What endears me about this book is its premise. The story of a young Chinese kid reconnecting with his history and learning that his ethnicity and culture are things that should be celebrated and revered is one that is instantly relatable and heart-warming. Having Zack’s powers get stronger the more he learns about Chinese history was, in my opinion, a brilliant addition and resulted in some of the most compelling scenes and dialogue in the entire book. 

 

I also really enjoyed the underlying discussion of how historical figures are presented in media and how we learn about them in academic settings. Historical figures are complicated in the sense that they were real people. And with that comes the journey of understanding that sometimes it can be hard to determine whether they were good people. 

 

Zack constantly struggles with being a descendent of Qin Shi Huang and the actions he committed to unify China. The instances in the book where Zack can relate to the emperor in terms of his upbringing, yet can also relate to the people who died and suffered for the sake of the emperor’s conquest supplied ample conflict and allowed Zack to contemplate is own identity (being Hui, being Muslim, being gay, being the child of immigrants who had to flee due to ethnic and racial prosecution) and how that influenced his ability to empathize with Qin Shin Huang. I think that it is amazing that the author attempted to conquer conveying these ideas to CHILDREN! 

 

I can feel the love for Sci-fi and Chinese history and mythology on every page, and I can tell that the author researched and wrote like their fucking rent was due. 

 

What snags me about this book, however, is the writing and the pacing. While I understand that Chinese history is robust and extensive, I don’t think that it was well incorporated in some chapters, leading to exposition dumps in dialogue that didn’t feel natural. 

 

The characterization was also a miss for me. I know that the kids are being possessed and influenced by Ancient Chinese emperors, but when they’re themselves they don’t… feel like children, and I don’t think enough time was allotted to fleshing out Simon and Melissa’s personalities. Even Zack feels a bit flat sometimes. 

 

I feel that major events happen not because the characters and their actions brought them to that point, but rather because the plot required them to happen, so they did. The characters need to find the McGuffin within ‘n’ number of days or ‘xyz’ will happen is well and good, but the book doesn’t do the best job of creating tension and urgency. 

 

Multiple times throughout this book I argued back and forth with myself about whether the writing truly lacked finesse or if the writing was simply meant to engage a person half my age and I wasn’t the target audience. I’m still not completely sure. I need a second opinion, but for now, I’ll attribute it to it not being to my personal tastes. 

 

Overall, I think the book was enjoyable and I’ll read the next one whenever it comes out! 

 

I didn’t intend for this to be this long.