Citlalli and her family have come to South Korea to join
their mother after their oldest sister, Marisol, disappeared after slowly
weakening over a long period.
In Seoul they face many difficulties acclimatising and
fitting in with the culture around them – and they have not achieved the safety
they sought. Raina, Citlalli’s sister starts to fall prey to the same symptoms
as Marisol
Desperate not to lose another sister, and frustrated by medicine’s inability to cure her, Citlalli pursues more and more mystical avenues to find an answer – and finds far more than she imagined. Ghosts and spirits, creatures of legend – and vampires, slow, life draining vampires and their enemies, the werewolves.
She’s in over her head and she needs to learn quickly – but Citlalli is determined that the vampire queen will not take another of her sisters, no matter what she must do to stop her.
When this story started I found it incredible disjointed
and confusing. The chronology moves back and forth – we see Citlalli in the
past coming to South Korea interspaced, lots of flashback that has happened to
her and her family interspaced with the present. They’re not clearly labelled,
we don’t always know if we’re in the past or the present and I found it
extremely confusing and really not to my taste. It was a real pain for me and
there was a moment when I nearly put the book down because it was too much work
to follow it.
This part of the book also coincides with a very long
preamble to the story. There’s foreshadowing to the supernatural, but it is
just foreshadowing and it feels like an extremely long run up to the actual
meat of the story. It’s frustrating and, again, made it a hard book to get into
and tempted me to stop.
But once you get past that original barrier, the book
opens up considerably. Not only does it improve, but it improves sufficiently
that it is more than worth battling past that beginning shakiness, because it
opens up into a truly original and excellent story that is definitely worth a read.
The story itself draws heavily on Korean mythology and
elements of east-Asian mythology and beliefs. I can’t venture to say how
accurate it was or how well it got it or how much different traditions were
mixed up – or even what were western inserts – because I’m not nearly well
versed enough to make that judgement. I will say that there was a sense of
considerable research- places were named, streets were named, areas were
referred to, there was a lot of use of the Korean language (and the little I
knew seemed accurate, same goes to the relatively small elements of mythology I
recognised) but all of this comes from a place of profound ignorance on my
part. I can’t say if it was authentic, only that there was a definite amount of
research going on.
It was highly original compared to most western-based Urban Fantasy with a completely different focus, especially with the spiritual world, the ghosts and other elements like the cockatrice, the lanterns and the places. The setting was extremely rich and, to me, very novel. It also hit an excellent balance between describing and displaying all of these extremely original concepts and places to me without devolving into either long winded description or gross exoticism which I really appreciated. The setting was rich without making me feel like a gawking tourist, well portrayed without me feeling like I was being forcefed information.
This comes with some decidedly beautiful vampires that
are, equally, horrifying and terrifying, yet still with an edge of tragedy. It’s
worked together and balanced really well. There’s also a really interesting
take on the idea of a werewolf Alpha. Personally I don’t really like any Alpha
because I think it messes with actual wolves and is an excuse for a lot of
shoddy behaviour; but this is a wonderful challenge of the trope. The Alpha is
in charge and demands obedience and respect and the Omega to obey the whims of
the pack. That doesn’t mean “aha I am Alpha, time for sexy time,” far from it –
it means that he’s the boss and is dictatorial with it. And it means the omega
ends up doing a whole lot of menial tasks and errands for the rest of the pack.
Citlalli was also an interesting character – as were her
family. A latino-American family in South Korea, it brought another element to
a genre we hardly ever see – different groups of POC interacting. A POC
protagonist in a “POC setting” as it were – not just reducing race to White
people and “Other”. It’s full of complexity, Citlalli’s difficulty in adapting
to her new home, her family difficulties, comparing her experience with her
immigrant Mexican parent’s experience – there’s lots of issues introduced and
covered and a whole lot of references without it being reduced to clumsy
lectures or obvious PSAs. There’s also Citlalli’s younger sister, Raina, half-Korean
and from their mother’s affair with another man, she faces a lot of conflict.
She is scapegoated and singled out by her family, constantly battling for
acceptance even from her kindest sisters. She has her own trouble in South
Korea, with both an easier time fitting in, but still facing a language barrier
– only with people not expecting her to have trouble. There’s a lot of
complexity and a whole lot of detail in the entire depiction making for a rich
and often harsh look at their family life and the challenges they face. There
were a lot of cultural references and hard moments dealing with and challenging
various elements of racism they faced – all fitting naturally into the story
without any feel of convoluted insertion.
The story eventually ends up with two protagonists –
Raina and Citlalli which allows us 2 very very different characters who are
both strong in different ways and both display a different set of talents. Both
fight to overcome the situation they’re facing – but they do it from very
different positions, with very different allies and, ultimately, end up with a
very different lens on the situation giving us a much more nuanced view point
of who the ultimate evil is or not. It adds to the excellent complexity of this
book.
The characters in general are deeply flawed but very real
and many of them are passionate and determined, none more so that Citlalli (she’s
also stubborn, impetuous, passionate, sometimes mean but she does try) but
equally so Raina – Citlalli is big and flashy and loud with her defiance and
her demands, but Raina is quiet and strong and solid with her endurance and
tenacity. Their sisters are portrayed in a very positive light even when they
fight a great deal. Their mother is frequently attacked and slut shamed but
there’s always an indication that they’re not fair to do that. Above all, she’s
extremely hard working and ambitious, even if she is harsh and unforgiving. One
of the vampires also repeatedly sexually assaults one of the characters – the
whole concept of the vampires kidnapping “brides” is beyond unpleasant – but then
the vampires are clearly portrayed as evil in part because of it. There is a
lot of grimness in this book – which includes the sexually assaulting vampires
and the kidnapped and enslaved girls – it’s presented as evil but it’s there
and not sugarcoated.
The characters are real, they’re human and there’s a huge
number of them – but never so many that I had trouble keeping track or the
story felt too full.
There are no GBLT characters, unfortunately, even with
the large cast; it’s another erased book.
It’s a fight to get into this book and it does take a
little while getting started and getting moving. But once in there it is more
than worth a look. It is truly original with very human main characters and a
setting that is sorely missing from the Urban Fantasy genre. It’s racially
diverse, it brings in culture and mythology and beliefs we rarely see (and when
we do see it, we usually only get a cameo appearance tacked onto the story –
fairy kitsunes abound). It definitely should be on the reading list of any fan
of the genre.
A copy of this book was received from the author in exchange for a review
