weeks to get there, and struggled to motivate myself to pick it up again until this morning. And then couldn't put it down.
The second half of the book, if the reader makes it that far, is completely worthwhile and the payoff is immense. The first half of the novel builds up a world, builds up a plot, builds up stakes that our main character, the kingdom's new queen Hesina, thinks she understands. And then the second half of the novel, twist by twist by twist, undoes and questions everything the first half built up, revealing a depth to world, to stakes, to characters previously hidden by Hesina's own ignorance about the court, about her kingdom, and about where she stands in it all.
I recommend this -- and recommend pushing through it -- without reserve and really really hope that (although the author has said this is at this point a stand alone book) we get a sequel because, despite the certain kind of poetry of this novel ending where it did, I am dying to see what happens next.