Wednesday, March 25, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Iron Will of Genie Lo by FC Yee





The Iron Will of Genie Lo is the sequel to 2017's "The Epic Crush of Genie Lo", which was one of my first reviews here on this blog (here).  I really enjoyed The Epic Crush, a YA Fantasy story featuring a Chinese-American high school girl trying to manager her way through high school (and her demanding parents) who finds herself caught in an urban fantasy-esque story based in large part upon Journey to the West.  It was a classic spin on the "young teen has to balance high school life with duties as a newfound superhero", only Genie's superhero powers are based upon being the reincarnation of the Monkey King's staff (the Ruyi Jingu Bang) and her supernatural foes are based upon Chinese mythology/Journey-to-the-West and her high school life is based upon Asian-American culture.  And it worked really well, in a really fun package, so I was excited to hear the sequel was out this year.

And honestly, the Iron Will of Genie Lo is a really damn good sequel, aging up the characters a year, and thus giving Genie a whole new bunch of worries in her normal life - becoming captain of Volleyball! Graduating High School!  College! - as well as throwing a new supernatural conflict in front of her and Quentin.   It's a short novel even for YA, filled with great humor and a fun great lead, and a surprisingly great ending, which seems to conclude this series at two books.  For fun YA Fantasy from a culture that isn't the typical White American culture, you could easily do worse and may not do a lot better - this is a truly fantastic piece of the genre and I devoured it as soon as I started.

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Life for Genie Lo isn't any simpler now that she's a rising senior instead of a rising junior.  She has to look at colleges, deal with being named captain of the school volleyball team, and oh yeah - deal with the fact that she's been named Shouhushen of the "Kingdom of California" and is responsible for dealing with the yaoguai (demons) who remain in the State under her dominion by the Jade Emperor.  And then she has a fight with Quentin, aka Sun Wukong the Monkey King and her boyfriend, and she just can't take it anymore.  All Genie wants to do is to go on a weekend adventure with Yunie to party at the local bay area college, if anyone will let her.

But when the Jade Emperor goes missing and an unknown force begins hurtling through the planes of existence towards Earth, Genie and Quentin find themselves not only fighting over the future of their relationship, but also facing a threat dangerous enough to threaten all of heaven.  They will have to team up with a group of another heavenly warriors, including the traitor who tried to kill them, if they want to save Earth's future from a force that could destroy even the forces of heaven if not stopped.  Assuming Genie has a future left for her personal life after all is said and done......
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Like its predecessor, the Iron Will of Genie Lo is told entirely from Genie's perspective with a story that is incredibly charming and full of wit as it goes on.  Genie is in a very serious part of her young life, trying to deal with high school senior responsibilities, with the idea of going to college, with the idea of struggling with what her family could afford, etc.  The book even throws in a medical crisis for Genie's family to go along with it all, so life isn't easy and Genie could be forgiven for being maudlin and depressed - and of course all that is before you deal with her role as the supernatural defender of California and the relationship with Quentin and all it means.

But that's not fully who Genie is, and so even though she's stressed out, she's still full of wit and charm to help carry this story incredibly well.  She's incredibly confused, don't get it wrong, with lots on her plate that she just can't seem to handle, but she's a really funny and amusing lead in how she tries to react to it all.  And this book does a great job at putting her in situations which feel real and natural - so you have the creepy older boy hitting on her, the privileged white drop out who wants to recruit her for his venture capital initiative, the college brats who show up a the party drunk or not, etc.  Genie is just terrific and her reactions to it all - aided by (or sometimes hindered by) her supernatural abilities are all so natural and make this a believable and fun book to read through it all.  And the side characters, like Genie's friend Yunie, the college girl who sets them up with the party, and other humans are really well done even though none of them gets particularly long features.

And then there's the supernatural elements which remain extremely well done.  Again I'm not crazy familiar with the source material of Journey to the West or of the Chinese/Buddhist mythology at the center of this series, but it appears from wiki-ing that the spins and twists taken in this book are wholly new, and they are pulled off really well.  Genie's special abilities are used in clever ways, to go along with the abilities of the rest of the gods - we meet a bunch more here - and they're all developed along the way into a conflict which Yee executes very effectively.

And that ending, wow.  This seems certainly to be the ending of this series, barring Yee doing something funky with the timeline (prequels, midquels, etc.), which is the only disappointment I have with this book.  But it's such a perfectly fitting ending to it all, definitely set up well by prior parts of the book, and which simply made me smile through it all.  It's beautifully done, a mix of humor and warm feelings that are a perfect way to cap off this duology.

So yeah, even if this series is VERY YA, I'm going to miss it quite a bit.  You don't find such pure good natured witty YA with serious treatment of growing up for a non-white protagonist done as well as this.  Highly recommended.  e


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