A review by tallyfire
Silk Road by Jeanne Larsen

adventurous hopeful lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Silk Road is a strange and unique book. It feels almost like patchwork, a beautiful quilt made of lots of varied parts (different points of view, a variety of narrators, poetry and “historic” texts). It tells the story of Parrot/Greenpearl on her quest to find her mother, and a lot of the story is told by her, but the machinations of a wide range of divine beings from Chinese mythology are also involved in her story. The book often steers off to distant realms to follow these divine beings, so Silk Road is constantly zooming in and out, mostly in space but occasionally in time too. It’s bizarre and disorienting, but also fascinating. A chapter narrated by Parrot morphs into a monologue by the anonymous narrator about how the story could continue, which flows into a collection of wild (but mostly true) tales describing what happened after, which turns into a description of what the nearby deities and silk weavers are up to, then on to a description of the local geography with flora and fauna listed… it’s madness.

Often it feels like the reader is only getting glimpses into the true story, particularly in the second half, which becomes more a fairy tale. In that regard, the first half is overly long and detailed in comparison, and much darker in tone. The book really lightens the more you read it.

When I started this book, I was hoping for a glimpse into life on the Silk Road during that time (Tang dynasty). This is not that. This is a book that whisks the reader off to China, steeped in mythology and natural beauty, for a story of how a general’s daughter goes from slave to concubine to swordswoman to weaver to
immortal
. Worth a read if you want something different and poetic. I hope to read it again now I know how the story ends.
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