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A review by apollo0325
Zhara by S. Jae-Jones
adventurous
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I had to sit with my feelings on this book before I wrote a review because when I finished the book, I was angry, irritated, and even frustrated. There was wasted potential everywhere bogged down by inconsistent characterization, unnecessary romantic subplot, and yes, we MUST reference BTS in every way we can. My review is full of spoilers so beware.
I’ll breakdown my frustrations one at a time.
My first frustration is how inconsistently our FMC, Zhara is portrayed. We’re immediately introduced to her as our nervous, shy, and introverted protagonist who loves reading and is of course a magician/magic user. She is our Cinderella as she is the step daughter to a horribly selfish woman and has a little step sister who is blind because of Zhara’s magic. Later on, we learn Shizun was always going to be blind, so did Zhara really actually blind her? No, soooo… Anyway, Zhara stutters around her step mother and any authority (until about 70% of the way through the book and then the stuttering suddenly stops) and is a big rule follower in private and in public. Until we meet our MMC, Han. This is when she starts to flirt hardcore and even make sex jokes! But only occasionally because other times, she’s quiet and attentive, blushing and becoming shy all over again. Huh??? What??? In your first meeting, you cracked a sex joke!!! Why are you suddenly shy now?? The inconsistencies only progress from there where Zhara is so smart one minute and then absolutely oblivious the next just so the audience can be info-dumped. Our BIG BAD ANTAGONIST of the ENTIRE SERIES info dumps in the last chapter right before the epilogue. What the fuck was that?
Which leads to my second point: the pacing. Chapters upon chapters will be a day or two in time, but then suddenly, we’re at the Big Celebration Night?? Zhara is stuck in a kitchen for 3 days, but there’s no sense of that time happening. She’s not talking about her hunger, her smell, nothing. There’s no true sense of being betrayed by Shizun because Zhara immediately forgives her without a second thought. That would have been a perfect character moment to harden Zhara to reality or even explored her relationship more with Shizun. I said fuck Shizun after that moment because we hardly get much scenes with Shizun to begin with and the moments we do get she is reduced to “helpless blind girl #1.” Why would I care about Shizun AT ALL??? Being abused isn’t a fucking character trait and I wish people would understand that more. Shizun is a ragdoll for Stepmother or the Chancellor, and her only trait is “omg she’s a prodigious zither player.” I don’t give a fuck because why should I when I know virtually nothing about her?
Han… Sweet Han. The victim of a trope of strong man = stupid man. I really enjoyed Han’s story at first because his position in life gave his story some actual stakes. Anyang being young and a magician, Han being the next in line for the crown that’s supposed to remove magicians from the Morning Realms. Amazing! I love that. Instead, it’s barely that. Similarly to Shizun, we know virtually nothing about Anyang. Why not? We get these great little moments but what about beyond the times Anyang has nightmares? Where are the moments of tenderness and calm between Han and Anyang that aren’t giving Anyang nightmares/night terrors of demon frogs? We have so many moments with Han and Xu; why were we lacking so much with character relationships that should have stakes?? Han himself suffered because of the overly consistent characterization and quickly became very flat by the 40% mark. He became muscled stupid man so quickly.
Truthfully, Yulana should have been the FMC. Her stake in the game is incredibly high and actively feels relevant to the plot. She’s the granddaughter of the magician-hating Warlord while she herself is a magician, even the Guardian of the Wind. She actively chooses to be engaged with Han because she needs information, and I think that’s great! It created this uneasy tension between Yulana and Han, and that was probably one of the better set of character interactions. Also, Yulana being this big lesbian really sent an arrow straight to my heart. Han and her had more chemistry than Han and Zhara! Because guess what? They actually had substantial interactions!
A love story was not necessary to this plot. What we should have been focusing on was the character relationships within the plot like Shizun and Zhara and Han and Anyang. The relationship could have been a beautiful slowburn built on friendship and trust but no. We MUST have them kiss. Why?? Why can we not explore a relationship further instead of immediately jumping into “ope, they’re together now, yay!” WHAT FUCKING CHEMISTRY WAS THERE????? “Omg she looks at me like a normal person” okay??? That’s the dumbest reason to want to be with someone. They barely know each other!
I will give the book points for a few things: the magic system has a lot of potential and is interesting especially when introducing brushes as the conduit for magic and the setting itself is thought out and expansive, making it easy to create a series within it. However, the trappings of this world mean nothing when your characters are simply cardboard cutouts.
The ending… What the fuck was this all for? If the crown could have denied the eradication of magicians in the first place, why did any of this start to begin with? Could the magicians of before not protect themselves? Could they have not rebelled against the Warlord like the epilogue says they’re doing now? I literally don’t fucking get it. I don’t understand why we went on this journey when they could have just done this in the first place.
My final critique of this book is the not subtle at all inclusion of BTS. I learned from a friend that I was sharing my cringe experience with this book to her about the heavy inclusion of BTS that S. Jae-Jones got into BTS around the time she was writing this book. I think in the future, should you want to include shit like this again, I recommend you stop and think and maybe just write your fun little ideas on a post-it note instead. Everything about the BTS inclusion made me cringe in real life. I had to literally stop my reading to take in the fact that these motherfuckers did a goddamn kpop introduction as if they were on a game show. I fucking lost it. I was MALDING. I kept asking myself why? Why are we doing this? To be cheeky? Because we like BTS?? It was so fucking stupid. It was so goddamn stupid. I think about it and then get unnecessarily angry because WHY. We sacrifice potential character development and relationship development so we can self-insert into a Bangtan Bomb video. Come the fuck on. It’s so fucking transparently what it is and it makes me so angry. Thank God my friend I’m buddy reading with has zero context and isn’t cursed like I am. She can read those moments in blissful ignorance while I yell from my cave about how annoyingly cringe it was to read it.
Anyway, 2 stars for the setting and magic system. In my heart, I’d give this a 1 but clearly, I still think about how infuriated this book made me so I guess 2/5.
My first frustration is how inconsistently our FMC, Zhara is portrayed. We’re immediately introduced to her as our nervous, shy, and introverted protagonist who loves reading and is of course a magician/magic user. She is our Cinderella as she is the step daughter to a horribly selfish woman and has a little step sister who is blind because of Zhara’s magic. Later on, we learn Shizun was always going to be blind, so did Zhara really actually blind her? No, soooo… Anyway, Zhara stutters around her step mother and any authority (until about 70% of the way through the book and then the stuttering suddenly stops) and is a big rule follower in private and in public. Until we meet our MMC, Han. This is when she starts to flirt hardcore and even make sex jokes! But only occasionally because other times, she’s quiet and attentive, blushing and becoming shy all over again. Huh??? What??? In your first meeting, you cracked a sex joke!!! Why are you suddenly shy now?? The inconsistencies only progress from there where Zhara is so smart one minute and then absolutely oblivious the next just so the audience can be info-dumped. Our BIG BAD ANTAGONIST of the ENTIRE SERIES info dumps in the last chapter right before the epilogue. What the fuck was that?
Which leads to my second point: the pacing. Chapters upon chapters will be a day or two in time, but then suddenly, we’re at the Big Celebration Night?? Zhara is stuck in a kitchen for 3 days, but there’s no sense of that time happening. She’s not talking about her hunger, her smell, nothing. There’s no true sense of being betrayed by Shizun because Zhara immediately forgives her without a second thought. That would have been a perfect character moment to harden Zhara to reality or even explored her relationship more with Shizun. I said fuck Shizun after that moment because we hardly get much scenes with Shizun to begin with and the moments we do get she is reduced to “helpless blind girl #1.” Why would I care about Shizun AT ALL??? Being abused isn’t a fucking character trait and I wish people would understand that more. Shizun is a ragdoll for Stepmother or the Chancellor, and her only trait is “omg she’s a prodigious zither player.” I don’t give a fuck because why should I when I know virtually nothing about her?
Han… Sweet Han. The victim of a trope of strong man = stupid man. I really enjoyed Han’s story at first because his position in life gave his story some actual stakes. Anyang being young and a magician, Han being the next in line for the crown that’s supposed to remove magicians from the Morning Realms. Amazing! I love that. Instead, it’s barely that. Similarly to Shizun, we know virtually nothing about Anyang. Why not? We get these great little moments but what about beyond the times Anyang has nightmares? Where are the moments of tenderness and calm between Han and Anyang that aren’t giving Anyang nightmares/night terrors of demon frogs? We have so many moments with Han and Xu; why were we lacking so much with character relationships that should have stakes?? Han himself suffered because of the overly consistent characterization and quickly became very flat by the 40% mark. He became muscled stupid man so quickly.
Truthfully, Yulana should have been the FMC. Her stake in the game is incredibly high and actively feels relevant to the plot. She’s the granddaughter of the magician-hating Warlord while she herself is a magician, even the Guardian of the Wind. She actively chooses to be engaged with Han because she needs information, and I think that’s great! It created this uneasy tension between Yulana and Han, and that was probably one of the better set of character interactions. Also, Yulana being this big lesbian really sent an arrow straight to my heart. Han and her had more chemistry than Han and Zhara! Because guess what? They actually had substantial interactions!
A love story was not necessary to this plot. What we should have been focusing on was the character relationships within the plot like Shizun and Zhara and Han and Anyang. The relationship could have been a beautiful slowburn built on friendship and trust but no. We MUST have them kiss. Why?? Why can we not explore a relationship further instead of immediately jumping into “ope, they’re together now, yay!” WHAT FUCKING CHEMISTRY WAS THERE????? “Omg she looks at me like a normal person” okay??? That’s the dumbest reason to want to be with someone. They barely know each other!
I will give the book points for a few things: the magic system has a lot of potential and is interesting especially when introducing brushes as the conduit for magic and the setting itself is thought out and expansive, making it easy to create a series within it. However, the trappings of this world mean nothing when your characters are simply cardboard cutouts.
The ending… What the fuck was this all for? If the crown could have denied the eradication of magicians in the first place, why did any of this start to begin with? Could the magicians of before not protect themselves? Could they have not rebelled against the Warlord like the epilogue says they’re doing now? I literally don’t fucking get it. I don’t understand why we went on this journey when they could have just done this in the first place.
My final critique of this book is the not subtle at all inclusion of BTS. I learned from a friend that I was sharing my cringe experience with this book to her about the heavy inclusion of BTS that S. Jae-Jones got into BTS around the time she was writing this book. I think in the future, should you want to include shit like this again, I recommend you stop and think and maybe just write your fun little ideas on a post-it note instead. Everything about the BTS inclusion made me cringe in real life. I had to literally stop my reading to take in the fact that these motherfuckers did a goddamn kpop introduction as if they were on a game show. I fucking lost it. I was MALDING. I kept asking myself why? Why are we doing this? To be cheeky? Because we like BTS?? It was so fucking stupid. It was so goddamn stupid. I think about it and then get unnecessarily angry because WHY. We sacrifice potential character development and relationship development so we can self-insert into a Bangtan Bomb video. Come the fuck on. It’s so fucking transparently what it is and it makes me so angry. Thank God my friend I’m buddy reading with has zero context and isn’t cursed like I am. She can read those moments in blissful ignorance while I yell from my cave about how annoyingly cringe it was to read it.
Anyway, 2 stars for the setting and magic system. In my heart, I’d give this a 1 but clearly, I still think about how infuriated this book made me so I guess 2/5.