SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Serpentine by Cindy Pon: https://t.co/LepGvNOcG6 Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)— garik16 (@garik16) December 24, 2018
Short Review (cont): A YA Fantasy featuring a teenage girl, left as a baby outside a compound, as she tries to protect the girl she loves as a sister & to figure out the monk to whom she's attracted....while hiding that she's been waking up with the tail of a serpent demon. (2/3— garik16 (@garik16) December 24, 2018
Serpentine is a YA Fantasy novel (first in a duology) by Cindy Pon which was released a few years back. It's a coming of age story and romance in a world inspired by Chinese mythology (with battles between demons and monks), but perhaps more importantly its a story of girls with a sisterly bond in a world that threatens them both.
And I enjoyed Serpentine a lot as a result. The sisterly-bond between this book's heroine and the girl she grew up with, ostensibly as a servant, is really lovely, and the romance works really well as a secondary subplot. And while the plot is a little bit by the numbers and predictable, it works functionally well with these excellent characters. The result is a fun and different YA fantasy novel that's well worth your time and whose sequel I anticipate getting to next month.
--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
When a baby girl was found outside Lady Yuan's compound, the girl, named Skybright, was taken in and raised to be a handmaid to the Lady's daughter Zhen Ni. Now Zhen Ni and Skybright are both teenage girls about to undergo puberty, and the two have come to love each other like sisters - sisters who share every secret and would do anything to help the other.
But when Skybright wakes up one night with a serpent's tail instead of legs, she becomes too afraid to tell anybody about it for fear of what would happen. And when she begins to fall in love with a warrior monk named Kai Sen, who has pledged his life to destroying demons, her fear only increases- what would her love do if he finds out that she might be a demon herself? But as demons and undead keep arising in the area and battling the monks, Skybright can't seem to keep herself away from the battle....and wondering which side she's supposed to be on.
But when Zhen Ni runs away, Skybright knows she has to do anything to find her and keep her safe from the demons and dangerous humans on the road....even if it ends up with her dead.
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I am bad at plot summaries and the above plot summary really misses quite a lot of what's encompasses in Serpentine, which again is rather good. This is a story of two teenage sisters going through puberty in both usual and fantastical ways and trying to help each other deal with their changes, while also being ashamed and afraid of those changes themselves. That there's also monks battling demons as part of an ancient conflict and a love story between one of those monks and our probably part-demon protagonist is almost besides the point.
For this is mainly a story of sisters growing up. I should add that Zhen Ni and Skybright aren't blood sisters and there is a power imbalance between them, but that imbalance is more on paper than anything else - their relationship isn't about that imbalance even if Skybright occasionally worries that it is becoming so as they each develop. Skybright is the one making the fantastical changes and becoming the Serpentine figure of the book's title, but Zhen Ni is also blossoming into more traditional womanhood in this book and having her first love as well - and not with a man as expected but a young woman. As such both teenagers have to discover more about themselves as the book goes on and have to learn again that they can always rely upon each other, and the story does this beautifully - both girls have their own personalities that seem real and make them easy to care for and their relationship is a wonderful heart to this story.
Again, there's other plots here - Skybright trying to figure out what she is and what her role is in this world and of course Skybright falling in love with Kai Sen, a handsome young monk who probably is obligated to kill her if he knew what she was becoming - and these are also done well, leading up to a conclusion that wraps up everything satisfactorily, but in a way that also poses a pretty damn big cliffhanger for the duology's conclusion. The book's a bit short, but it still works rather well and it never feels like it ends all to abruptly either, which is a typical problem with short books.
Recommended.
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