K. Bird Lincoln
Auteur van Dream Eater
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Werken van K. Bird Lincoln
Bringer of Death: A Portland Hafu Trilogy Prequel Novelette (The Portland Hafu Book 0) (2019) 2 exemplaren
Sometimes We Arrive Home 1 exemplaar
And the Bones Would Keep Speaking {short story} 1 exemplaar
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- female
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 10
- Ook door
- 2
- Leden
- 85
- Populariteit
- #214,931
- Waardering
- 4.0
- Besprekingen
- 28
- ISBNs
- 8
Secondly, after reading all of the reviews that pretty much hated this book because they disliked the main character, I can understand why. Lily wastes half of the story either feeling sorry for herself even though her middle class life as a cook's daughter/laughing stock of the village isn't *that* bad.
However, her constant whining/crying/self-loathing isn't nearly as bad as the detestable protagonist of the widely acclaimed book series "The Paper Magician". At least when Lily isn't hating herself and instead shows the belligerent Tiger courage to counter the authority of Lordling Ashikaga, she's quite amusing. Ceony on the other hand constantly gets herself in danger (pretty much every book) even though she is barely an unlicensed apprentice and gloating over her teacher who might not even feel attracted to her anyways.
In feudal Japan, Lily occasionally skips her duties planting the rice fields to wander in the forest and sings forbidden religious songs that were taught by her mother Dawn that vanished without a trace several years ago. One day, she stumbles upon the Lord's middle son named Yoshinori Ashikaga who has been wounded by a surprise attack by a rogue separatist army commanded by Price Norinaga who serves Go-Daigo, the Emperor's cousin that ultimately wishes to oust the government for an unknown reason.
Defenseless and scared, she sings a kami song that renders the magic of the enemy army useless and saves the lordling's life (who just happens to realize she did it using a forbidden religious song). The book then becomes a mixture between a forbidden nobleman/peasant romance and a story about the injust battle of fighting an ancient holistic religion in favor of appeasing foreign nations.
In a way, it reminded me a lot of Studio Ghibli's megahit film "The Princess Mononoke". Foreign forces are destabilizing a bustling medieval Japan, and the spiritual world that lives among them is suffering as a result. Meanwhile, good natured people from different walks of life are tossed into this political vs nature turmoil and love seems to blossom in the middle of it all.
Now, the writing can be both great and frustrating at the same time. The book moves very quickly and I give the author kudos because I seldom set it aside (which is good because it allows me to read more books). The overall story is good and I really felt like I had been transported to ancient Japan with vegetable soup and the smell of permission flowers among the insects that rummaged this Honshu village.
If anything, I just felt like Lily wasn't the strongest protagonist. I don't mind at all that she can't wield a sword. I sometimes get tired of the uber super strong female lead character that wields a 200 pound sword yet she's dainty. In this sense, Lily's fear of being murdered by heavily trained samurai felt real. It's the excessive focus on her self-loathing that became tiring after a while, and the fact that major wounds seemed to heal in a matter of minutes, lost the allure.
Ashikaga was returned to his palace delirious and riddled in fever, but suddenly he's like a spring chicken, ready to continue fighting the enemy forces the very next morning. Huh? As a matter of fact, the entire book occurs in a matter of just 4 days. Yes, I am serious. Lordling Ashikaga never paid any attention to Lily, except for the scant occasion he spotted her stealing vegetables from his family's garden. And in just a few hours, instalove occurs and he suddenly feels sufficiently comfortable leaving his heavily guarded palace while he's still badly injured to reveal to her his most deeply guarded secret. Worse, both characters suffer from pretty bad wounds during the course of the story, but they seem to be pushed to the sidelines in just 1 day. The battle against the rogue army has taken place in 2 years. I just felt like there was no rush to hyper jump light speed the story so quickly. The forbidden romance could have blossomed during a longer amount of time and it would have never really affected the story.
As for the characters, I simply loved Ashikaga's right hand trusty samurai, Uesugi. I love the honorable silent warrior type characters, and he is the epitome. He doesn't fully trust Lily, but he puts up with her because of his loyalty to Ashikaga. Quite frankly, if he had been the POV character of the story, this book would have been totally awesome.
Now, is the book worth reading?
I think that if you enter the story expecting a lot of rambling and get used to the fact that Lily falls on her butt or face pretty much once every 5 pages, and then starts crying at least once per chapter, you can try to mentally block that bad aspect of the book and enjoy the many good merits.
I think the story ends up in a nice place and will read the sequel sometime, just out of curiosity. I just hope that Lily's character starts to build a backbone by then.
I give this book 3 1/2 stars, mainly because Uesugi is such an awesome supporting character.… (meer)