![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
These are my confessions (it's now or never)
I don't sleep. I fret and review books.
Series: Breaking the Wall [Amazon]
Books: Thirteen Orphans, Nine Gates, Five Odd Honors
Author: Jane M. Lindskold
How I Found It: Border's close-out sale; the covers were pretty.
Super Short Summary: A war between our 'real' world and a world rooted in Chinese magical tradition is looming. It is up to the descendants of thirteen advisers who fled that magical world, known as the Thirteen Orphans, to hone their magical abilities and set both worlds straight again.
What I Expected: YA novel about thirteen teenagers who discover they have hidden abilities tied to the Chinese zodiac, sort of in the magical-girl tradition with a heap of Animorphs thrown in.
What I Got: holy shit the amazing adventures of the most badass 70 year old woman there ever fucking was
The Breaking the Wall series went from being an obscure find to an unexpected favorite very, very quickly. K and I got to read it over the past two months, and we were/are still so full of freaking glee over it. We've tried to find a fandom for it but alas, there is none. If there was a fandom, I'd probably just write Riprap fanfic constantly. I might do that anyway.
Let me steal a synopsis from Amazon's reviews for a moment:
Brenda Morris, an innocent quarter-Chinese college student, is abruptly thrust into the hidden world of the Thirteen Orphans, descendants of magicians who take the forms of Chinese zodiac animals and draw magic from the game of mah-jongg. Brenda fights valiantly against otherworld elements who seek to steal the Orphans' power, but indulges in a painfully juvenile crush on a killer who attacks her father.
So with a summary like that, I hope you can understand why I thought this was about a pile of teens clumsily throwing around magic and shit. WRONG. This is not YA, or at least not what I define as YA. This book is maturely handled and spends a lot of time spinning yarn, wanting to invest you in the intellectual and metaphysical aspects of the world and action. It also is extremely diverse on the aspect of age - Brenda is the youngest character in the cast (the two-year old doesn't count), and 75% of the book's principle characters are over the age of 35. The older characters aren't there just as 'mentor' figures either, but warriors just as much as the younger ones are. It was a little mind-blowing in that regard, but something I ended up appreciating.
The magic system used in this book is also fairly clever and unique. People with the power of the zodiac animals is stuff that we came up with ten years ago when creating Sailor Moon fan games, but Lindskold takes it a step further by binding her characters' magic to the game of mahjongg. Using a game as a medium for magic is something that obviously appeals to me (coughYUGIOHcough), but it also forced ingenuity upon the characters, since they couldn't whirl around fireballs with just a thought.
Character development was a strong suit for this book. The characters, above all else, are extremely down-to-earth and likeable, and it is easy to be drawn to them and want them to succeed. During climaxes and big action scenes, the author deeply considers how easily her characters might be traumatized or frightened or frozen in the light of some of the horrific and shocking things that happen, and so you get the characters suffering very realistic consequences for these magical events. I can't think of any instances of profound out-of-character asspulls for the sake of plot - well, I can think of one character who does a bizarre 180 shift and never looks back, but she was a rather unrealistic and unlikeable character to start with.
The author mentioned in her first book that the 19 year old Brenda was originally not supposed to be the main character of the books (probably brought forward just so the books could possibly be marketed as YA), and it does show. It is very, very clear that the 70 year old Pearl Bright, a Chinese-Hungarian former child actress and wealthy philanthropist, is the apple of the author's eye. PEARL BRIGHT. IS BADDER THAN CHUCK NORRIS. She is the one who trained El Combito, she can wear the Ring of Mordor without being corrupted by its power, she rides on the back of the White Tiger of the West and calls it her bitch (that last part being ENTIRELY CANON). While Brenda is billed as the main character, Pearl has more of the focus, more of the plot, and more of the character development. And Brenda is the one billed with the 'coming of age' plot, but honestly I think Pearl's character development had more by way of 'coming of age' to it, since she strove to overcome feelings of inadequacy that plagued her since she was a child.
The POV of the books are divided between three characters per book - Pearl and Brenda are POV characters for all three books, and the third one shifts per book. Some reviews I read complained about this, saying that it chopped up the action, but I rather liked it and it kept my attention by constantly switching around and leaving cliffhangers as it went along.
One thing I REALLY LOVE this series for is being a fantasy that not only embraced multi-culturalism, but then it went on to take risks with it, and that boldness on the author's part deeply paid off. It didn't bring in a non-white character just to treat him/her gingerly - issues of cultural misconceptions are brought to the table and addressed up-front. Happily, the book doesn't pretend that racial prejudices don't exist in this happy little world - Brenda, quite a few times, dips into racist thoughts and preconceptions, though she has enough sense to recognize and mentally reprimand herself for it. This had the effect of making me like Brenda and the book even more, because I knew the author was being honest with me about how a (mostly) white girl from a sheltered town would react to people unlike her. The fact that she included a black character, Riprap, and treated him with amazing respect and skill still has me over the moon.
There were pacing problems with the books that did grate at me. I will freely admit that part of this might be my fault for being an ADD crackmonkey of a reader who needs something to explode once every thirty pages. But there are such large gaps between action sequences at times that I start to lose investment in the storyline. In the third book, for example, the action was moving so slowly that I was actually deeply confused as to whether this series was a trilogy or not, since it seemed impossible to me that the series could reach a satisfying conclusion when I was over halfway done the third book with no climax in sight. (It is a trilogy.) While I had no problems listening to the characters plan their actions out in detail, it would have helped a lot to temper those long conversation scenes with fighting scenes or some other action soon after. Or to have more of their detailed plans go wrong and force the characters to play it on-the-fly more often.
I will say that when it did go into an action scene, Lindskold DELIVERED. I tend to get lost and confused in fantasy action sequences (and though I love you, Robin McKinley, I cannot understand your action sequences for shit), but Lindskold seems to effortlessly glide through them, making them rather poetic in a strange way. More than once I really was reminded of a Chinese martial arts film with how fluidly the action seemed to flow. For that, Lindskold is now on my list of Authors To Admire.
She wins me over on another point too. If there is one thing that makes or breaks a book experience with me, it is having a profound "HOLY SHIT" moment while I am reading it. It is a time in the book where my eyes scan over words, then as my mind feebly tries to process some miracle of badass the author was able to concoct, all I am able to think to myself is oh snap, he/she did NOT just go there. I really, really love those moments, and it's probably the reason why Stephen King is an author so close to my heart. Lindskold managed to give me one of these moments per book, usually around the later part of the middle, and it is the second wind that carries me through the rest of the book.
The author didn't deliver on the OTP I wanted the most (Riprap x EVERYONE, so maybe it's realistic that she didn't deliver on that), BUT I will forgive her because with a single act, she was able to turn the often-painful canon OTP into something AWESOME by the end of the last book. I still can't say I like the canon OTP, but I sure as hell don't hate it like I used to.
So in short, I really enjoyed these books! I think people who enjoyed The Twelve Kingdoms or who are in the game Perfect World could benefit from taking a look at it, for sure. If anyone wants to give it a try but doesn't feel like paying for a copy, I won't mind shipping my first volume out, though I'm sure local libraries will have the series too. I WISH I COULD HAVE A GAME BASED ON THIS SERIES RIGHT NOW, HUARGH (I call the Dragon).
Series: Breaking the Wall [Amazon]
Books: Thirteen Orphans, Nine Gates, Five Odd Honors
Author: Jane M. Lindskold
How I Found It: Border's close-out sale; the covers were pretty.
Super Short Summary: A war between our 'real' world and a world rooted in Chinese magical tradition is looming. It is up to the descendants of thirteen advisers who fled that magical world, known as the Thirteen Orphans, to hone their magical abilities and set both worlds straight again.
What I Expected: YA novel about thirteen teenagers who discover they have hidden abilities tied to the Chinese zodiac, sort of in the magical-girl tradition with a heap of Animorphs thrown in.
What I Got: holy shit the amazing adventures of the most badass 70 year old woman there ever fucking was
The Breaking the Wall series went from being an obscure find to an unexpected favorite very, very quickly. K and I got to read it over the past two months, and we were/are still so full of freaking glee over it. We've tried to find a fandom for it but alas, there is none. If there was a fandom, I'd probably just write Riprap fanfic constantly. I might do that anyway.
Let me steal a synopsis from Amazon's reviews for a moment:
Brenda Morris, an innocent quarter-Chinese college student, is abruptly thrust into the hidden world of the Thirteen Orphans, descendants of magicians who take the forms of Chinese zodiac animals and draw magic from the game of mah-jongg. Brenda fights valiantly against otherworld elements who seek to steal the Orphans' power, but indulges in a painfully juvenile crush on a killer who attacks her father.
So with a summary like that, I hope you can understand why I thought this was about a pile of teens clumsily throwing around magic and shit. WRONG. This is not YA, or at least not what I define as YA. This book is maturely handled and spends a lot of time spinning yarn, wanting to invest you in the intellectual and metaphysical aspects of the world and action. It also is extremely diverse on the aspect of age - Brenda is the youngest character in the cast (the two-year old doesn't count), and 75% of the book's principle characters are over the age of 35. The older characters aren't there just as 'mentor' figures either, but warriors just as much as the younger ones are. It was a little mind-blowing in that regard, but something I ended up appreciating.
The magic system used in this book is also fairly clever and unique. People with the power of the zodiac animals is stuff that we came up with ten years ago when creating Sailor Moon fan games, but Lindskold takes it a step further by binding her characters' magic to the game of mahjongg. Using a game as a medium for magic is something that obviously appeals to me (coughYUGIOHcough), but it also forced ingenuity upon the characters, since they couldn't whirl around fireballs with just a thought.
Character development was a strong suit for this book. The characters, above all else, are extremely down-to-earth and likeable, and it is easy to be drawn to them and want them to succeed. During climaxes and big action scenes, the author deeply considers how easily her characters might be traumatized or frightened or frozen in the light of some of the horrific and shocking things that happen, and so you get the characters suffering very realistic consequences for these magical events. I can't think of any instances of profound out-of-character asspulls for the sake of plot - well, I can think of one character who does a bizarre 180 shift and never looks back, but she was a rather unrealistic and unlikeable character to start with.
The author mentioned in her first book that the 19 year old Brenda was originally not supposed to be the main character of the books (probably brought forward just so the books could possibly be marketed as YA), and it does show. It is very, very clear that the 70 year old Pearl Bright, a Chinese-Hungarian former child actress and wealthy philanthropist, is the apple of the author's eye. PEARL BRIGHT. IS BADDER THAN CHUCK NORRIS. She is the one who trained El Combito, she can wear the Ring of Mordor without being corrupted by its power, she rides on the back of the White Tiger of the West and calls it her bitch (that last part being ENTIRELY CANON). While Brenda is billed as the main character, Pearl has more of the focus, more of the plot, and more of the character development. And Brenda is the one billed with the 'coming of age' plot, but honestly I think Pearl's character development had more by way of 'coming of age' to it, since she strove to overcome feelings of inadequacy that plagued her since she was a child.
The POV of the books are divided between three characters per book - Pearl and Brenda are POV characters for all three books, and the third one shifts per book. Some reviews I read complained about this, saying that it chopped up the action, but I rather liked it and it kept my attention by constantly switching around and leaving cliffhangers as it went along.
One thing I REALLY LOVE this series for is being a fantasy that not only embraced multi-culturalism, but then it went on to take risks with it, and that boldness on the author's part deeply paid off. It didn't bring in a non-white character just to treat him/her gingerly - issues of cultural misconceptions are brought to the table and addressed up-front. Happily, the book doesn't pretend that racial prejudices don't exist in this happy little world - Brenda, quite a few times, dips into racist thoughts and preconceptions, though she has enough sense to recognize and mentally reprimand herself for it. This had the effect of making me like Brenda and the book even more, because I knew the author was being honest with me about how a (mostly) white girl from a sheltered town would react to people unlike her. The fact that she included a black character, Riprap, and treated him with amazing respect and skill still has me over the moon.
There were pacing problems with the books that did grate at me. I will freely admit that part of this might be my fault for being an ADD crackmonkey of a reader who needs something to explode once every thirty pages. But there are such large gaps between action sequences at times that I start to lose investment in the storyline. In the third book, for example, the action was moving so slowly that I was actually deeply confused as to whether this series was a trilogy or not, since it seemed impossible to me that the series could reach a satisfying conclusion when I was over halfway done the third book with no climax in sight. (It is a trilogy.) While I had no problems listening to the characters plan their actions out in detail, it would have helped a lot to temper those long conversation scenes with fighting scenes or some other action soon after. Or to have more of their detailed plans go wrong and force the characters to play it on-the-fly more often.
I will say that when it did go into an action scene, Lindskold DELIVERED. I tend to get lost and confused in fantasy action sequences (and though I love you, Robin McKinley, I cannot understand your action sequences for shit), but Lindskold seems to effortlessly glide through them, making them rather poetic in a strange way. More than once I really was reminded of a Chinese martial arts film with how fluidly the action seemed to flow. For that, Lindskold is now on my list of Authors To Admire.
She wins me over on another point too. If there is one thing that makes or breaks a book experience with me, it is having a profound "HOLY SHIT" moment while I am reading it. It is a time in the book where my eyes scan over words, then as my mind feebly tries to process some miracle of badass the author was able to concoct, all I am able to think to myself is oh snap, he/she did NOT just go there. I really, really love those moments, and it's probably the reason why Stephen King is an author so close to my heart. Lindskold managed to give me one of these moments per book, usually around the later part of the middle, and it is the second wind that carries me through the rest of the book.
The author didn't deliver on the OTP I wanted the most (Riprap x EVERYONE, so maybe it's realistic that she didn't deliver on that), BUT I will forgive her because with a single act, she was able to turn the often-painful canon OTP into something AWESOME by the end of the last book. I still can't say I like the canon OTP, but I sure as hell don't hate it like I used to.
So in short, I really enjoyed these books! I think people who enjoyed The Twelve Kingdoms or who are in the game Perfect World could benefit from taking a look at it, for sure. If anyone wants to give it a try but doesn't feel like paying for a copy, I won't mind shipping my first volume out, though I'm sure local libraries will have the series too. I WISH I COULD HAVE A GAME BASED ON THIS SERIES RIGHT NOW, HUARGH (I call the Dragon).
no subject