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A review by negative40
Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff
3.0
I picked this up from the library due to the cool cover and the words "Japanese Steampunk." It really was a pretty cool book. Nice story, some decent twists, and ultimately a great book in the genre. There was some quite wooden prose, but I chalk that up to debut novel pitfalls.
However, there was this one thing about the book that was rather glaring was its Japanese-ness. I know precious little about Japanese culture, but even I could tell that this felt like culture as interpreted by a guy that had seen Kill Bill a few times and watched a bit of anime. (Which, from the criticism I've read, may not be far from the truth.) Sure, it's not really Japan but some fictional island, so maybe you can fudge it a bit. However, everything felt very Western with a dash of "ain't this cool" exoticism. I imagine the words "Japanese steampunk" helped him sell the book, but I think the author should have either done the research and made this truly Japanese in flavor or just made it vaguely Asian. He tries to do both and it comes across as lazy. It's unfortunate, because other than that it's a great book.
However, there was this one thing about the book that was rather glaring was its Japanese-ness. I know precious little about Japanese culture, but even I could tell that this felt like culture as interpreted by a guy that had seen Kill Bill a few times and watched a bit of anime. (Which, from the criticism I've read, may not be far from the truth.) Sure, it's not really Japan but some fictional island, so maybe you can fudge it a bit. However, everything felt very Western with a dash of "ain't this cool" exoticism. I imagine the words "Japanese steampunk" helped him sell the book, but I think the author should have either done the research and made this truly Japanese in flavor or just made it vaguely Asian. He tries to do both and it comes across as lazy. It's unfortunate, because other than that it's a great book.