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Aug. 27th, 2009 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSO speaking of YA novels that are heavy on the ridiculous monsters, I read Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix! Which has at least one new monster per chapter, each crazier and creepier than the last. (Seriously - we start with triple-breasted vampire sirens and move onto GIANTS COMPOSED ENTIRELY OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S CORPSES.)
The book follows 17-year-old Ai Ling, who decides that instead of hanging around waiting for a creepy dude to put pressure on her mom to let her marry him, she's going to head off and find her missing father herself. It would be a lot easier if not for the fact that she keeps getting attacked by the aforementioned monster per chapter. On the plus side, she rapidly acquires a hot half-foreign dude on a Quest To Find Out His Parentage and his entertainingly girl-crazy younger brother as sidekicks!
The backstory turns out to be complicated if not fully explored and involve reincarnation, eternal life, and trapped souls, not to mention a secret baby! There is also a lot of really cool Chinese-based mythology, and I mean a lot - the exuberance of the worldbuilding and the creative and unique fantasy elements are half of the best part of the book. The other half is the food descriptions, which are guaranteed to make you hungry. (Thirty pages in, I gave in and went to order Chinese takeout as a pale approximation.)
The downside is that the characterization is kind of flat - Ai Ling is a perfectly acceptable protagonist and I didn't dislike her at all, but she's a pretty standard Spunky Heroine, and I kept wanting more character development out of the reincarnation stuff than we got. I kept feeling like it would make a good movie, actually. The imagery is great and would be gorgeous filmed, the plot is all there and not too dense to compress a bit, and good actors would infuse the characters with a little more personality.
Anyway, it's a fun read! You kind of have to love an author whose response to "what should happen in this chapter?" is always "MORE MONSTERS! This time . . . . CREEPY SCIENTIST MONSTERS!" I will be checking out the prequel/sequel (I am not clear on which it is going to be?) when Cindy Pon comes out with it.
The book follows 17-year-old Ai Ling, who decides that instead of hanging around waiting for a creepy dude to put pressure on her mom to let her marry him, she's going to head off and find her missing father herself. It would be a lot easier if not for the fact that she keeps getting attacked by the aforementioned monster per chapter. On the plus side, she rapidly acquires a hot half-foreign dude on a Quest To Find Out His Parentage and his entertainingly girl-crazy younger brother as sidekicks!
The backstory turns out to be complicated if not fully explored and involve reincarnation, eternal life, and trapped souls, not to mention a secret baby! There is also a lot of really cool Chinese-based mythology, and I mean a lot - the exuberance of the worldbuilding and the creative and unique fantasy elements are half of the best part of the book. The other half is the food descriptions, which are guaranteed to make you hungry. (Thirty pages in, I gave in and went to order Chinese takeout as a pale approximation.)
The downside is that the characterization is kind of flat - Ai Ling is a perfectly acceptable protagonist and I didn't dislike her at all, but she's a pretty standard Spunky Heroine, and I kept wanting more character development out of the reincarnation stuff than we got. I kept feeling like it would make a good movie, actually. The imagery is great and would be gorgeous filmed, the plot is all there and not too dense to compress a bit, and good actors would infuse the characters with a little more personality.
Anyway, it's a fun read! You kind of have to love an author whose response to "what should happen in this chapter?" is always "MORE MONSTERS! This time . . . . CREEPY SCIENTIST MONSTERS!" I will be checking out the prequel/sequel (I am not clear on which it is going to be?) when Cindy Pon comes out with it.
