ARC Review: Song of the Crimson Flower by Julie C. Dao

Song of the Crimson Flower
by Julie C. Dao
Publication Date: November 5^th 2019
Publisher: Philomel
Find This Book: Song of the Crimson Flower
Rating: 4/5




I was given an ARC of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

As you can see, the cover is STUNNING and I was so excited to get an ARC of this after how much I enjoyed Dao's Evil Queen retelling in Forest of a Thousand Lanturns. Song of the Crimson Flower takes place in the same universe, which means an awesome myth and magic system that I'm already familiar with frames the story. The best part? Stone-hearted girls with swords have taken over the YA industry recently and this book is NOT one of them! The main character is Bao, the physician's assistant, and Lan, a noble woman with basically zero skills but an amazing sense of right and wrong. My soft children strike out on a quest to break a curse and get more than they thought they signed up for. 

If you're looking for a story with kind, relatable characters, THIS is the book for you. If you're looking for a cool magic system with witches and curses and an awful lot of boating and horseback riding, THIS book is for you! Don't get me wrong, this book will have action and tension in it!! But the characters are gentle and emotional and it makes alllllll the difference. I found Bao and Lan so easy to connect to and this change up from the current genre trope made for very compelling and vulnerable scenes.

The only reason this book isn't getting 5 stars is because there was no doubt in my mind how the book was going to end and nothing in the last 40 pages or so provoked the thoughts or emotions I expected to be feeling after how amazing the lead up was. It's a sweet story, but I thought I'd be on my toes a bit for the finale and I wasn't.

That being said, I would highly recommend this book about heartwarming characters who are passionate about helping others, politics (we do have a war about to break out after all), and of course love.

Review: Quests and Quandaries by Alda Yuan

Quests and Quandaries 
By Alda Yuan 
Publication Date: December 16^th 2018 
Publisher: N/A 
Find This Book: Quests and Quandaries
Rating: 3.5/5 




I was given a copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review. 

In this case, definitely don't judge a book by its cover! Alda Yuan's self published book Quests and Quandaries holds a treasure trove of fantasy tropes just waiting to be poked fun at, which a nice philosophical thought process about how much control the characters (and perhaps the readers themselves) have over their own lives. 

I really like the sort of self aware, satirical angle this book took. It was refreshing to see a character acknowledging how things turn out a specific way, because that's how quests and epics always go in the stories! The characters and different lands were lots of fun as well. I particularly enjoyed when Rahni watched how her world came to be (a beetle created her land, and the world is suspended by wires). Cementing a mythological story as "truth" was very cool.

The only thing I didn't enjoy was all the footnotes. There were 324 footnotes and they're very hard to open and read on a kindle device. I was curious to what they contained, so I read them all. Unfortunately, only about 10% actually answered a question a reader might have in the relevant scene. Most of the footnotes did not add anything to the story, and some of them even confused me more by mentioning characters not in the book! Furthermore, it would have been nice if the 4 rules *were* footnoted whenever they were mentioned, but they were not important enough to get footnotes I guess. The rules are read once towards the beginning, and rule #4 isn't brought up again until the end. I had no clue what the rule was by then!

That being said, the footnotes only brought this book down by one star. It's still a hilarious fantasy book that I would recommend to those who don't take their tropes and cliches too seriously.