I feared both men and spirits now. I had no allies, only enemies on all sides.
A magnificent retelling, The Night Ends with Fire isn't the Mulan legend of your Disney youth, that's for sure.
Meilin has grown up under the thumb of her oppressive father all her life. Soon he plans to sell her for her dowry to another violent man who will treat her the same. When war comes to the Three Kingdoms, Meilin seizes her chance and enlists in the army as a man. But as she gains skills and confidence and the power of a spirit, she begins to wonder if her duplicity will hold and how far she's really willing to go to secure her freedom.
Let me just gush for a second here. I had such an amazing time with this story. It's exactly the sort I adore, with a badass heroine and a high stakes conflict where everything is on the line. There is no easy victory, only hard choices, and every character is some shade of morally gray.
I feel like Disney's Mulan was a bit too goody two-shoes (as is typical of Disney), so I'm really glad this book turned that on its head. Meilin certainly isn't good through and through. Instead, she must balance her desire for freedom and power with her duty to her kingdom and her love for her family. There was a rawness and courage to Meilin that makes it easy to like her and relate to her, even if I didn't always understand or agree with her decisions.
In fact, it's not just Meilin's character that's interesting and complex. It's almost every character in this book. Their moral ambiguity is a large part of why they come across as real and interesting. There is no straightforward path when it comes to war, no high road to take on the way to victory. There is only bloodshed and sacrifice and death, and this tale certainly doesn't shy away from that.
The writing in here is evocative and easy to fall into. I feel like I was sucked in from the very first page. To me, there is no higher compliment and no greater quality in a book than immersiveness, and this story has it in spades. I wanted to gobbled it up but also savor it slowly so that I didn't reach the end too soon.
This is categorized as romantasy, and I would say it's mostly fantasy with just a bit of romance sprinkled in, exactly how I like it. The fantasy world is vivid and easy to grasp without a lot of complex worldbuilding. And the light romance should appeal to readers who aren't big fans of it or don't care for lots of explicit scenes.
One interesting thing to note are the names in here. When you translate names between different languages, you have the choice of going phonetically or contextually. Phonetically is generally considered more authentic, but you lose the meaning behind the names. Here, the author chose to do a mix of both. While at first it was a little odd to have names in pinyin like "Meilin" next to "Sky" and "Sparrow", I did grow to appreciate that it gave context where otherwise there would be none and helped to distinguish the characters for an English-speaking audience.
Same could also be said for including some Chinese phrases mixed in in an English book. When the meaning is unclear, the author often put the pinyin and the English side-by-side, so that really the phrase is duplicated. I can see the purists getting up in arms over it, claiming that it's sufficient just to include the pinyin and leave it at that. So what if the audience it's intended for doesn't understand? But that's just silly. While I'm all for authenticity, I'm happy with the balance the author struck so that no one has to miss out.
What an exhilarating tale this turned out to be. I originally picked it up because the luminous cover and pretty sprayed edges totally captured my attention, and I wasn't about to pass up a Mulan retelling. While judging a book by its cover doesn't always pay off, it certainly did in this case.
My only regret is reaching the end and realizing this isn't a standalone. Now starts the long wait for the sequel.
Readaroo Rating; 5 stars!
0 comments:
Post a Comment