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acozyreaderlife 's review for:
Descendant of the Crane
by Joan He
You know when you’re at the bookstore looking over the recent releases, and suddenly you’re drawn to a book? That was me with ‘Descendant of the Crane.’ The cover is stunning, and the description sounded amazing. A king murdered? His daughter will do anything to find the truth. I was getting major Hamlet vibes, and I was into it. Not to mention the fact that it’s an Asian fantasy and it just sounded so great. I was expecting a tale of murder, vengeance, power, and seeking the truth, but unfortunately, those expectations tanked after around page 100.
I thought this would be a perfect read, last fall I took Chinese Literature at University. It was an ethnic lit class. Not very in depth. A lot of Chinese literature is centered around immortality. (This is solely based on the course I took so forgive me if I leave out things.) Based on that limited knowledge, the ending of this book was not a grand reveal. I saw what was going to happen back from page 50.
This book suffers from what I tell my friends “edited 100 syndrome” which means that the book was edited and beautifully written up until page 100 or so and then it’s as if the beautiful book I have been reading has been replaced with utter trash. The writing for this tanked. It was littered with cliches and writing that I couldn’t even understand. But I was intrigued and wanted to know what happened to her father.
I thought the beginning, as stated before, was pretty darn good. I believed that Hesina was a new Queen, dealing with the loss of her father, and she was the only one to think that he didn’t die of natural circumstances. But the characters were so, and the world building was just not it. It was passed off by flowery descriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in a world full of descriptions where I can really see where the story takes place, but this just wasn’t it.
The love interest in this book was ok. I wish there were more scenes of Hensia being a powerful Queen and really showing herself as powerful. But she felt very underdeveloped when she was in ‘queen mode’ it was almost like she was a different person.
I thought this would be a perfect read, last fall I took Chinese Literature at University. It was an ethnic lit class. Not very in depth. A lot of Chinese literature is centered around immortality. (This is solely based on the course I took so forgive me if I leave out things.) Based on that limited knowledge, the ending of this book was not a grand reveal. I saw what was going to happen back from page 50.
This book suffers from what I tell my friends “edited 100 syndrome” which means that the book was edited and beautifully written up until page 100 or so and then it’s as if the beautiful book I have been reading has been replaced with utter trash. The writing for this tanked. It was littered with cliches and writing that I couldn’t even understand. But I was intrigued and wanted to know what happened to her father.
I thought the beginning, as stated before, was pretty darn good. I believed that Hesina was a new Queen, dealing with the loss of her father, and she was the only one to think that he didn’t die of natural circumstances. But the characters were so, and the world building was just not it. It was passed off by flowery descriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in a world full of descriptions where I can really see where the story takes place, but this just wasn’t it.
The love interest in this book was ok. I wish there were more scenes of Hensia being a powerful Queen and really showing herself as powerful. But she felt very underdeveloped when she was in ‘queen mode’ it was almost like she was a different person.