attackfish

I actually wrote a review for Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia by Cindy Pon a while ago, but I lost it when my computer crashed, and so this book is actually one of my scores from the half off sale at my local independent book store. I'd been waiting for this book to come out ever since I discovered the 2009 debutantes. Secondary world fantasy based on the mythology of Classical China instead of Medieval Europe? What's not to look forward to?

Bad luck seems to cling to Ai Ling, a too tall girl, dishonored and betrothed, and when her father disappears on a journey to the capital, and a man from the town tries to force her into marriage to pay off a manufactured debt, she flees her village to find her father and save her family. On her way to the Palace of Fragrant Dreams, she must figure out the sinister forces pulling her ever closer to the capital, and the others seeking to ensure she will never get there.

I was hoping when I opened this book to read an epic quest fantasy, with plenty of feats of daring, a little mystery, a little mayhem, a lot of adventuring, and a deadly struggle against evil. Oh I got that all right, but I also got a little romance, a little sibling rivalry, a little creepiness, and a strong heroine that I fell in love with by the end of the first chapter. Silver Phoenix is in the great tradition of Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Toll Booth, a kitchen sink novel, so called because it has everything inside but a kitchen sink. It uses the motif of a quest to take readers not just through the "mundane" realm of a fantasy world, the realm where ordinary people live and do ordinary human things like have children, make war, eat, work, and get married, the titular kingdom of Xia, but into the realms of the gods and other immortal creatures (I guess that would be the "beyond" part). Ai Ling and her companions, trying to get back on the path to the capital and the palace after they were swept away from it, enter the land of strange. Three eyed mad scientists, benevolent goddesses, dragons, and lakes that cause pregnancy were just some of the things they ran across.

Back in antiquity, before myths were written down, epics became the first kitchen sink stories as storytellers added every bit of myth they could to the epic frames to make them more interesting. When they were written down, the amalgamated myths remained in the story. Silver Phoenix feels a lot like that. Unlike the other kitchen sink novels I mentioned, one instructional, one literary nonsense, the kitchen sinkishness of this novel is more the result of pushing as much cool stuff into one book as possible. Silver Phoenix suffers from a lack of focus, and also from a lack of real fear of threat on the part of the main characters, which leads to a lack of tension, but it's such an unbelievably fun romp, that I really can't mind much.

What I can mind is the way Pon gets heavy-handed with morals. She has all of the characters either voice mild feminism or look like fools. Even the self-proclaimed traditional Chen Yong remarks that he doesn't understand why most girls aren't taught to read and write, and is later horrified at the thought of a country without women. Instead of saying all of this, I wish Pon had just showed us this, showed how Ai Ling's ability to read helped her fight her enemies and stay alive, and just show how much she kicks ass.

There's plenty of that too. Ai Ling saves the lives of her companions, tricks her enemies, kills an evil immortal, and gets through it all by sheer force of will. With her special status and power, she could easily cross over into being a Mary Sue, but she's so unassuming and acts so ordinary that Pon pulls it off with incredible panache.

Pon's world building is superb. From the prologue where she sets the scene in the concubines’ chambers of the imperial palace where the reader can see and hear and smell everything around the characters, she immerses the readers into the world. And what a world it is! Demons and monsters straight out of Chinese mythology and folklore roam the roads between Ai Ling's home and the capital, and tremendous royal wealth supports absolute luxury. Pon mentions food a lot in this book, which serves to pull the reader in further and make the world even more real. Her portrayals of the numerous realms beyond the kingdom of Xia are just as complete and fascinating. In some cases, through the fantasy, there's almost a hint of science fiction. In some there's a dream-like atmosphere. Pon's ability to create so many miniature worlds and a different feel for each really makes me eager to read anything else she should write.

Silver Phoenix has a truly creepy villain, obsessed with the heroine, stealing other people's lives to make himself immortal, controlling emperor after emperor, and all this with his penis in a jar. Zhong Ye might have been introduced late (and really he should have been introduced earlier, along with his relationship to the reincarnated heroine, as it was it felt like the story wasn't really about them, but more a travelogue of the fantastic) but he made a huge impact, and I would like to have seen more of him.

There were a lot of things I would have liked to see more of. Chen Yong's relationship to his adoptive family and his status both as an adoptive child and a half-foreigner seemed to me to be a really rich source of conflict and story. I hope that should Pon write a sequel, it touches on this. Likewise, I would have liked to see more of the imperial court than the little tidbits we got at the very beginning and then right before the end. But then, dear readers, if you've been reading these reviews of mine for any length of time, you know that if the entire book were spent at the imperial court, wrangling over politics, it still wouldn't be enough. Also, I would like to have seen more of Xia proper instead of the realms of the immortals. The fact that Pon has left me wanting more should tell you something about how much I like this book, and my nit picks are loving.

I really really hope Pon writes a sequel about Chen Yong's own journey, and Ai Ling better be in it!