Dear Author » Asian hero

REVIEW: The Words of the Pitcher by Kei Swanson

Jayne — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:25 +0000

“When the Cleveland Chiefs baseball team signs Kentaro Ikuta as their new star pitcher, they are faced with a man unable to speak English and a media frenzy clamoring for his words. Management turns to the renown linguistics department of Case Western Reserve University for help. Doctoral candidate Claire Ferris is chosen to act as interpreter and English teacher for Kentaro and finds herself suddenly thrown into the glaring fast-paced world of Major League Baseball.”

Dear Ms. Swanson,

Frequent readers here know that I like to seek out the unusual whether in settings, place or characters. In a recent article here, Jane provided us with a luscious photo of Asian mantitty and in the comments, people lamented the lack of Asian characters in books and suggested other phwoar-worthy subjects. One of the posters mentioned your book and I decided to track down a copy.

The first thing I noticed is that the team the story uses has been renamed the Cleveland Chiefs. I assume you did that to get around MLB restrictions or some such even though Chief Wahoo is mentioned. The team is in the correct League and during the season plays other teams in the American League and, when they make the World Series, play a team from the National League. You have Claire down at spring training with the team and go a bit into that and some of the regular season stuff before the playoffs arrive.

There’s some – to me – slightly wonky stuff then such as when Kentaro injures his pitching hand and no team trainer much less doctor even appears to take a look at it before Claire zips him off to her manicurist to repair the completely split nail or Claire questions the pitching coach about why Kentaro isn’t playing one evening and when said coach reminds Kentaro he’s pitching that night in the final Series game. Would he not know which games he’s to play? Would a coach not get pissed at Claire questioning his decisions? And wouldn’t a major league team have a doctor on staff to look after their star pitcher? I would think so but then I know very little about baseball. Still, you appear to get most things correct so far as I can tell which might make some readers very happy if this is of major interest to them.

As for the romance….I love seeing an Asian hero in a contemporary story. Hell, any period story for that matter. But for the first half of the story, I didn’t get much of a feel for Kentaro. Here he’s in a foreign country, learning a foreign language and I learn nothing about how he feels about this. What does he like about Cleveland, about the people, about his team mates and is playing US baseball living up to his childhood dream? But also what does he miss about Japan, what foods does he crave, what or who does he long to see? I’d have like some insights about this. The story starts with mainly Claire’s point of view and for a little while I was afraid the book would remain there but even in the scenes from Kentaro’s POV, the man remains an enigma for a long while.

On the other hand, there’s a lot about and centering on Claire. Claire does a good job as an interpreter and by the end of the story she’s got Kentaro up to speed with his English language skills but Claire can also snap at people and be a little whiny at times though when Kentaro jerks her around romantically, I can understand her anger. It takes them a while to get past Kentaro’s natural reserve but once they’re a couple, it’s hot sex – though please, no more “forested lips” in the purple prose department – all around. That is until an arranged marriage rears its ugly head and, as I referred to earlier, Kentaro won’t either break the engagement nor give up Claire. When his Japanese American agent finally urges Kentaro to grow a pair and fix the situation, he finally – finally! – does so but not before hurting everyone. And why does his Japanese fiancee have to be presented in so negative a manner? She morphs from sweet childhood friend to clingy, sycophant just when the plot demands it. The break ups and make ups tried my patience as well as Claire’s.

I have to reluctantly say that the writing style feels a little clunky and stilted at times when neither Claire nor Kentaro uses any contractions in their speech. I could see Kentaro not doing so but Claire? I do applaud your decision to only sprinkle a bare minimum of Japanese through the text and merely indicate which language Claire and Kentaro are speaking then present it in English.

I’m glad someone mentioned the book and also that I gave it a try. Kudos to you for writing it in the first place and then pursuing what it took to get it into print. Though parts of it didn’t work well for me, maybe others will find it exactly what they’re hoping for.

~Jayne

NOTE: This is an older book (I believe from 2000) so I don’t think there’s an ebook version.

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REVIEW: Gold Mountain by Sharon Cullars

Jayne — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:00:55 +0000

Dear Ms. Cullars,

I can’t recall whose blog I was reading when this book was mentioned but I’m glad I found out about it. A Negro heroine and a Chinese hero in 1865? Sign me up.

“In 1865, the hope for gold has spurred many to seek their fortunes in California, the place the Chinese call Gum San or “Gold Mountain.” Amidst this backdrop, Quiang, a new Chinese immigrant, works the dangerous rails hoping to save enough money to send home to his parents. In town, Leah and Clara, two enterprising women from New York, have plans of their own to grow a restaurant and laundry business. However, both plans go awry when Quiang and Leah meet one fateful day. What starts as a budding attraction soon grows into tumultuous desire despite the cultural and language barriers between them.

Initially resistant, Leah succumbs to passion following a tragic loss that leaves her vulnerable and alone. With hopes for a future that now includes Leah, Quiang embarks on a perilous path as he leaves the railroad behind for a more profitable position as a courier for The Tong, henchmen for the dangerous Triad. Quiang soon finds that navigating the secretive life of a courier brings more danger than he has ever faced on the railroad, dangers that not only threaten to tear him and Leah apart, but may cost them their lives as well.”

The book begins in media res with a scene showing the dangerous job Quiang and the other Chinese workers do. It also makes clear how little they were valued and how much less they were paid. Leah and Clara are also outside the mainstream. They have more say in what they do but the work is also hard plus they’re women alone in a town mainly populated by men and have learned to keep a shotgun handy. Though you avoid info dumps about them and flesh out Leah and Quiang slowly over the course of the book, I would still have enjoyed just a little bit more about before they each reached the mining town. As well, the book moves quickly past their escape from the villain and jumps far into their marriage. It’s nice to know how well they’re doing, that the family has grown and to be left with a positive feeling about their future but I would like to have seen just a touch more – their wedding, their initial time in Colorado…a little bit more.

The detailing is nicely done and makes it easy to imagine the rough and tumble town. I like how you didn’t attempt to shoehorn foreign words and phrases into the dialog but instead used plain English for Quiang and the other Chinese characters leaving the reader to assume that they’d be speaking fluently in their own language. Neither Leah nor Quaing are looking for a romance or even merely a friendship with the other. Thank goodness there’s no “one night of love to last a lifetime” jump into the fire used to justify bringing them together too soon. As their relationship progresses though, both Leah and Quaing are also well aware of the societal views and challenges they could face as a couple.

At the halfway point, I was wondering how you’d manage to get these two together in the face of the odds against them. The story is well plotted and the events flow together in a way to lead Leah and Quaing to their destiny together. And yet, I still wanted more. It appears you’ve done plenty of research about life in the mining towns and the challenges which faced Negros and Coolies (your choice of descriptions) but even though these are slipped quietly into the threads of the story, they felt more like a stone skipping across the surface. Sort of a “Here’s something interesting about life then” but these will only briefly be mentioned then little more is said about them or how they affects the main characters again. Generally there are at least a few scenes in any book which seem like merely page padders to me but this is a book which I would have loved to have seen expanded. B-

~Jayne

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REVIEW: Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon

Jia — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:00:10 +0000

Dear Ms. Pon,

I read your debut, Silver Phoenix, when it was first released and enjoyed it. Like Jane, I’m a big fan of multicultural stories and it was wonderful to see a YA fantasy featuring a setting based on ancient China. So I’ve been looking forward to your follow-up for a quite a while. I wish I could say the wait was worth it.

Silver Phoenix ended on a bit of a cliffhanger regarding the romantic subplot. It was a very bittersweet ending that left me wishing and hoping that Ai Ling’s story was not over. Ai Ling accomplished her goal, but she didn’t get the guy. How sad is that?

Fury of the Phoenix picks up where Silver Phoenix ended, with Ai Ling tracking down her love, Chen Yong, because she’s been having terrible dreams warning of danger to him. Most people would assume these dreams mean nothing or are just a nocturnal manifestation of her subconscious. But Ai Ling knows a thing or two about the supernatural and fantastical, so she trusts her instincts.

Chen Yong has decided to seek out his birth father, a foreigner not of the kingdom of Xia. The journey involves a long sea voyage to his father’s homeland. Ai Ling decides to join him, even if it means sneaking aboard the ship.

But the journey doesn’t proceed smoothly. For one, Chen Yong is not thrilled to see her. For another, Ai Ling is plagued by guilt over events that took place in Silver Phoenix. And worst of all, her nightmares and visions give her insight into her nemesis, Zhong Ye, whom she thought she’d defeated.

I think my less-than-enthused reaction to this novel is due to a combination of factors. I’ve been anticipating Fury for a while now and despite my best efforts, sometimes a long wait time results in raised expectations. I try not to do this because raised expectations have burned me numerous times in the past but it’s difficult to do that when we’re talking about Asian-influenced fantasy. I love Asian-influence fantasy so I’m constantly hoping the next story will be the one that breaks out.

But more than that, I think the kind of story Fury of Phoenix tells is not the one I was expecting, nor the kind of narrative I wanted. I’d hoped for more fantastical adventures along the lines of what we saw in the previous novel. There’s a sea voyage and a new country to explore. And while we were treated to menacing pirates and some family intrigue concerning Chen Yong’s father, these scenes were overshadowed by the secondary narrative.

And this is my main problem about Fury of the Phoenix. The novel is split into two storylines: one about Ai Ling’s present and one about Zhong Ye’s past. Zhong Ye, for those readers new to these books, is the villain of Silver Phoenix. His inclusion is the root of my dissatisfaction. I thought we were done with Zhong Ye. I thought we would move onto other adventures, other opponents, other goals. Instead, we were given a retread.

Part of it is that I personally don’t care to see villains redeemed, especially when they were portrayed in a particularly heinous way. I have no interest in such narratives. I also have no desire to read stories about how love can destroy us by leading us astray because it can make us do horrible things. That is not a story I care for in any way.

On top of all that, we also discover everything we thought we knew about Silver Phoenix and the circumstances leading up to her death was wrong. Maybe if there had been some hints of this in the previous book or maybe if recasting the story served some purpose, I’d like this aspect more. Instead I was left questioning what the point of it all.

But it wasn’t just Zhong Ye’s half of the book that gave me problems. It was also Ai Ling’s interactions with Chen Yong. Maybe I’m just looking back with rose-colored glasses, but I remember really liking the romantic subplot and their relationship. Here, their interactions left me cold and at times were wooden and 2D. Their relationship just did not develop in a way that was organic or believable to me.

On the other hand, I still enjoyed the setting. Even though much of Ai Ling’s storyline took place on a boat and in a foreign country, we still got to see much of the Asian setting through Zhong Ye’s eyes. I personally don’t recommend reading this book on an empty stomach because like its predecessor, the food descriptions made me hungry.

I did finish the book so despite my complaints, it wasn’t a DNF. That said, I suspect how readers receive this book will depend on their feelings towards Zhong He’s narrative. It makes up a significant portion of the book, so it can’t easily be ignored. And at times, I thought it overshadowed Ai Ling’s storyline which is a shame because Ai Ling is the character I wanted to read about — her journey, her story, her growth and evolution as a person. Instead, I got the tale of a man’s fall and how it impacted a poor girl in the present. As for the cover, I have nothing to say about it that hasn’t been said already. C

My regards,
Jia

If You Like…Multicultural Books

Jane — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:00:49 +0000

In light of the very gracious post by Handyhunter about cultural appropriation, it seems that we should compile a list of books that feature multicultural characters. Please note whether the book is a young adult (YA) or romance as well as whether the multicultural characters are main or secondary. Please also be respectful of other people’s recommendations. This is not to say that you can’t disagree with them, but let’s keep the comments as civil as possible.

Here are a couple to start the thread:

Eileen Wilks, Tempting Danger featuring Lily Yu, of Chinese descent. Main protagonist. Urban fantasy romance.
Meljean Brook, Demon Moon featuring Savi Murray, of Indian descent. Main protagonist. Urban fantasy romance.
Jade Lee, The Concubine, historical set in China featuring two Chinese protagonists. Historical.
Anne McAllister, Antonides’ Forbidden Wife, featuring Ally, half Japanese. Main protagonist. Straight contemporary.

REVIEW: Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon

Jia — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:00:42 +0000

Dear Ms. Pon,

I fall into that category of people who wish more fantasy novels set in non-Western settings were available to the general readership at large. And while I’m it, I want more than just those non-Western settings; I also want the stories of the non-white characters that live in those worlds. Diversity, multiculturalism — these are things that we’ve encouraged and discussed in the past here at DA. It doesn’t matter what the genre is — romance, fantasy, young adult — I personally want to see more of it.

I was predisposed to like your debut because not only was it set in a fantasy world inspired by ancient China, it featured an Asian heroine. Like Jane, I have a bias towards Asian heroines. And an Asian heroine in a fantasy that’s not exoticized, fetishized, or made into a prize for the strapping hero? Definitely a plus for me.

Ai Ling is the daughter of a disgraced scholar who was exiled from the Imperial court before she was born. But then one day her father is called back for reasons she doesn’t know or understand, leaving Ai Ling and her mother to fend for themselves. As months pass with no word, they grow increasingly worried and distressed. Things come to a head when a lecherous merchant proclaims his intent to take Ai Ling to be the latest in a string of wives. Even though Ai Ling has been all but declared unmarriageable thanks to a disastrous betrothal, the idea horrifies her. And it’s enough to make her embark on a journey to find her missing father and bring him home.

Almost immediately Ai Ling learns forces are conspiring against her. She knows she’s not entirely normal — she’s able to see into other people’s souls and hear their thoughts, an ability that manifested during her failed betrothal. But her inexplicable ability didn’t prepare her for an encounter with a serpentine monster that drags her into a lake and nearly drowns her in skeleton-infested waters. Thankfully, she is pulled free by a young man named Chen Yong, who is on a filial mission of his own. And Ai Ling will need his help on her quest, because it becomes apparent that the demon world doesn’t want her to succeed.

What I found most stunning about this book is the worldbuilding. Many of the monsters were familiar to me from Asian mythology but I think readers not as well-versed will find it very fresh and a nice change of pace from other books in the genre. I just found it very comforting in that sense because here was a book drawing on traditions and material more in line with my background than your average fantasy novel.

To be honest, I think Silver Phoenix will appeal most to fans of the wuxia genre. The comparison to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an apt one in many ways. I don’t necessarily consider that movie the best example of the genre itself, but it’s probably the one most readers here will be familiar with. But the adventures Ai ling encounters on her quest to find and free her father are reminiscent of classic wuxia serials — journeying through the countryside, staying in the homes of powerful lords, climbing a mountain to find the sage who can bless a gifted dagger, meeting with gods, and freeing immortals. Silver Phoenix is very much an adventure novel and readers looking for that sort of thing will enjoy it a lot.

Ironically, this trait is also its weakest point. Because of Ai Ling’s multiple adventures on the road to the Imperial palace, the book is somewhat episodic. There is an overarching plot that serves as the backdrop for those adventures, of course, but the crux of it comes later in the book so people who want a stronger, more focused storyline might not enjoy it as much. Speaking for myself, I wished for more on-page presence of the villain. When we learn of Ai Ling’s connection to the antagonist and his reasons for holding her father prisoner, I expected more of a legitimate threat from him but I ultimately didn’t get it. In that sense, I was left dissatisfied.

As a word of warning to those who aren’t as familiar with the wuxia genre, I will say the relationship between Ai Ling and Chen Yong might not turn out the way you expect or hope. I thought the resolution to that subplot was very indicative of the types of stories I associate with the wuxia genre but it’s not the sort of ending that will work for every reader. It worked for me but there is the caveat that I have a weakness for bittersweet endings.

Overall, I enjoyed Silver Phoenix for Ai Ling’s adventures through the various landscapes of its China-inspired world but I hoped for a stronger underlying plotline to drive the story along. Towards the end, I felt the emotional power of the narrative fell flat, particularly on the idea of why it was Ai Ling, and Ai Ling alone, who had to face the antagonist. The reasoning for doing so had a lot of dramatic potential but it failed to leave an impact on me. After all, hanging yourself on your wedding night with your bridal veil and then lingering in the underworld for a couple hundred years, biding your time and gathering your power before allowing yourself to be reincarnated as a girl with the power to read people’s hearts and souls? That’s a powerful fodder for an equally powerful narrative. I wish more time and depth had been given to it.

I loved that at its heart, Silver Phoenix is a story about families. Ai Ling embarks on this quest because of her love for her father. She meets Chen Yong because he’s on a quest to find his birth parents. However, I will say that the prologue is a bit out of place as it pertains more towards Chen Yong’s story than Ai Ling’s — and I consider Silver Phoenix to be solely Ai Ling’s story — and merely provided a tenuous connection between their respective family histories. On the other hand, it does give me hope that Ai Ling and Chen Yong’s story is not finished, which may go a long way to making the ending easier to swallow. B-

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

REVIEW: Soft Focus by Jaye Valentine and Reno MacLeod

SarahF — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:00:54 +0000

Dear Mr. Valentine and Mr. MacLeod:

It’s all about expectations, isn’t it? This book is being marketed, or at least it’s labeled by its publisher, eXcessica, as a BDSM novel. And the excerpt is some pretty darn hot pre-BDSM-play negotiations which promises more hotness of the BDSM variety when you get the rest of the scene….and then Ethan and David (two of the three main characters) go off and just fuck. Admittedly, there’s some rope involved and some mild dominance on David’s side and Kiyoshi (David’s submissive) is sitting at the foot of the bed listening, but mostly, it’s just fucking. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hot fucking. I enjoyed it. You have a gift for making sex (with some ropes) sound really exciting, which in this erotica-saturated market is an important gift to have. But I certainly wouldn’t label the book as a whole a BDSM novel.

I discovered when I reviewed Anah Crow’s Uneven that there’s a big difference between a mainly vanilla story that includes some kinky aspects (ropes, blindfolds, mild spanking), one that demonstrates and explores the play of dominance and submission between the main characters (like most of Joey Hill’s novels), and full-on BDSM novels that include all aspects of the acronym (bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, masochism). Hill’s Natural Law is an amazing novel about a female dominant relationship that happens to include a little bit of sado-masochism. It’s all about D/s: the will to power and surrender of the two characters. Crow’s Uneven is a novel about a sado-masochistic relationship that happens to include dominance and submission. Your novel is set in a BDSM world (a BDSM convention–yes, they exist!), but is not, in and of itself, an exploration of a BDSM relationship, thereby disappointing my expectations but not necessarily making it a bad book.

Ethan is a nature photographer and an erotic romance author. He’s trying to figure out the plot and subject matter of his next novel when he is shown some D/s pictures in a magazine by a seat-mate on a plane trip. Enraptured by David Turner, the subject of the photos, Ethan contacts him, asking if he would consent to an interview for research purposes. David accepts and they agree to meet at a BDSM convention. At the convention, we’re introduced to Kiyoshi, David’s submissive. Kiyoshi presents as a remarkably beautiful woman, but is, in fact, a man told to dress as a woman by David.

I actually very much like this aspect of the story. The completely blithe acceptance by the narrative of Kiyoshi’s gender bending and yet his utter desirability as a man is wonderful to read and I’d like to see more of it. I personally find the “forced feminization” niche of male-submissive culture to be demeaning to women (Why is it so humiliating to be dressed as a woman, pray tell?), but that’s absolutely not what is going on here. Kiyoshi is beautiful as a woman but he is not dressed as such in order to be humiliated, but rather because he is beautiful and that is enough.

After their meeting, David and Ethan fuck, with very little BDSM involved, except in that David is definitely in charge. And while this might be my experience and might not translate to the gay BDSM world, if two people come together to play and impart knowledge/learn about BDSM, as is the ostensible reason for David and Ethan’s meeting, they don’t immediately fuck like bunnies; rather, they do some light, pre-negotiated, non-sexual play (and usually before one of them is securely tied, face down, to the bed). But that doesn’t happen here. The focus is the pretty darned vanilla sex, first between Ethan and David, and then between Ethan and Kiyoshi.

And it is in the progression of the relationship between Ethan and Kiyoshi that I got really confused. David and Kiyoshi apparently base their entire relationship (as is natural) on trust and honesty, and yet Ethan seduces Kiyoshi in a public bathroom in such a way that I was confused as to whether either Ethan or Kiyoshi thought that they were betraying David and whether they expected to be able to or even wanted to hide their encounter. Their motivation, especially Kiyoshi’s was very muddied by the (admittedly hot) sex. In one minute, Kiyoshi is telling Ethan how much he loves David and how lost he’d be without him, and in the next, he’s not only admitting that he’s worried about the effect Ethan will have on their relationship, he’s pondering whether he’s more worried about losing David to Ethan or whether David should be worried about losing him to Ethan.

If your hope was to try to portray a realistic, successful BDSM relationship between David and Kiyoshi, these confused motivations detracted from the relationship, for me. If they’re in an open/poly relationship, this kind of thing (outside relationships) should be negotiated as soon as the potential arises; that goes double for an open BDSM relationship in which one partner identifies as the other’s “slave”. Additionally, if Ethan falls in love with these two men IN TWO DAYS, and they with him, then a little more demonstration of the actual BDSM aspects of both sides of the relationships would be appropriate. Not only does nothing less vanilla than ropes happen to Ethan, but we don’t see the BDSM between David and Kiyoshi at all except for some crawling, despite the promise early in the book that Kiyoshi likes pain.

Add to the mix an altercation with an asshole dominant who assumes that every submissive is there for his use, consent be damned, and who demands that everyone call him Master, which turns into real attempted rape by the end of the book, and a strange little scene in which Kiyoshi canes David at one of their public demonstrations, and I was seriously confused by the dynamics of the book. Very little is explained. David is a complete enigma and his motivations and feelings are completely opaque. Kiyoshi and David are operating on their own relationship rules, but we never know what they are. Ethan is operating on his curiosity and his strong feelings for these men, but neither is fully explored.

Readers reading this story expecting a thorough and emotional exploration of a BDSM relationship will be disappointed. If they read it as a fun little triad relationship with a slightly kinky bent, some D/s aspects, but no actual kinky sex, and you’ll have a cool little story with some pretty hot sex. I enjoyed it, once I let go of my marketing-fed expectations.

Grade: C

Sincerely,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased in ebook format from BooksonBoard and other etailers.

REVIEW: North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

Jia — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:00:44 +0000

Dear Ms. Chen Headley,

I loved your previous novel, Girl Overboard, and after going back to read your debut, Nothing But The Truth (and a few white lies), I’ve decided that you’re one of my favorite contemporary young adult novelists in recent years. I wasn’t sure if North of Beautiful could match my love for Girl Overboard but I went in with an open mind. The final verdict: Wow.

From behind, Terra is a stunningly beautiful: tall and blond with a knockout body. Unfortunately she has one minor “flaw:”

While my face couldn’t launch a thousand ships, it has the power to make any stranger whip around for a second look. Trust me, this mixture of curiosity and revulsion is nothing Helen of Troy would ever have encountered.

Terra has a port wine stain that covers her entire right cheek. In her small Washington town, it’s branded her a freak since she was little. And it’s not just the people in town who treat her as “flawed.” Terra also gets it from her family. The youngest of three children, Terra is the only one still living at home. Her oldest brother works halfway around the world in China, and the second oldest attends college but never comes home. The reason for their avoidance stems from their father whose determination to control everyone manifests itself via cruel, sniping criticisms.

With the boys gone, Terra and her mother, Lois, are the ones left to deal with the brunt of his daily abuse. For Terra, this means she’s on the receiving end of insults about her “ugly” face. For Lois, a former rodeo queen who’s been worn down by her husband’s constant barrage of petty comments, this means she gets comments about her weight, her cooking, and her dietary habits. As a result, Lois clings to Terra, nearly suffocating her, by showering her with miracle treatments and laser treatments in the hope that “repairing” her face will give her “perfect” beauty. It’s a sad reflection on two fronts. First, if Lois can’t be the beautiful rodeo queen she once was, her daughter can be. Secondly, and probably most importantly, if Terra’s face can be “fixed,” then so can their family. Of course, it’s never that easy.

The relationship between Terra and Lois is further strained when it hits home that Terra will be graduating one year early and be heading to college next year, leaving Lois alone with her husband with no children present to serve as buffers. So out of guilt, Terra agrees to one final treatment for her birthmark, and it’s after that fateful appointment that she nearly runs over a goth Asian boy named Jacob. It’s this meeting that changes her life and teaches her what beauty truly means.

If Girl Overboard was a novel with multiple intersecting external events, North of Beautiful is a novel with multiple intersecting internal (emotional) currents. The obvious one is that Terra’s been chasing after the Land of Beauty for her entire life, but it’s always been beauty as defined by other people — a father’s never-satisfied standards, a mother’s hopes that fixing Terra’s face will fix their home, a best friend who defends Terra but never really lets her shine either, and a boyfriend who loves her body but is ashamed to be seen with her in public. Everyone’s put her in a box and in one way or another, she’s trying to escape, to become the person she wants to be.

And speaking of Terra’s father, what an awful man. He’s the perfect illustration of how abuse isn’t limited to physical, or even yelling. Not once does he ever raise his voice but I don’t think anyone who reads this book can see him as anything other than an abuser, not with the things he says to his wife and kids. And all because he was professionally humiliated by trying to put forth a forged map as genuine? As if that was their fault. He doesn’t need to take it out on them. What a jerk.

While some readers will be put off by the romantic aspects of the novel — because let’s face it, Terra was cheating on her boyfriend with Jacob even though her relationship with Jacob was mostly innocent although their feelings obviously went beyond the platonic — I did enjoy it because it reminded me of how high school relationships could be so messy, seemingly to bounce from one to the next without any clear delineations in between. I do appreciate the fact that even though it’s obvious Terra is with her boyfriend, Eric, for all the wrong reasons (she’s afraid that no one else will ever want her; after all, the only reason he hooked up with her in the first place is because he fell in lust with her body) and that Jacob is the one for her, the story never vilifies Eric. They’re wrong for each other but I think we can all remember a time when we all went out with someone just to go out with them, just because, even though there was no connection there.

Even if I don’t quite buy the thought of relative strangers going on a trip halfway around the world with each other, I did like the trip Terra and Lois took with Jacob and his mother to China. It was wonderful watching Terra’s mother rediscover herself, the former rodeo queen who could hold her head high, and seeing Jacob’s confident, self-possessed mother show some vulnerability and weakness. I’m curious to know how well the adoption storyline was portrayed. It rang true for me but since I’m not adopted, that doesn’t say much about its authenticity. On the other hand, I completely sympathized with Jacob during his time in China. I know what it’s like to have people assume you speak the language because you’re Asian but in reality, the only one you know is English. That I can agree with; it gets tiring — especially when they look like at you like you’re a freak or brain-damaged.

But what I loved most about the book was the prose. I readily admit I’m not a prose lover like some of my fellow DA reviewers are. I only really notice it when it’s exceptional one way or another. This book reminded me of the power of first person point of view, and how it can reveal character through the words used and can give insight into what matters to them most:

But all maps lie, I wanted to tell Karin and the rest of the class and especially this holly-jolly geneticist. Even the best maps distort the truth. Something’s got to give when you take our three-dimensional world and flatten it down to a two-dimensional piece of paper: Greenland balloons; Africa stretches. Entire wars have been won and lost because of maps, these keepers of secrets. There’s power in the grid lines, in knowing where resources are, in the snaking boundaries that define countries. I should know. My father is a modern-day cartographer, the Ptolemy of global positioning software, and was once the most gifted liar around.

Some people will find the map analogy tiresome. But seeing as Terra’s father was such a domineering force in her life, the all-pervasiveness of cartography and maps in her perspective worked for me. It reminded me of how much her life has been determined by his whims. Oh, and bonus points for including geocaching. It makes sense, given the importance of cartography and maps in the story, but that’s not something you run across often in fiction. A-

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

REVIEW: The Concubine by Jade Lee

Jia — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:00:17 +0000

Dear Ms. Lee,

Like Jane, I’m biased towards books featuring Asian heroines. So imagine how excited I was to discover a book that not only featured an Asian heroine but an Asian hero too! And in historical China! Even better, the cover depicted them as both distinctly Asian. That last bit sounds like a strange thing to be excited about but speaking from experience, book covers don’t really have a good history of staying true to a character’s ethnicity. Just look at the cover of that Harlequin Presents with the Asian heroine that Jane reviewed last month.

Chen Ji Yue is the only daughter of a poor noble. With little money to their name and two brothers who need to take the Imperial examinations, her family sends her to the Forbidden City. The previous emperor has recently died and his son has newly ascended the throne. And his first duty as emperor is to produce an heir. To this end, he sends notice to all the eligible young women that he is seeking an empress. And that’s not all: he also seeks four favored concubines and enough women to fill the two tiers of harems below that. So even though any of these roles would fulfill her goals, Ji Yue’s goal is to be chosen as empress because she’s been raised her entire life to be a political wife.

Sun Bo Tao is the emperor’s cousin and childhood best friend. With no real position, money, or title to his name, he’s forced to live on the emperor’s whims. And judging by what we see in the story, the emperor is a capricious man. Some readers might find that off-putting but I enjoyed seeing someone raised to be emperor actually act like an emperor. He thinks he’s a god so he acts like he is one, even if this means being cruel to his dearest friends. When Bo Tao suggests that his best friend focus on the impending visit of a group of Dutch envoys instead of searching for an empress, the emperor punishes him by placing in charge of the Festival of Fertility — the very search for the new empress he was advocating against.

This is an immensely likeable book. Even with the Asian leads and setting, the story itself is a great read. Ji Yue isn’t the most beautiful of women so she was taught to use her brain, and the ways in which she maneuvers through the candidate search show just how clever she really is. She also has an insight into current events (the Dutch envoys, the civil unrest in China) that show how canny she is about politics and ruling, proving just how good an empress she would be — if the emperor were interested in a woman who was more than a womb, which, unfortunately for her, he is not.

Bo Tao is the classic example of someone who can’t escape his past and the mistakes of his youth. As the emperor’s childhood friend, they used to run wild in the Forbidden City and he is infamous for being an unrepentant seducer. At least that’s what everyone says. As we see from his perspective, however, Bo Tao is older, wiser, and more responsible than the emperor. He may have a bad reputation but there’s no sign he’s acted that way in a long time. If anything else, he’s doing all he can to win the adviser position the emperor’s been promising him since forever.

I admit harem stories aren’t my favorite so I’m not sure how this holds up to that trope, but I do like stories in which the protagonist goes after one person, only to discover another person (usually the best friend or sibling) is more suited for them. And for me, the story delivered on that. Ji Yue used all her strengths to try and win the emperor’s affection: her intelligence, her political savvy, her cleverness. But in a search for the perfect woman to bear the imperial heir, those traits aren’t at the top of the list. Or anywhere near the middle, for that matter. Bo Tao views the Festival as nothing more than an inconvenient annoyance and has no desire to spend his time with desperate virgins panting after his best friend. But as he spends more time with Ji Yue, he discovers that some women — and this woman in particular — deserve better than the life they’d get in the Forbidden City and that in fact she’d be wasted as the emperor’s wife. The way they deny their attraction to one another while trying to keep it a secret from everyone else was delightful.

Some readers might find the ending to be a deus ex machina but in all honesty, I can’t see Ji Yue and Bo Tao getting their HEA in any other way without completely violating the limitations placed upon the story by the historical setting. For other readers, however, I think this is a story that makes excellent use of familiar romance tropes — the poor heroine who needs to earn money for her family, the reformed bad boy hero who falls in love with the woman promised to his best friend — and breathes new life into them by using them in a culture and time period not often found in the genre. B

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from Harlequin. It is a February release and you can only get the early releaseas at eHarlequin.com. Smart or what?