Thursday, October 12, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee


The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is a Young Adult Urban Fantasy book, where the "Fantasy" elements come from classic Chinese folk stories (Journey to the West being the source for most, if not all of it, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the background material to know if bits and parts are pulled from elsewhere).  It also features an Asian-American high school girl as its protagonist, trying to live high school life in a competitive largely Asian High School.

Oh and it's also very very fun.  I don't dip into books that are blatantly young adult very often (you'll notice a lot of the time I describe books as "young adult" on this blog or on twitter, I often am not sure about whether the tag should apply), but this one is excellent.  Sometimes you just want books that are just about a heroine trying to balance high school life with duties of having discovered special powers, and not anything totally serious or dark.  If so, this is definitely a good place to look..

More after the Jump:


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Eugenia "Genie" Lo is just a normal Asian-American High School Girl, trying to live her life in the Bay Area.  She works hard at school, gets good grades, and is trying to get into a pretty damn good college.  Her sole defining feature she thought is that she's very tall, and as such, is a star at volleyball just from being able to defend the net incredibly well.

Or so she thought, until the day she tried to save a boy named Quentin Sun from a beatdown and then saw him come to her school and declare her to be his.  Quentin claims to be the Monkey King from Chinese legend, and claims that Genie herself is the reincarnation of his legendary staff, the Ruyi Jingu Bang.  Course, Genie doesn't like to be called not a person, so she isn't too thrilled with this claim (and hits Quentin around a bit).

But when demons supposedly sent to hell start appearing in town, threatening innocents, and the Chinese deities refuse to change their policy of non-interference, it will fall to Quentin and Genie, with her growing powers, to stop them.  Doing so without ruining the rest of her life however....might be a bit difficult.
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Again, this book is an incredibly fun and breezy read.  Genie is a really fun character, and a very good narrator.  She's fun to root for, her actions are believable, and she's just plain fun honestly.  Quentin is also a solid secondary character, and some of the other minor characters (the two deities who pop up here and then) are nice supporting characters.

The plot is also well paced and does a good job really showing us Genie's life and the social pressures she feels, and how those impact her decisions when she discovers her powers.  The fights in the book are nicely written if short, and Genie's power set (and the powers of opponents) are a fun mix.  Again, I hate to be just repeating myself, but the general package is fun and reads really quickly.

Obviously it's not perfect - Genie's best friend doesn't really get a lot of development and while she matters a lot to Genie, it very much feels like something to the side.  The book might be the first in a series, so I suspect that'll be remedied in the sequel.  In addition, the ending to this book involves a bit of a deus ex machina - the book reaches a natural ending point 95% of the way through, realizes it has a rather large loose end left, and just sort of finds a super cheap easy way to deal with it.  The natural ending is fine enough (and the final chapter as well) that it doesn't really matter much, but it's a small negative mark.

In short, recommended if you want something light and breezy, and if you're looking for something light YA, this certainly fits the bill.
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