Tica has struggles to fight – bone cancer has left some
devastating effect on her life and her future. Her dreams are severely set back
and she has to fight hard to be someone other than “the cancer girl”
But there’s another struggle looming – the cursed Vampyre
Prince Khyber has come to Hawai’i with a mission: he wants to die. And the keys
to doing so lie in recruiting Tica to the fight to protect Hawai’i and the spirit
world from desperate spiritual attack.
This book did an excellent job of filling in a few of the
gaps – there are characters I read about in Year
of the Tiger that I felt had a lot going on that I had missed. Which
was true – but the elegance of the series is that I didn’t need to know Rafael’s
backstory to understand Year of the Tiger, the battles that were fought or why
Rafael felt the way he did. It was clear that Rafael had a major life above and
beyond what Citlali saw, and that wasn’t a bad thing
Which is something else this story does excellently, we
continue the whole metaplot of The
Changeling Sisters series but also get to exp
I think, perhaps, this would have been improved without
the focus on Khyber, to be honest. I think it would have been better served
with a less involved vampire – or even no vampires at all (do the taking over
dark spirits need the direct vampire presence to be an issue?). It would have
done better at giving the idea that this is a battle across the globe with
different warriors struggling against them. It would expand the universe.
But it still did expand that – because Khyber was pretty
much unnecessary to the main plot of this book which was definitely,
overwhelmingly Tica’s story. Which I also love because it sets another champion
up who is every bit as awesome as Citlali
And Tica is awesome. She’s passionate and determined. She
isn’t perfect and definitely has some painful, difficult moments with her
friends and certainly with her mother. But she’s extremely knowledgeable and
tough and faces both personal battles, accepts the vastness of the supernatural
and absorbs and adapts to it well.
Her story is really well written, excellently paced as it
matches development of her character and the world, her difficult, painful
relationships, her very painful struggle as well as the action involved in
fighting to save the spirit world and fight off the dark spirits (and the dark
Spirits of Plague are horrendous – and much better villains than the vampires
that seem almost clumsily inserted to the rest of this awesome story) as well
as a lot of Hawai’ian mythology
This book has a large number of Hawai’ian deities and
spirits, especially Poli’ahu, one of the goddess of snow, being majorly
involved. Kamapua’a being intimately involved with Tica’s story and the story
of Nanaue being fundamental to this overall story with Mo’o playing a vital
role at every stage. I especially like that these were allowed to exist and
explore and be the prime actors in the story without them being minor
characters in a larger plot and world. While it’s clear in other books there
are other deities and legends, here, in Hawai’i, the Hawai’ian deities are the
centre of this story, they are the powers, they are the ones who are important
here. These legends are the ones that are going to absorb every part of this
book, they’re going to be the ones who will be important here and be part of
every plotline.
I’m not going to say how awesome this is. It looks
awesome. It look well researched. It looks well made. It looks really awesome.
So say I, a man who has never been to Hawai’i and am not going to remotely
claim remotely to know the slightest thing about Hawai’ian mythology. I’m not
going to say this is awesomely researched because of this: it feels like a lot’s
there but I can’t say I know enough to know the author hasn’t created this. I
don’t think they did but still.
I do like the way the story ends because it’s
complicated. It is kind of Bitter-Sweet happily ever after, it’s not all fun
and happy; it’s layered, powerful, sad but strong. I like it, I appreciate the
complexity and levels to it and the lack of shiny, simple,
everything-is-perfect ending
We also have some really nice way the identities of these
characters and their struggles are present in this story. We have Aolani
fighting for success and a future career in the hotel industry only to see how
they use her culture and her name. We have Kyoko discussing what education will
actually help her succeed – but that means less attention for language and culture
she doesn’t see as being useful to her, which are de-emphasised
We have a large cast of POC here. Tica is Latina and
Hawai’ian. Kyoko, her best friend, is Japanese. Aolani and many of the other
characters are Hawai’ian. The very rare white character is openly mentioned as
such as he is the different one in their POC collection. And issues like these
above are nicely incorporated in the plot without in any way distracting,
derailing or turning it into a PSA book. Many of these characters have their
own storylines – Kyoko and Aolani both have their own plot lines.
We do have a minor gay character who is kind of not
really involved in the plot. The word “sashayed” is also used which… really?
Let’s not
Tica, in addition to being a Woman of Colour, is also a
disabled woman. She is battling bone cancer and has already had her arm
amputated. She has had to struggle to change so much of her life, what she
wants, what she loves, her dreams due to losing her arm. She worries about
medical bills and what that does to her family. She lives under the fear that
she may have suffer a remission – again it doesn’t completely consume her character
but does massively influence her and inform her. And we don’t get a magical
healing story either
This series is wonderfully complicated, it’s extremely
racially inclusive and this story has made a real stride in expanding the world
setting, the series and the mythology. It’s fun, exciting, deep and layered and
really fascinating – it’s a more than welcome addition to our library.
