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A review by hiveretcafe
The Walled City by Ryan Graudin
4.0
4.5 stars.
This review was originally posted on my blog, Hiver et Cafe with the moodboard.
I was provided with an e-ARC of this book from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers via NetGalley. This fact does not affect my review whatsoever and this review is my complete, honest opinion. I was not compensated for this review in any shape or form.
This is seriously the first book I've ever read that takes place in Hong Kong, and it's fascinating and refreshing.
My parents are from Hong Kong so I can understand some of the cantonese-isms that take place in this book. It's a little bit hard to understand because the english "ping-yum" or romanization of cantonese is a little weird.
Anyways, this book takes place in The Walled City in Kowloon, Hong Kong. At first, I had thought that it was a dystopia because of the whole, being in a walled city thing and having to run for their lives. I was sorely mistaken and instead this book, takes place in the 80s in Hong Kong.
This book switches between three points of view, Dai, Jin Ling and Mei Yee. Jin Ling and Mei Yee are sisters. Two years ago, Mei Yee was taken and put in a brothel run by the gangsters known as the Brotherhood, inside The Walled City. Jin Ling cut off her hair and disguised herself as a boy in order to find her sister. Dai is very mysterious in the beginning and he's on a mission. He's counting down to something, but the reader isn't aware until the whole "reveal" happens even from Dai's POV.
I really liked Jin Ling's character. She's strong, determined and loyal. She's not going to let anything get in the way of finding her sister. Dai is interesting. Very, very interesting. He may just seem mysterious in the beginning, but as things get revealed, his backstory really adds some depth to his character, some but not much. Mei Yee is stuck in the brothel and she displays a different kind of strength compared to her sister. She's strong in a quiet way, while Jin Ling's is loud.
I never knew what to expect from the storyline of this book. It really threw me for a loop with the whole being in HK thing. I could kind of predict some things just because of experience and generally how stories progress. But I seriously didn't predict too much of how it was exactly going to go about. It also helped that I didn't really know anything about The Walled City until I googled about it afterwards.
I seriously loved the setting and the world that THE WALLED CITY takes place in though. There's a sort of familiarity to the setting that is both strange and comforting. However, because this book is in an Asian setting about Asian characters, (all of them Asian btw. <3), I guess some things just don't translate well into English language. Some of the metaphors were just really weird to me and seemed like it was trying too hard to prove to be Asian.
Hong Kong is an interesting place to write a book about, especially fiction, because although they do mainly speak Cantonese, the British ruled Hong Kong for some time and so it was a mandatory thing in school to learn English, unlike now as China has taken Hong Kong back and thusly it's Mandarin that is taught in schools.
This book is a standalone and I really enjoyed it. I think that it would have ruined it if it were to have been a series. However, I would absolutely LOVE to read more YA that takes place in Hong Kong or Asia in general that focuses on an all Asian cast.
This review was originally posted on my blog, Hiver et Cafe with the moodboard.
I was provided with an e-ARC of this book from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers via NetGalley. This fact does not affect my review whatsoever and this review is my complete, honest opinion. I was not compensated for this review in any shape or form.
This is seriously the first book I've ever read that takes place in Hong Kong, and it's fascinating and refreshing.
My parents are from Hong Kong so I can understand some of the cantonese-isms that take place in this book. It's a little bit hard to understand because the english "ping-yum" or romanization of cantonese is a little weird.
Anyways, this book takes place in The Walled City in Kowloon, Hong Kong. At first, I had thought that it was a dystopia because of the whole, being in a walled city thing and having to run for their lives. I was sorely mistaken and instead this book, takes place in the 80s in Hong Kong.
This book switches between three points of view, Dai, Jin Ling and Mei Yee. Jin Ling and Mei Yee are sisters. Two years ago, Mei Yee was taken and put in a brothel run by the gangsters known as the Brotherhood, inside The Walled City. Jin Ling cut off her hair and disguised herself as a boy in order to find her sister. Dai is very mysterious in the beginning and he's on a mission. He's counting down to something, but the reader isn't aware until the whole "reveal" happens even from Dai's POV.
I really liked Jin Ling's character. She's strong, determined and loyal. She's not going to let anything get in the way of finding her sister. Dai is interesting. Very, very interesting. He may just seem mysterious in the beginning, but as things get revealed, his backstory really adds some depth to his character, some but not much. Mei Yee is stuck in the brothel and she displays a different kind of strength compared to her sister. She's strong in a quiet way, while Jin Ling's is loud.
I never knew what to expect from the storyline of this book. It really threw me for a loop with the whole being in HK thing. I could kind of predict some things just because of experience and generally how stories progress. But I seriously didn't predict too much of how it was exactly going to go about. It also helped that I didn't really know anything about The Walled City until I googled about it afterwards.
I seriously loved the setting and the world that THE WALLED CITY takes place in though. There's a sort of familiarity to the setting that is both strange and comforting. However, because this book is in an Asian setting about Asian characters, (all of them Asian btw. <3), I guess some things just don't translate well into English language. Some of the metaphors were just really weird to me and seemed like it was trying too hard to prove to be Asian.
Hong Kong is an interesting place to write a book about, especially fiction, because although they do mainly speak Cantonese, the British ruled Hong Kong for some time and so it was a mandatory thing in school to learn English, unlike now as China has taken Hong Kong back and thusly it's Mandarin that is taught in schools.
This book is a standalone and I really enjoyed it. I think that it would have ruined it if it were to have been a series. However, I would absolutely LOVE to read more YA that takes place in Hong Kong or Asia in general that focuses on an all Asian cast.