From the Bookshelf of Challenge Corner…

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom, #1)

Amélie Wen Zhao

Start date: January 1, 2023

Finish date: January 31, 2023

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Sep 08, 2023 Lee rated it liked it

All that Lan has left of her mother is a stranger mark on her arm. No one else can see this mark but her. One evening, she runs into Zen, a young man who can also see the mark. Hungry for answers, Lan follows Zen in hopes of getting answers. As both their secrets are threatening to come out, what are the answers going to cost?

The cover for this is absolutely gorgeous, so I was drawn to this book immediately. I also love reading about mythology and folklore from other cultures, so I was thrilled All that Lan has left of her mother is a stranger mark on her arm. No one else can see this mark but her. One evening, she runs into Zen, a young man who can also see the mark. Hungry for answers, Lan follows Zen in hopes of getting answers. As both their secrets are threatening to come out, what are the answers going to cost?

The cover for this is absolutely gorgeous, so I was drawn to this book immediately. I also love reading about mythology and folklore from other cultures, so I was thrilled to dive into this and see what it was all about. Plus, the promise of magic and secrets? I was sucked in! While at the beginning, I was involved, that did end up falling out to the point where I debated if I should DNF.

I do think this started well. I was gripped and curious about Lan and Zen, Lan especially. Her background and had me curious as to how she was going to get out of that and grow from the environment that she was in. Zen just had this mysterious energy that I wanted to know more about him. But, after the introduction, it felt like things fell apart for me.

A lot of world building is required for stories like this and while I do think that there was world building here and some was left for the sequel, it was presented in such a way that I struggled to digest. The information came in in info dumps. A lot of info dumps. There times when the reader gets one batch of information and then a little later gets that same bunch of information just a little reworded. I struggled with this a lot. It pulled me out of the story and it took me a while to get back into it each time as the information didn’t feel like it came from a more organic spot.

In part due to the info dumping, the pacing of the story felt off. As mentioned previously, I do think it started out well. I was interested in the characters and curious as to where everything was going. Then it massively slowed down and didn’t pick up until the end which with a book as long as this one, was a long time.

This is a more nitpicky thing, but I hated how the use of Chinese words were including with the translation of it immediately following. I wish there was a chance for the readers to use context clues to figure it out or the translation would have been included in a footnote instead.

While I did enjoy the beginning of this and even had some moments where I had a good laugh, I’m not entirely sure how much of this book was for me. I’m even torn on if I’ll pick up the sequel. I might just out of curiosity and hope that there is less info dumps that pull me out of the story, but right now I’m not sure.

A lot of other people have enjoyed this, so if it sounds interesting, give it a chance and see if it’s for you. ...more

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