MY RATING: ★★/ 5
“It’s easy to lose yourself in the idea of a person and be blinded to their reality.”
― Jay Kristoff, Stormdancer
I was very excited to read this novel giving the fact that I’ve loved AIDAN in The Illuminae Files and I knew that Jay Kristoff was the one behind it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t for me.
At first, I found it weird that I couldn’t like it because the concept and ideas are VERY GOOD. We have a bad-ass heroin set in Japan, telepathic samurai, a search for a griffin, super skills in martial arts, may mystical creatures and a worldbuilding out of this world.
But I was very out this world building…
As I was reading the novel, I didn’t feel connected to the story nor the characters. I thought maybe because I was traveling a lot and couldn’t focus. Then, I finished the book peacefully in my room and thought : IT WASN’T ME. It WAS YOU, THE BOOK.
The writing was too overly descriptive, I can understand that the author tries to give us as much information about Japanese culture but this is too much. Imagine all the stereotypes putting into a book. I’m not saying I’m a Japanese culture specialist, I just felt it was heavy to read. You know that feeling when you have to reread the same sentences several times to really get everything the author is trying to say? Yah, not good.
Sometimes, I feel the speech is odd. You don’t need to add sama at the end of the sentence everytime, like a word on his own. But from what I understood, correct me if I’m wrong, Sama is often added to a name, like an honorific. The Japanese added here and there often put me off. I don’t know what it means!! Imagine a sentence writing in two different languages. I often do that when I’m speaking english and French, but those are the languages I comprehend. But Japanese? What about the readers who don’t know it? It has a glossary but when you have to turn to glossary everytime…It’s a problem. It gets to the point where I don’t even bother reading it anymore.
There’s a series for this book but I think my adventure ends here ahah 🙂 Did you read the book ? What did you think about it ?
Big thank you to Raincoast for sending us a copy review for that book 😀
P.S: I’m still in Saigon for now, I will answer the comments shortly!! 🙂 Thank you all for the support and travel wishes ❤
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I think I would give this a miss. And hope you’re still having fun in Saigon!!
My Dark Theories 
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