I received an eARC of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I read Xiran Jay Zhao’s YA debut Iron Widow when it was released and absolutely fell in love with their writing style, pacing, and authorial voice. I was so excited when their Middle-Grade debut became available on NetGalley for request and was even more so when I was approved to read it. However, the flow of this novel lacked the grace they showed in the writing of Iron Widow.
I struggled a lot with the near-constant info-dumping that this book did in order to explain the complex Chinese mythology that this story was working with to both the main character and the audience. It often felt like a primer on Chinese mythology more than an adventure story. The ending of this story also left me feeling hollow and frustrated for the characters because they are kids and they didn’t even get a moment to breathe or feel like they’d earned any feeling of victory after the journey they went through before being told that it was all for nothing and that the stakes had been raised again. This book felt more like it was worldbuilding for the rest of the (presumably forthcoming) series than it was a story that could stand on its own strength of execution. The impression this book gave me by the end was that it was just a piece in time within a never-ending cycle and that nothing these children did would ever be enough to succeed, that there would forever be another challenge for them to solve to finish this mission and save China.