I really liked Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga – there was a lot going on so it took a second to get into them but once I was hooked, I couldn’t stop being impressed by what she did: it was an Asian influenced fantasy in a modern day setting with Mafia vibes, and felt very much like The Godfather movies as far as the span of the story. The series starts at a time where old and new are colliding and ends in a world that has completely changed and modernized, much like 1940s vs the 1970s of The Godfather movies felt like so much more than 30 years. When I saw Fonda Lee had a YA novel coming out, there was no question, I was going to read it.
I didn’t realize until later that Shannon Lee is Bruce Lee’s daughter and she worked with Fonda Lee to take one of Bruce Lee’s ideas and turn it into a novel. Considering that the show Warrior is another property that has a similar origin, this made me even more excited.
And I don’t know, it was a perfectly decent book, solidly plotted and developed, and I am curious to see where it goes but I think maybe my expectations were too high. Or maybe Fonda Lee is better suited for adult stories and given Bruce Lee’s background, this would have been better as a show or movie, a more visual medium, like Warrior is. There was just something missing to make it stand out in the way other really good YA does or the way that Green Bone Saga does.
Also, the Green Bone Saga novels were big books, each covering a lot of activity and time. I wonder if this would have been better if it had been a longer stand alone novel vs the first half of a duology.
This novel is set in two countries – until anout 50 years ago, they were one but after revolutionaries tried to force change, the country split into West and East. Both are flawed in their own ways and both have one of two sacred scrolls. In the East, martial arts are forbidden to all except those that are dragon marked. These people have special abilities but they don’t always know what they are but since the mark is something physical on their body, that doesn’t matter in them getting identified. When these dragon marked children turn 6, they are supposed to go to the government to serve as an Aspect initiate and eventually become an Aspect. It’s a great honor. The novel starts a month after Jun and Sai’s 6th birthday when two Aspects come to collect Sai. Identical in all ways but this, Jun does not want his brother to leave him alone and he also doesn’t want to be seen as less than his twin. After all, Sai may be able to perfectly mimic anything he sees Jun do, but Jun is the one that learns everything first. To prove this, he demonstrates his martial arts abilities, but instead of making his case, he and his father are banished for 5 years for forbidden practices while Sai will take his intended place with the initiates.
Ten years later, Jun and his father are still in the West. Tense relations between the countries deteriorated after their exile, with all communications and hope of return ending 2 years after their departure. Once this door closed, Jun’s father finally let Jun train at martial arts school and even made his own living as the choreographer for stage fights at the local theater.
It’s not enough for Jim, though, who is driven by a mix of ambition, guilt, desire to proof his worth, and feeling of destiny. Every 6 years, there is a competition in the Capitol to find the greatest warrior and select the new Guardian of the scroll of Heaven. When Jun’s father forbids him from competing, Jun stows away in Chang and Ren’s cart, a set of traveling entertainers with a father-daughter relationship.
Once Jun arrives, he realizes the tournament will be much more complicated than he expected as politicians are subverting its intent for their own agendas and to drive the country towards a path to war.
Overall, as well as everything was put together, it just felt like familiar ground. I think I also felt a bit distant from the characters so while it was a solid novel, it just didn’t have that special something it needed to take beyond solid, whether that would have meant amazing characters or a unique spin on the story.