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A review by ihateprozac
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao
3.0
I adore vicious women and diverse retellings, so I really wanted to love this. But unfortunately the storytelling was too slow and around 100 pages too long. I was just booooooored.
I did really enjoy Xifeng as the protagonist, and if you liked The Young Elites by Marie Lu you may enjoy her too. She has a gradual descent from victim to villain and she’s wonderfully unlikeable and vain. She’s deliberately an uncomfortable POV to read from.
That being said, there’s a LOT of physical abuse and animal death surrounding Xifeng that I didn’t fuck with. It’s downright nauseating at times and I could’ve done with less….visceral description.
Back to the writing: each scene technically propels the story forward, but there’s a lot of waiting we do as readers when it comes to retellings. Because we generally know the shape that the story is going to take - even if the culture or protagonist is switched up - we’re always waiting for the characters to hit certain beats set down in the source text. The first act was really engaging but 80% of the book was me waiting forever for Xifeng to manoeuvre court politics to an outcome that’s already set in stone.
3 stars. I won’t be continuing on in this series because it’s just too slow for my liking. However, I did enjoy some of the magic and mythological elements, so I’d be keen to pick up other stories from Julie C Dao in the future!
TW: physical abuse, multiple animal sacrifices, gore
I did really enjoy Xifeng as the protagonist, and if you liked The Young Elites by Marie Lu you may enjoy her too. She has a gradual descent from victim to villain and she’s wonderfully unlikeable and vain. She’s deliberately an uncomfortable POV to read from.
That being said, there’s a LOT of physical abuse and animal death surrounding Xifeng that I didn’t fuck with. It’s downright nauseating at times and I could’ve done with less….visceral description.
Back to the writing: each scene technically propels the story forward, but there’s a lot of waiting we do as readers when it comes to retellings. Because we generally know the shape that the story is going to take - even if the culture or protagonist is switched up - we’re always waiting for the characters to hit certain beats set down in the source text. The first act was really engaging but 80% of the book was me waiting forever for Xifeng to manoeuvre court politics to an outcome that’s already set in stone.
3 stars. I won’t be continuing on in this series because it’s just too slow for my liking. However, I did enjoy some of the magic and mythological elements, so I’d be keen to pick up other stories from Julie C Dao in the future!
TW: physical abuse, multiple animal sacrifices, gore