Tuesday, July 20, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Monkey Around by Jadie Jang

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 3, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Monkey Around is an upcoming novel from author Jadie Jang (a pen name of author Claire Light), and the first in what seems to be a new urban fantasy series, set in San Francisco.  I love Urban Fantasy and Monkey Around shares a couple of traits with some urban fantasy series/books that I've loved, so I was really interested to try this one out when I saw it on NetGalley, even if I honestly almost passed up on it due to the silly title.  

And I'm really glad I didn't.  Monkey Around is a really fun urban fantasy novel, featuring a really strong lead character in its Asian American heroine Maya (with an abundance of shapeshifting powers), a world where supernatural creatures from all different mythologies exist in a shadow world alongside real life, during the height of Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.  It takes a bunch of tropes I've seen done before but does them really well, in a story that has lots of fun beats (its sardonic, fun loving, but idealistic and searching for herself heroine helps a lot here) alongside some pretty dark plot elements and makes it all work really well.  And since this seems to be the first book in a series, I am excited to see how the series will develop from here.  

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Maya McQueen has a lot on her plate.  After graduating from Berkeley, she has taken an Asian-American magazine she co-founded there national.  She's a leader in the Occupy Wall Street movement making waves in San Fran and around the country.  And she's a barista in her day job....at a cafe that's actually a safe haven for supernatural creatures trying to live their lives alongside a humanity that doesn't quite know they exist.  Of course most of those "supernats" know what they are, what heritage they have, and where they come from.  

Maya on the other hand, does not.  Orphaned as a child, possessing tremendous shapeshifting powers (although she feels like her default mode, with a prankish mind of its own, is "Monkey"), she doesn't fit into any mythological origin she's ever heard of - or that her employer, human magic user Ayo.  Maya is driven in everything she does, but she wishes to find out what she is almost more than anything, and she hopes that helping Ayo out with the supernatural community will one day lead her to answers.

But when she starts investigating a missing leader in the supernatural community, May finds herself facing off with a two new strange occurrences: a shadowy creature sucking out people's essences and a magical artifact with potentially deadly....and addictive power.  And Maya will find herself having to deal with both of them, for the sake of all of San Francisco, human and supernatural......
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Monkey Around is a story carried by the really fun voice of Maya - a young woman with her hands in a lot of pies, both human and supernatural, and a really really fun voice.  Maya is fun loving, especially with her powers when she fights - having what are essentially all the powers of the Monkey King: shapeshifting into practically anything and anyone, invisibility, super strength, - and a love for prankish behavior (especially when driven by her monkey side).  She's idealistic, sarcastic, humorous, and well very immature in both her desires and actions at times, and is tremendous to take us through this world, as she attempts to deal with two different but potentially related crises at once dealing with the supernatural community of San Francisco...all the while trying to help lead a publication of non-supernatural Asian-American interest and to organize support for Occupy Wall Street.  There's a lot there for her to be interested in, and it makes her a really interesting character to see develop.  

This is also a world that is really interesting, with it being one in which supernatural creatures of various mythologies all live together somewhat underground in the real world.  So a boy and his sister, love interests for the protagonist, are Naguals (From Aztec/MesoAmerican Myth), another character is out of Japanese myth, and the book's glossary in the back features creatures from all over.  And yet these creatures interact with beings from other cultures, in ways that wind up changing their traditions and pasts, in ways that are more interesting than just throwing these creatures together unchanged like in other stories.  And the ones of these creatures who are focused upon as major side characters are largely very fun and interesting to read about, making them excellent complements and major parts of Maya's own story.  

It's a story that takes some real surprising turns at times, and one that is not afraid to kill off major side characters as the plot goes on.  It also leads Maya to some real dark actions, which leave her interpersonal relations not quite in the best place by the end of the novel, although it's not overall depressing at the same time.  And it leaves open one major plot thread for the next book in the series, which I'd be really interesting in seeing followed up. 

That said, the plot has some clear weaknesses, weaknesses that probably stem from being a debut novel.  Maya's origins are played for mystery when they're so obvious (she has the powers of the Monkey King) that they're basically advertised in the publishing advertisements...and yet she has no idea of them and her super knowledgeable mentor can't help her figure them out, which is just bizarre.  Maya's mentor Ayo also is bizarrely ignorant about some of the things she helps facilitate, which doesn't really fit the character.  And Maya's human life isn't nearly as well developed as her supernatural one, such that her human best friend barely does anything and we really don't get to see their friendship, supposedly a big one, at all. 

But these weaknesses are small ones, and this book is so fun and creative that it's hard really to complain - and pretty much every first book in a longer urban fantasy series I've read has some odd quirks that don't really add up that they manage to overcome in future works.  I look forward quite a bit to seeing this series do the same.  

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