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A review by bibliomania_express
Pahua and the Soul Stealer by Lori M. Lee
4.0
Pahua and the Soul Stealer is fun, snappy, and has falliable heroes and real issues bound up in the adventure and fantasy. I really enjoyed this book - the characters felt real and the worldbuilding was fantastic.
Pahua is a great main character - she's strong, cunning, determined, and brave, but she sees herself as inferior and a perpetual outsider. She's dealing with her father abandoning their family, her guilt over her brother's soul being captured, and all the bullying and racism she's faced at school. Pahua goes from a Hmong girl who feels out of place, who loses herself in games of pretend to be strong, to someone who embraces her uniqueness and finds strength in being herself.
Zhong was a great foil for Pahua, as Pahua sees Zhong as this perfect, competent and confident shaman-warrior, but we get enough glimpses of Zhong's life at her shaman school that she also feels overlooked and second-best. Rounding out our trio is Miv, the sassy cat spirit who is Pahua's best friend. Miv has his own past, but I loved seeing the three of them work their way through danger to become a team.
As with all the books in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, I loved learning about a new mythology - this one the oral traditions of the Hmong people. Nature spirits play a big role in this story, particularly trees, but we also get a rundown of the gods, like Ntuj the Sky Father and Xov the destroyer, and heroes like Shee Yee. I particularly liked the Tree of Souls and the Crossroads - both settings were fun and vivid (and packed with adventure).
There were a few plot points that I called early on, and a couple of very convenient things, but there were also a few of great twists. I do wish we had more of the shaman world fleshed out, but I expect to see more in the next book. I also wish there had been more of Matt - he felt like a typical younger brother, but I didn't feel like we got enough hints of who he was for how imporrant he was to the story.
Also, there's a bit of a fake out with phonics - sneaky, sneaky.
Rating:
Pahua is a great main character - she's strong, cunning, determined, and brave, but she sees herself as inferior and a perpetual outsider. She's dealing with her father abandoning their family, her guilt over her brother's soul being captured, and all the bullying and racism she's faced at school. Pahua goes from a Hmong girl who feels out of place, who loses herself in games of pretend to be strong, to someone who embraces her uniqueness and finds strength in being herself.
Zhong was a great foil for Pahua, as Pahua sees Zhong as this perfect, competent and confident shaman-warrior, but we get enough glimpses of Zhong's life at her shaman school that she also feels overlooked and second-best. Rounding out our trio is Miv, the sassy cat spirit who is Pahua's best friend. Miv has his own past, but I loved seeing the three of them work their way through danger to become a team.
As with all the books in the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, I loved learning about a new mythology - this one the oral traditions of the Hmong people. Nature spirits play a big role in this story, particularly trees, but we also get a rundown of the gods, like Ntuj the Sky Father and Xov the destroyer, and heroes like Shee Yee. I particularly liked the Tree of Souls and the Crossroads - both settings were fun and vivid (and packed with adventure).
There were a few plot points that I called early on, and a couple of very convenient things, but there were also a few of great twists. I do wish we had more of the shaman world fleshed out, but I expect to see more in the next book. I also wish there had been more of Matt - he felt like a typical younger brother, but I didn't feel like we got enough hints of who he was for how imporrant he was to the story.
Also, there's a bit of a fake out with phonics - sneaky, sneaky.
Rating: