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A review by alibrareads
Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara
2.0
I wish that this spoke to me more, but I found this so boring! Some vaguely interesting/intriguing things happen at the very very end, but most of this had a whole lot of nothing happening. Or rather, things happened... But it was like I was viewing it from a distance and there was nothing connecting me emotionally to the things going on. Saya was utterly useless as a “heroine”. She was nothing but a plot device, even though she was apparently super important as the Water Maiden and the one who could still the wrath of gods. That wasn’t even really displayed clearly in the book! If I wasn’t repeatedly told that’s what she could do I never would have surmised that she was good for anything at all. She was just swept along by other people or events and was miserable all the time.
I did like the idea that there wasn’t exactly good or evil in either the Light or Darkness. The Light was all about being utterly devoted to something to a fault and tossing out things like compassion to achieve an ideal, and the Darkness was about mischief and enjoying life because of its impermanence. Both can be necessary and beautiful in their own way. But it isn’t a new or revolutionary idea to have “light” be viewed more as the enemy rather than “darkness”.
This was translated from Japanese, so I’m not sure if maybe some cultural differences between Japanese storytelling and European/American storytelling influenced my feelings on this. I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it was a 100 page short story or something rather than almost 300 pages. As it is, I had to force myself to push through and finish this book.
The pacing was slow and I was just not interested in Saya’s constant pity-party and her weird relationships/fascinations with the two Princes of Light.
Won’t be looking into the other books in this series and probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless they were specifically looking for translated Japanese fantasy/folklore, and even then... I don’t think it was very good for how long it was.
Check out my YouTube review: https://youtu.be/nsw7W7rtIGM
I did like the idea that there wasn’t exactly good or evil in either the Light or Darkness. The Light was all about being utterly devoted to something to a fault and tossing out things like compassion to achieve an ideal, and the Darkness was about mischief and enjoying life because of its impermanence. Both can be necessary and beautiful in their own way. But it isn’t a new or revolutionary idea to have “light” be viewed more as the enemy rather than “darkness”.
This was translated from Japanese, so I’m not sure if maybe some cultural differences between Japanese storytelling and European/American storytelling influenced my feelings on this. I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it was a 100 page short story or something rather than almost 300 pages. As it is, I had to force myself to push through and finish this book.
The pacing was slow and I was just not interested in Saya’s constant pity-party and her weird relationships/fascinations with the two Princes of Light.
Won’t be looking into the other books in this series and probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless they were specifically looking for translated Japanese fantasy/folklore, and even then... I don’t think it was very good for how long it was.
Check out my YouTube review: https://youtu.be/nsw7W7rtIGM