Hotlist Horrors

#7 - The façade of a culture

Another POC-inspired story written by someone outside said culture. Fingers crossed for proper research.

Opening scene Japanese-and-Chinese-inspired setting, opens with cherry blossoms. Such a formulaic cliché I don't know whether I should be offended or embarrassed.

Not a fan of the prose. Too dry, too tell-y. There is too much unnecessary description and minutiae that could be cut out to make the narrative much tighter.

Following chapters I find myself skimming a LOT and yet not actually missing anything of importance. There's a fundamental question that I hope is later answered (ie why the MC needs to do this particular quest/job/assignment when the person hiring her to do this quest has a group of specially trained, powerful people at their disposal).

Pacing is uneven. Strangely fast where it needs to be drawn out for the sake of suspense and intrigue (eg action scenes, key conversations), but excruciatingly slow and over-descriptive where it needs to move quicker (eg stepping out of a carriage and meeting someone is described in way more paragraphs than is necessary).

The narrative voice isn't engaging enough to keep me reading to the end. It is just too simplistic to convince me that it can pull off such a complex plot (as the synopsis hints at), rounded world-building, or multi-dimensional characters.

That said, it did get me through to more chapters than most other books. So kudos.

But since I mentioned world-building. Other than the use of names, clothes, and some weapons (all of which are stereotypical and cliché of Japanese culture), nothing else suggested anything remotely unique or reflective of any other culture besides your average medieval Western setting. So in terms of atmosphere---name-dropping kimonos, shurikens, cherry blossoms---all was just a cheap way of adding the façade of a culture; but when you look deeper, it's all just an empty husk.

Amanda-Mae says it best in her chapter "The culture rants: Calm down, it's only a fantasy world" (external link). I think this book fits exactly into that rant.