A review by asahome
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

2.0

Girl lies to everyone around her without serious consequences and still gets what she wants most in life regardless of how she hurts others.
 
I love learning about new cultures and pantheons. The discussion around the spirits was interesting and I loved the idea of terraforming similar to Earth 2. It makes my little heart pitter patter. A lot of the characteristics were based on Korean beliefs and I have not studied that before.

I liked the stark contrast between the places she's describing. I liked the way the tech operated with flow as it worked well within the story. I struggled a little bit with the term "luck" being applied all over the place. It felt a little arbitrary that everything bad happened because of luck. It made it feel like the characters had no agency.

I liked the representation where, universally, pronouns were displayed to help communication. Min knew to look at the symbol to ensure she spoke to or about someone correctly.

I hated she got what she wanted most while not dealing with fallout from her lies. It didn't matter if she hurt her friends, abandoned her family to clean up her mess, or put the lives of an entire ship in danger. This is not only wrong, but also perpetuates stereotypes about the fox spirits. And her magic has no limits? That doesn't make any sense. She's allowed to engage her magic when she's unconscious and incredibly ill. The only mention she makes of problems with the magic is after holding it for MONTHS without end (a skill she's barely used before now) is a slight tiredness in her bones she hadn't noticed before. Come on! Jun's note was never mentioned nor how it was supposed to communicate something to his family. Then why have the note?
 

Content Warnings by Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee - Book Trigger Warnings 
Representation: 
  • Korean* characters (author openly identifies)
  • Non-binary side character
  • Brief mention of a poly relationship (m/m/m)
 
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