crispycritter's Reviews (516)

“This is the difficult calculus of Meyer’s future, of any Type A extremist who longs for balance. They want the old results without paying the old costs, and while they’ll feel guilty about not changing, they’ll feel empty without the success. He wants peace and wins, which is a short walk from thinking they are the same.”

"I've reimagined [Water Margin] as a melding of epic fantasy and wuxia, an action-packed battle against patriarchy that's rife with indecorous women and fantastical sword fights . . . [i]n that context, this story is intentionally, gloriously violent -- mostly in a cinematic style . . . [t]hat said, I hope this is primarily a joyous, toothy escapist adventure, one in which a group . . . stand[s] up as self-proclaimed heroes to tear the world asunder."

• At the sentence level: SL Huang writes fine albeit boring sentences. Low-hanging obvious metaphors. Too much time spent on description. My hot take is that nice sentences are not necessary for a fun, fast-moving plot. Technically proficient. Soulless. This was part of the head scratcher. Well the writing's fine, what went wrong?
• Main Characters: I didn't enjoy or relate to our main POV characters. Lin Chong and Lu Junyi were both so passive, a massive personal pet peeve. Just using Lin Chong as an example -- Lin Chong makes it clear from the beginning that she is aware she lives in a violently misogynistic society but that it's not her job to look out for other women in her community. That's a hard place to start from, but a good place if you wanted to have a long runway for character growth. Halfway in I saw none, not even inklings. Lin Chong only speaks up when her close friend is in danger, and then only becomes truly rageful when she personally experiences violence at the hands of men. It's likely she would not have even left society had she not been forced. Her easy acceptance of the bandits' way of life feels convenient, sudden, and at odds with the values she allegedly espouses. After all, some of them are there for justice, but some of them just legitimately enjoy killing and eating people. She is self-aware enough to recognize how odd this is but we're left with little indication why this happened. I'm reading this in 2025 from Gilead *oops* I mean America, so Lin Chong is an especially difficult character to want to bother understanding. Lin Chong is a woman who has benefitted under the patriarchy by flying under the radar and aligning with the right folks. She's the fictional version of that right wing influencer who just had a baby with Mr. Cheeto's grand advisor and has just learned that she's been hung out to dry. Woops! There are anti-heroes like Glokta who I understand and can root for, despite being terrible people. And then there are characters like Lin Chong, who reads like a fantastical reimaging of my aunt in middle America with bad credit, really terrible political hot takes, and a confederate flag tattoo on her back. Nah.
• Side Characters: Simply too many to keep track of without anything distinct to differentiate them. SL Huang relied heavily on stereotypes which is oftentimes fun if you can lean into the campiness, but alas, there was no camp. Only suffering. I felt like I had dementia and couldn't quite recall that one sad memory with that one sad person. Oh what was their name?
• Plot: There was no plot. There was an inciting incident (Lin Chong's betrayal and abandonment). That inciting incident leads Lin Chong to our merry, murderous bandits. But then what??? I was 45% in, following the characters on the world's most boring heist side quest with no idea where we were going. Please see: Characters. Maybe if I'd known Lin Chong's motivations, I'd have an idea of where we're going. Is this a revenge story? Dunno. We had Lu Junyi's whole Dr. Frankenstein plotline of manufacturing space daddy teef as well, but on balance, that felt much less important than what was going on in Sherwood Forest. Well, now I'm just getting too snarky.
• Major Themes: This book attempted to say . . . something about the patriarchy. Men are bad. Women are good (unless they're bootlickers, but not Lin Chong!). The Emperor and the Empire are somehow removed from this critique and blameless, as corruption begins at the level below our dear supreme leader, as everyone knows (I didn't know this, but everyone in the book seemed to). I didn't find the discourse on patriarchy cogent at all. It seemed to fall into the Dollar Store Feminism / Strong Woman trap of 'let's defeat the patriarchy by becoming the patriarchy, women can murder too!' Another reviewer summed it up better: It's a very sincerely written story, but written in a naive manner that does not convey full control and awareness of the larger themes it attempts to get across.
• Vibez: Was this a joyous, toothy escapist adventure? Methinks no. It felt like grimdark without the humor and soul of an Abercrombie book. The characters seemed to relentlessly suffer. Lu Da was put there for comedic relief, but it read like an amateur attempt at slapstick humor.
• Author's Notes: Congratulations, I now have a new pet peeve. I'm already an uptight grumpy asshat about books. What's one more tick? Content warnings are great. I love content warnings. I have some very big triggers and it causes me genuine psychological distress if I read something graphic without preparing. Those are great and so kind to readers. What's not fine is authors using the content warning section of the book to try to cage in how a reader interprets their book. I found that SL Huang's author's note tipped over the line of "hey here are the potential triggers" to "hey here's what my book is about and how you should read it." What's my job here, then? Just pass my eyes over or listen to words, not a thought in my head, la ti da? Or is it actually part of the conversation to have readers determine for themselves what the tone and overall message of the book are? There are objective things, like genre, and then there are those subjective things. Don't strip me of the joy of discovering that subjectivity.