The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho
Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 23rd June 2020
I love the idea of Wuxia, but I’ve actually encountered very little of it, and I think that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to evaluating how successful this is, and knowing how to enjoy it. And it’s marketed as being about a “found family” — well, that should be totally up my street!
Unfortunately, I didn’t really get along with it as well as I’d hoped, and the “found family” feels fairly thin. The characterisation of anyone apart from the main characters is fairly light, and I didn’t really feel I got a handle on who anyone was as a person and what they held dear, apart from those main two (and even then, sometimes I struggled). It feels like it’s going to be an adventure story, but in the end it’s more personal — only I didn’t feel like I came along for the journey.
This sounds more critical than I want to be; I enjoyed reading it, and appreciated Tet Sang a lot. I don’t know how to stack up my experience here against other Wuxia books, and I think that’s part of the problem.
Great review! I’m sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy this one as much as you hoped, but I’ve seen a few similar reviews for this one so you’re not alone there. It’s one I’d really like to try myself, but I’m going to wait until it’s a little cheaper—I get a little frustrated with how expensive Tor novellas are.
Jess @ Jessticulates recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday | Books I’m going to borrow from the library (when I can go to the library again)
Aww, that’s kind of sad. It sounds so cool, I feel like I didn’t get the context, you know?
I felt similarly, there were some fun moments, and it wasn’t a *bad* book, I just didn’t find I particularly connected with the characters.
Caitlin G. recently posted…Weekly Reading Check-In: 06/10/20
Yeah… I do think it’s partly just not being super aware of the genre and tropes. I think it might be pretty clever if you know that kind of thing!