A review by mlkao94697
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I am overall pretty disappointed. I’ve heard so many great things about this book and I was super excited to read it especially since it was based in Chinese mythology. I rated this a 2/5. My criteria: I  did not enjoy this book overall but there were a couple of parts that I thought were somewhat engaging or interesting. There were several fundamental issues that I have with the story or the writing style. I definitely will not read this book again. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’ll be reading the sequel.
The good things: I thought the premise was cool and I thought that the world was described beautifully and in a way that I could really imagine myself being there. Ok… moving on to what I didn’t like. The tell don’t show style of writing really got under my skin and didn’t improve throughout the book. I didn’t feel any attachment to the characters and the relationships felt stunted because of this. Some spoiler-y criticisms:
Xingyin’s character development was almost nonexistent. Yes, she got more powerful (very quickly at that), but she didn’t really grow in any other way. Her ambition is tied pretty much solely to freeing her mother, which I as a reader did not find interesting or compelling. I wanted something more from her, but just never got it. Also, so many people treat her so poorly for almost no reason constantly! It got so frustrating at some points. The romance was… ok I guess. At some points it was fine and even good but I eventually got bored of it. Liwei was not really interesting beyond being merciful and kind. And Wenzhi was pretty much unredeemable by the end.
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