A good read but a tough one, mostly because there’s no easy way out of racism and generational poverty, even when you’ve been touched by Hawaiian legends. As a child, Nainoa falls into the water and is magically rescued by sharks; he comes out of the experience bearing supernatural gifts that he cannot quite figure out how to use. His siblings, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, also struggle to make their own way in his shadow. The book is brilliantly written, each viewpoint distinct, and the overall work just seethes with pent-up frustration and thwarted ambition, alongside gorgeous descriptions of Hawaiian landscape. It’s amazing.
Tag: genre-fairytale
Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A Mexican fairy tale in which Casiopea plays a wary, cynical Cinderella. Doomed to serve her casually cruel rich relations, Casiopea accidentally frees the Mayan God of Death, and he enlists (demands, really) her help in defeating the brother who wronged him. Their journey through Mexico and deep into the land of the underworld, as seen through Casiopea’s suspicious naivete, is delightful; the character of the God of Death gets surprising depth as well.
Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho
This phrase is overused, but: I felt seen. Narrator Jess, getting ready to move back to Malaysia with her parents, begins to hear a voice in her head. She chalks it up to the multiple stresses in her life: moving back to a country she barely remembers; feeling like a failure for being unemployed after graduating from Harvard; being afraid to come out to her parents, and having to constantly hide the existence of her long-distance girlfriend. But when the voice keeps feeding her facts that actually turn out to be true, Jess eventually finds to her dismay that she is a medium, and that the ghost of her grandmother Ah Ma has her own reasons for wanting to drag her Americanized granddaughter into the world of spirits and gangsters that she’d left behind. I loved Jess’s relationship to her parents and extended family, which reflected my experience of being mostly familiar with your birth culture, but occasionally encountering unexpected pitfalls that remind you that you didn’t really grow up immersed in the culture the way the previous generation did… though of course my pitfalls didn’t involve demons or a powerful crime boss. The book manages to cover a ton of ground, touching on various conflicts from homophobia and sexism to the tension between capitalist development and the respect due tradition and nature, while never losing track of the personal and familial relationships that drive the story. Jess is a strong character who tries her best to take control of her own story, even as the plot events yank her around (often literally). I actually loved most of the characters, and their conversations and interactions were delightful. If I had a criticism of this book, it would be that I felt it moved a bit too fast, without giving Jess (and therefore me) time to process what was happening. Still, I really liked it and will definitely be reading anything else the I can find from the author.
The Winter of the Witch, by Katherine Arden
End of the Winternight Trilogy, completing Vasya’s evolution from country village girl to a major figure in Russian folktale. What grounds her as a character is that she never loses track of the things that matter to her – her family, her people, her country – even as her powers and her view of the world evolves. As with the other two books in the series, absolutely beautiful writing.
The Girl in the Tower, by Katherine Arden
Sequel to The Bear and the Nightingale, another adaptation of Russian fairy tales with acknowledgement of societal gender roles and limitations woven in, as well as the continuing tension between folk beliefs and Christianity. As in the previous book, the descriptive language is absolutely gorgeous; the author paints really vivid pictures of both landscapes and characters.