"Wouldn't you like to see the desert?"
FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS
Julie C. Dao
"Lush" aptly describes Dao's East Asian retelling of the rise of Snow White's Evil Queen, as does "violent" and "lovingly detailed" and "epic." Xifeng begins the story as her aunt Guma's servant and student, a seamstress with rebellion threaded into her being. Her destiny lies in the Palace, says her aunt, and Xifeng knows in her heart that she is meant for greater things than canings from her aunt and standing in the crowd while the Emperor's latest concubine is paraded down the town thoroughfare. Magic lives in her. But what profits it a woman to gain the whole empire if she loses her own soul? To realize her dream and live into her destiny, she must decide whether or not she is willing to destroy those she once held dear, to manipulate, to listen to the darkness rumbling inside her.
Many of my favorite tropes mingle here--the villain origin story, the dueling with powerful inner darkness--against the backdrop of a verdant East Asian landscape of dark forests populated by tengaru and entire cities within the Palace populated entirely with the royalty's female servants to wonderful effect. Dao establishes early on that this is more than a courtly drama. There are decapitations, men split in two, disfigurement, disembowelment. Blood splashed onto tulip petals.
Enticing, mysterious, and bursting with color. I eagerly await Book 2.
Julie C. Dao
"Lush" aptly describes Dao's East Asian retelling of the rise of Snow White's Evil Queen, as does "violent" and "lovingly detailed" and "epic." Xifeng begins the story as her aunt Guma's servant and student, a seamstress with rebellion threaded into her being. Her destiny lies in the Palace, says her aunt, and Xifeng knows in her heart that she is meant for greater things than canings from her aunt and standing in the crowd while the Emperor's latest concubine is paraded down the town thoroughfare. Magic lives in her. But what profits it a woman to gain the whole empire if she loses her own soul? To realize her dream and live into her destiny, she must decide whether or not she is willing to destroy those she once held dear, to manipulate, to listen to the darkness rumbling inside her.
Many of my favorite tropes mingle here--the villain origin story, the dueling with powerful inner darkness--against the backdrop of a verdant East Asian landscape of dark forests populated by tengaru and entire cities within the Palace populated entirely with the royalty's female servants to wonderful effect. Dao establishes early on that this is more than a courtly drama. There are decapitations, men split in two, disfigurement, disembowelment. Blood splashed onto tulip petals.
Enticing, mysterious, and bursting with color. I eagerly await Book 2.