Book Review: Fox and Phoenix

My eye was caught by the cover of this book at one of my library's teeny-tiny branches and wow that is a pretty cover. As I've said in the past, I tend to prefer illustrated covers to ones that are photographs since it seems like the most elaborate covers I've seen, like this one, tend to be illustrated (I suppose it's simply cheaper to pay an artist to draw something rather than to shoot an image/shoot several images and composite them/search for stock images that you can composite together). And as far as I'm concerned, judging a real, physical book by it's cover, whether or not it's actually illustrated in the same style inside, is a perfectly reasonable way of choosing what to read!

Fox & Phoenix by Beth Bernobich

Summary: Kai used to be a street rat king but after winning the competition for the princess's hand he's had to settle down and become respectable, learning magic at his mother's shop instead of running through the sewers. But something is amiss in Lóng City and he and his old friend Yún are going to have to bring the princess back from her studies and the journey to her school isn't a simple one under the best of circumstances and dangerous when there are backstabbing political factions that would rather they not succeed. 

The Good: As the cover indicates this book had a rather cool setting, a mixture of magic and technology with a lot of detail put into it*. Plus, hopefully the cover, title, and character names made this clear but it's also an Asian inspired setting which makes me happy since those are less common (which means that it tends to feel a little fresher/we're getting a bit more diversity in YA which is always excellent). And that was easily my favorite part of the story, seeing a nicely thought out setting with plenty of details, although I did feel like Lóng City and the Phoenix Empire had a disproportionately large amount of the descriptions.

The Bad: Just for the record, the title is a bit misleading since it refers to the companion spirit animals of characters who appear rather late in the story, although I suppose it's more romantic saying than a more accurate version, Pig & Crane. Also, some people might remember that a few weeks ago I talked about the book Throne of Glass and my mixed feelings on having the story start the way it did, basically starting a series with what would have normally been the second book since quite a few important things have already happened to the main character and made her who she is (and the story doesn't elaborate on much of it). Fox & Phoenix is rather similar, Kai and his band of friends have already had some grand adventures and now they're settling into their lives after and, while the characters could see how everyone was growing up and changing the reader couldn't as much because we never got to see where they started from. I think this would have been less of a problem if their previous adventures hadn't been brought up with quite as much frequency as they were because it made me feel like I had missed part of the story which is a rather unsettling feeling. And because of that the entire story felt underdeveloped to me, I wasn't able to care about the characters as much as I should have and even though I found the setting cool more often or not the characters were just talking about how cool something was instead of letting me come to that conclusion on my own. 


So just a 3 out of 5 for me since while the setting was nice and the book worked the plot wasn't original enough to be memorable a few years down the road and I just felt like it could have handled how it talked about earlier events a bit smoother. I am a bit curious why I've suddenly come across two books published relatively close together that have used that set-up when I've rarely seen it before in YA, I wonder why that is....



*if I say "magic punk" will anyone else get what I'm trying to say? Like, somewhat anocrasnic technology with lots of magic mixed in (basically steampunk with magic instead)? No, hmm, must figure out a better phrase then.

Book Review: Where Mountain Meets the Moon

And now to mooch off of family wifi to see if I can get this review up on time. This is another book that I grabbed in desperation towards the end of the school year yet I wasn't able to read it until I got home and checked it out from my local library (silly school had me return the books a few days before graduation). Once I started reading I got a little nervous since it became clear that it was middle grade not young adult, and well, middle grade books just engage me less these days (considering I'm about ten years too old for them this shouldn't be a surprise). But, since I am still in a slump, plus this was on my list, and I was enjoying it, I decided to perserve and finished it rather quickly regardless.

Where Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Summary: Minli lives with her family on the Fruitless Mountain and, even though she knows why the stories say the mountain is so barren, after hearing another story from her father and on the advice of a goldfish she goes off to see the Old Man on the Moon and ask him herself.

The Good: I liked how the story was able to incorporate a half dozen other stories told by the characters into itself and create a history and a precedence for what Minli is doing that way. I have no idea how closely any of these stories resemble real Chinese fairy tales but they have the same feeling, the same kind of stories and storytelling, that “real” fairy tales I’ve read had and that’s not the easiest style of story to recreate.

The Bad: Since the story is middle grade it was a little too simplistic for my taste, that combined with the fact that it’s a quest means that Minli rarely faced true adversary or hardship and I do wish the story had thrown in a little more of that (even though I do prefer quest type stories to "defeat the evil lord" kinds of stories and liked how no villain suddenly appeared at the end for Minli to vanquish). But, since a middle grade book doesn’t need to be the most complex thing out there, nothing really does and when your readers are 11 this is doubly true, this isn’t a terrible thing and with the story’s quick pacing this also would have been hard to pull off.

I’m giving this one a 3.5 out of 5 for being a rather solid book, even if it wasn’t precisely what I wanted, and would easily recommend it to any middle grade reader who wanted something fantasy to read. 

Manga Review: A Bride's Story volume 2

Once again I'm rather behind in this series, I got the second volume right when everyone else was getting the third volume, but since this series comes out so slowly I don't think this is going to end up being a problem in the long run.  It does leave me with a bit less to say since it feels like everyone has covered all the important details. It also feels a bit odd to be covering a volume of work in the middle of a series (instead of the first one or the series as a whole) but since I've already reviewed the first volume I'll give this a shot and see how reviewing indivdual manga volumes go.

A Bride’s Story (volume 2) by Kaoru Mori

Summary: Despite interruptions by Amir's family life continues as it has with Amir discovering new things about her adopted culture and deepening her relationship with Karluk.

The Good: The plot picks up a bit with the conflict between Amir and her family which, while not permanently resolved, concludes satisfyingly for the moment. This bit of plot development provides a bit more character development for Karluk and some development in his and Amir's relationship which works nicely. A few new characters are introduced and while they're not fully fleshed out they don't feel like 2D cutouts. In short I believe this was a stronger volume than the first and can only hope that the third volume is even stronger yet.  

The Bad: It appears that after this volume that the manga is shifting gears and will be focusing on other characters instead which will probably be a good thing in the long run but does make me a bit sad since Mori created some very likable characters and I hope the story comes back to them sometime later on. In some ways this "arc" was tied up a bit too neatly but, while it's clear that Mori is going for realism here she's also made it clear in Emma that she won't be a slave to it if it gets in the way of her storytelling so that's to be expected.

The Art: The art continues to stun and shows what an incredible amount of visual research Mori must have put into the series. The scenes that show the characters sewing could be used as a step-by-step guide to teach people how to sew those stitches and her art makes the relatively humble art of baking fascinating. The action scenes also show that she can show dynamic movement without having the details overwhelm the image/sacrificing her trademark detail work.

Bit of a short review but again, it seems like everyone else has already covered everything worth saying about this volume plus it is slice of life, there's a bit less to talk about to start with. Not sure when I'll get a hold of volume 3, probably the next time TRSI has a Yen Press sale so most likely in 2 or 3 months, and I'm eagerly looking forward to that volume as well.