Fantasy Novella Review: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a brand new novella by award winning/nominated SF/F author Zen Cho, known for her novel Sorcerer to the Crown (and its follow up, The True Queen).  I actually didn't love either of those two novels, but I've really enjoyed Cho's shorter fiction, particularly last year's Hugo Winning Novelette and a short story in the upcoming anthology, The Book of Dragons.  And I'd heard good things in advance about this one, so I was excited to find myself first in line for it from the NYPL eLibrary when it was about to come out.

And my excitement was mostly justified - as I really enjoyed this novella.  It was sort of advertised as a Wuxia-esque novella, but Cho has walked that back in recent comments and correctly so: there's some martial arts fun, but this is mainly a story of a family of outcasts being met with an outsider in a war torn nation (based on Emergency Malaya).  There's a lot of comedy and kind of a quiet form of romance as well and the novella made me smile quite a bit throughout even as it became clear where it was heading.


Quick Summary:  A beautiful bandit enters a coffeehouse, causing stares all around, and then intervenes when a customer starts arguing with the waitress claiming she hexed him.  When the waitress, a former nun of the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, finds herself in further trouble, a second bandit named Tet Sang steps in to save her.  But when the bandits try to leave, the nun, named Guet Imm, tracks them down and insists upon joining their group, despite her seeming inability to help them in any way.  And so the bandits lives - an Guet Imm's herself - are changed in ways they could never have expected......

Thoughts:  I basically just described the first 15 ebook pages of this novella because to say anything more would be a spoiler.  The world this takes place in is a fantasy version of Emergency Malaya, where the "Protectorate" fights against "Reformists" who it now deems bandits, and our protagonists are a bunch of "bandits" who mostly are just trying to survive rather than throw themselves in with any grand rebellion, but because of the Protectorate's fight, they're wanted criminals.  And yet, the five men working together are basically their own little family, some with their own secrets, but all who really try to work together despite it all to survive.  It's a queer little group - both figuratively and literally - and that's just how it is.

And Guet Imm's self-insertion into that group threatens to disturb that equilibrium, and causes the plot to evolve, but it works so well as a result, especially in her relation to Tet Sang, the only one of the bandits at first to not trust her.  You will see where the novella is going fairly quickly (not that it's a long novella) but it pulls it off in a really nice way, with some twists as to how that way is going to happen that will surprise you.  And it does so with a ton of wit - again I was cracking up throughout this book at times - and some pretty fine action sequences, even if anyone looking for a full wuxia novel will be a bit disappointed.

But even if neither Wuxia nor Fantasy Malaya Rom-Com really fits in explaining this one's genre, whatever it is is really enjoyable and recommended.