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A review by darkskybooks
Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee
3.0
This was a mildly frustrating read. It was on for a solid 4 in my rating until the last 20 pages...
The basic premise of the story is interesting - a magic system where grinding up artwork from dead artists produces magical pigment used to animate automatons, all set in an early 20th centuryesque Korea. Two very solid ticks with a cool sounding hard magic system and an interesting and less well known world basis. The non-binary gendering of the main character also added an interesting twist and the use of the plural pronouns to refer to the main protagonist gives an interesting reading experience. Even the family units are interesting, apparently consisting of three adults in a parenting role. The oppressive occupation and the cultural world building all gave this a very cool flair.
Unfortunately this did not stick the ending. It all just went a bit too whimsical and strange. Whilst there was a gritty realism to much of the rest of the book, this ending ended up feeling way to off tone. A shame, as the rest of the book was really good.
The basic premise of the story is interesting - a magic system where grinding up artwork from dead artists produces magical pigment used to animate automatons, all set in an early 20th centuryesque Korea. Two very solid ticks with a cool sounding hard magic system and an interesting and less well known world basis. The non-binary gendering of the main character also added an interesting twist and the use of the plural pronouns to refer to the main protagonist gives an interesting reading experience. Even the family units are interesting, apparently consisting of three adults in a parenting role. The oppressive occupation and the cultural world building all gave this a very cool flair.
Unfortunately this did not stick the ending. It all just went a bit too whimsical and strange. Whilst there was a gritty realism to much of the rest of the book, this ending ended up feeling way to off tone. A shame, as the rest of the book was really good.