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A review by lizziekam
Dragon's Gate by Laurence Yep
3.0
I read this because it was a choice on my son's required-reading list. I can't say I enjoyed it much or could really recommend it but it was informative. The main character is Otter, who lives in the mid-1800s in China. His father and uncle have emigrated to America to work on the railroads, and are the richest men in the village, treated like kings when they come home occasionally to visit. However, when events conspire to send Otter to America, he find that conditions for Chinese working on the railroads are awful. The book then spends many, many claustrophobic pages locked inside a mountain in the Sierras as the Chinese chip out a tunnel.
This book must have been assigned reading because it is an award-winning YA historical fiction. However, it is smack in the middle of a series, so I think this reader missed quite a bit of the development of the characters and setting. While the plot of the novel is stand-alone, I think this might have been a more rewarding reading experience if readers were more immersed in the story of generations of Chinese that Yep is building in this series.
This book must have been assigned reading because it is an award-winning YA historical fiction. However, it is smack in the middle of a series, so I think this reader missed quite a bit of the development of the characters and setting. While the plot of the novel is stand-alone, I think this might have been a more rewarding reading experience if readers were more immersed in the story of generations of Chinese that Yep is building in this series.