Monday, January 21, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Sacrifice by Cindy Pon




Sacrifice is the sequel to Cindy Pon's YA Fantasy novel, Serpentine (Review Here).  That novel contained a Asian-Inspired Fantasy world where warrior monks fought against undead and demon invaders, and two teenage girls who get caught up in the middle - one of whom discovers she can turn her bottom half into a serpent's tail.  It featured a coming-of-age story, some romance, and a bond between sisters that drove the entire plot as the two face danger in the middle of it all - and ended with the separation of its heroine from both her love interest and her sister-figure, as she sacrificed herself in order to save the two of them.  It was a strong ending to a pretty solid novel and promised some major changes to come for all the characters.

Sacrifice mostly follows through on that promise and features all three main characters getting involved in the same crisis a few months later.  Unlike the first book, which was told entirely from our main heroine's POV, Sacrifice shows us the points of view of all three main characters, but due to where the plot has gone it is no longer really a coming of age story or a story of sisters facing adversary.  Despite losing those two plot elements - which I really liked - Sacrifice is still fairly good, featuring several strong characters and a plot which took some surprising turns near the end.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Taken out of the Mortal Realm by the mysterious being Stone, Skybright finds the immortal trying to convince her to accept her Serpent-Demon nature.  But Skybright resists and Stone brings her months forward into the future with his powers.

Now that months have passed, things have changed in the mortal world.  Kai-Sing has been taken under the Abbott's wing as his designated successor and is learning to wield powerful magic - but secretly intends to both stop the Accord that sacrifices humans to close the portal between the mortal and demon realms and to somehow save Skybright from Stone.  Meanwhile, Zhen Ni has been married off by her parents to the rich loner Master Bei and is in misery all alone.

But things are far from normal, and danger lurks for all three of them - as Demons and Undead are reappearing in the mortal world, as if the Breach has reopened....and these demons are strange and far more powerful than the usual ones.  And the demons seem to be connected to Master Bei and Zhen Ni finds herself in dire danger.

With Stone no longer as powerful due to his seeming failure to seal the Breach and the monastery devastated by a new Demon attack, Skybright, Zhen Ni, and Kai-Sing will need to find a way to work together and find a new equilibrium if they want to save the mortal realm and to keep Zhen Ni alive.  But it will take them putting aside their differences and discovering the truth about who they all are, and what they mean to each other, in order to save everything....and even then there may yet require another sacrifice to prevent the absolute worst....
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Sacrifice is still the story of Skybright, the half-human half-Serpent Demon girl who was the heroine of Serpentine, but its story is expanded to be more of an ensemble story.  As mentioned above the jump, whereas Serpentine took place entirely from Skybright's point of view, this book jumps between Skybright, Kai-Sing, and Zhen Ni's points of view as the story moves forward (with most of the story from the first two's points of view).  It is thus more of the story of all three of them attempting to move forward and find who they each are, as everything has changed.

And it works because the main trio remain really good characters.  Skybright's growth in this book is really really well done, with her acceptance of who she really is being extremely well done and resulting in a very strong sequence in the end that really contrasts with her feelings towards her two forms at the beginning.  Kai-Sing's insecurity with Skybright's demon form is natural but his determination to change things and moral practicality makes him easy to root for, even if I wanted him to get over himself much quicker.  And Zhen Ni, poor Zhen Ni, finds a way to make even her own helpless position bearable as she first discovers the truth and finds a way to in the end help the other fight back.

And then there's our fourth major character, Stone, who gets central story time here.  Stone was kind of creepy in the first book, seemingly trying to make romantic moves on Skybright while being an asshole, and despite the fact he seemed almost certainly to have been a lover of Skybright's mother Opal.  But this book knocks him down a page and makes him far more relateable, making him an actual character worth rooting for in the context of the love triangle that develops.

Still, with the coming of age and sisterly love story over, this story is kind of less personal and deals more with the characters trying to prevent a disastrous outcome for the mortal world, a story that seems fairly traditional and predictable on its surface.  But the story takes some interesting and surprising turns along the way, particularly with Zhen Ni and Kai-Sing's endings, which did not go at all how I predicted.  And in doing so, it all comes back to Skybright once again, as she makes one final choice to decide how she will continue going forward in the end and who she really is.  It's really well done.  And while the ending is once again a bit bittersweet, it really works.

I think Sacrifice is maybe a weaker book than Serpentine still because there's too much of the early part of the book where I just wanted the leads to finally get back together again, which made it a bit distracting when that took so long to happen.  The loss of some of the more personal elements of the first book in favor of a more typical fantasy story is also a bit of a loss.  But Pon manages to make it all come together with some very interesting choices in the end that make it all worthwhile in the end so I still recommend picking up this book if you enjoyed Serpentine, which was definitely good on its own.  If there's a drop-off, it's a minor one at that.

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