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Jan. 25th, 2010 12:23 pmWriting about Fuyumi Ono's The Vast Spread of the Seas is going to be a little hard for me because I simultaneously was a little disappointed in it, and loved it passionately. My feelings are sometimes complicated!
To recap: this is the third book in the Twelve Kingdoms series which I am following with extreme interest. The Vast Spread of the Seas is a prequel that follows a pair of characters who, when you meet them in the first book in the series, are firmly established as Awesomely Successful King of En and Advisor. Obviously back in the day things were not so easy! In this universe, kings literally chosen by divine mandate - magical creatures called kirin basically go around looking for them until they experience a revelation and find the right person, and they rule (with the kirin's help) until they screw up enough that they lose the divine mandate, at which point both kirin and king start to sicken. But this process can take a while, and by the time baby kirin Rokuta finds Shoryu, the new king of En, the kingdom has been basically turned into a wasteland by several years of terrible management followed by several more years of no management at all.
Now skip twenty years into the future. The kingdom is slowly getting back on its feet, but Shoryu seems to be your classic Prince Hal-type irresponsible ruler, wandering out of meetings and spending all his time getting drunk and hanging out with the ladiez, much to the chagrin of his advisors. (Who are hilarious, by the way - they are basically all lower-ranked people who got promoted by insulting the king during his first few months of office, and spend most of their time ranting, facepalming, and insulting the king some more.) Meanwhile, Rokuta - who is an eternal thirteen-year-old as well as a magical kirin, and has some backstory issues of his own - is pretty dubious about the whole kingship concept to begin with, and Shoryu's apparent inability to take anything ever seriously doesn't help. So when Rokuta is kidnapped and held hostage by a group of rebels that includes a lonely boy he befriended a long time ago, who say that ALL THEY WANT IS FOR THE KING TO BUILD THEM SOME AQUEDUCTS, SERIOUSLY, he finds himself kind of sympathizing with their cause even as the situation in En starts to build to civil war.
Reasons I loved this book: first of all, I really like Rokuta, the magical chooser of kings who is actually really skeptical about the whole concept of magically chosen kings! (I also love how he is simultaneously a cranky brat, and a holy creature of kindness who literally runs a fever when exposed to too much blood.) He has a lot of conversations that go like this:
PERSON A: Rokuta, the king isn't doing his job!
ROKUTA: Dude, don't ask me, I didn't pick him.
PERSON A: But . . . actually, um, you did. You had a divine revelation and everything.
ROKUTA: Look, take it up with heaven, okay? KINGS SUCK. THE END.
I love all the political discussions and how Ono problematizes her own magical kingship system, and I love the shades of gray and the emphasis on difficult decisions - once again, Ono shows how much she loves stomping on and complicating tropes, and I eat it up with a spoon! And I did love Shoryu, who I don't think it is spoilery to say hides a lot of competence underneath his flippant surface of constant LOL. (I kept picturing him as played by Dam Duk from The Legend.) The dude knows how to work the propaganda machine! It's an important skill in a ruler. I also really loved the constant and deliberate paralleling of Rokuta and Koya, the demon-riding war orphan that Rokuta sees a little too much of himself in, and the way their roles are reversed at the end.
On the other hand, a lot of the stuff I loved with all my heart also had a flip-side that I had my doubts about, or didn't go as far as I wanted it to.
( Cut for spoilers! )
These issues aside, though, I continue to love this series so much. SO MUCH. Sea of Shadows is still my favorite, but this is a really excellent book too, and I am so massively looking forward to the next one. March! Get here faster!
To recap: this is the third book in the Twelve Kingdoms series which I am following with extreme interest. The Vast Spread of the Seas is a prequel that follows a pair of characters who, when you meet them in the first book in the series, are firmly established as Awesomely Successful King of En and Advisor. Obviously back in the day things were not so easy! In this universe, kings literally chosen by divine mandate - magical creatures called kirin basically go around looking for them until they experience a revelation and find the right person, and they rule (with the kirin's help) until they screw up enough that they lose the divine mandate, at which point both kirin and king start to sicken. But this process can take a while, and by the time baby kirin Rokuta finds Shoryu, the new king of En, the kingdom has been basically turned into a wasteland by several years of terrible management followed by several more years of no management at all.
Now skip twenty years into the future. The kingdom is slowly getting back on its feet, but Shoryu seems to be your classic Prince Hal-type irresponsible ruler, wandering out of meetings and spending all his time getting drunk and hanging out with the ladiez, much to the chagrin of his advisors. (Who are hilarious, by the way - they are basically all lower-ranked people who got promoted by insulting the king during his first few months of office, and spend most of their time ranting, facepalming, and insulting the king some more.) Meanwhile, Rokuta - who is an eternal thirteen-year-old as well as a magical kirin, and has some backstory issues of his own - is pretty dubious about the whole kingship concept to begin with, and Shoryu's apparent inability to take anything ever seriously doesn't help. So when Rokuta is kidnapped and held hostage by a group of rebels that includes a lonely boy he befriended a long time ago, who say that ALL THEY WANT IS FOR THE KING TO BUILD THEM SOME AQUEDUCTS, SERIOUSLY, he finds himself kind of sympathizing with their cause even as the situation in En starts to build to civil war.
Reasons I loved this book: first of all, I really like Rokuta, the magical chooser of kings who is actually really skeptical about the whole concept of magically chosen kings! (I also love how he is simultaneously a cranky brat, and a holy creature of kindness who literally runs a fever when exposed to too much blood.) He has a lot of conversations that go like this:
PERSON A: Rokuta, the king isn't doing his job!
ROKUTA: Dude, don't ask me, I didn't pick him.
PERSON A: But . . . actually, um, you did. You had a divine revelation and everything.
ROKUTA: Look, take it up with heaven, okay? KINGS SUCK. THE END.
I love all the political discussions and how Ono problematizes her own magical kingship system, and I love the shades of gray and the emphasis on difficult decisions - once again, Ono shows how much she loves stomping on and complicating tropes, and I eat it up with a spoon! And I did love Shoryu, who I don't think it is spoilery to say hides a lot of competence underneath his flippant surface of constant LOL. (I kept picturing him as played by Dam Duk from The Legend.) The dude knows how to work the propaganda machine! It's an important skill in a ruler. I also really loved the constant and deliberate paralleling of Rokuta and Koya, the demon-riding war orphan that Rokuta sees a little too much of himself in, and the way their roles are reversed at the end.
On the other hand, a lot of the stuff I loved with all my heart also had a flip-side that I had my doubts about, or didn't go as far as I wanted it to.
( Cut for spoilers! )These issues aside, though, I continue to love this series so much. SO MUCH. Sea of Shadows is still my favorite, but this is a really excellent book too, and I am so massively looking forward to the next one. March! Get here faster!
