Tuesday, September 20, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: An Arrow to the Moon by Emily X.R. Pan

 



An Arrow to the Moon is a young adult modern fantasy novel by author Emily X.R. Pan.  The story is an adaptation of the story of Hou Yi the Archer and Chang'e the Moon Goddess (from Chinese mythology), moved forward into modern times and combined with a Romeo and Juliet-esque setup of dueling families.  Having enjoyed both other takes on the myth and the dueling rival family romance setup in the past (Hey it's a classic for a reason), I was curious to see how An Arrow to the Moon would read.  

The result is a solid book, with a really enjoyable pair of central characters - a pair of end of high school age teens with very different family backgrounds - and a solid if not perfect romance.  At the same time, it has some issues that prevented me from fully loving it - the ridiculously short chapter lengths, a final act that seemed really truncated, and a plot that sometimes didn't feel as natural as I'd like.  The result is a solid young adult modern fantasy romance, and one that those interested in if not super familiar with the original Chinese myth may enjoy quite a bit.  

------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
Luna Chang loves her parents tremendously and just wants them to be proud of her - even if she's not quite sure that what they want from her (to go to college at Stanford) is quite what she wants.  But when she breaks the rules for like the first time in her life, she winds up meeting a strange new boy she'd never seen before, and feeling some sort of connection to him.  So when that boy turns out to be Hunter Yee, son of her parents' most hated rivals, and the new transfer student into her school, she doesn't know what to do.  But strange magical fireflies, an unnatural earthquake and just the draw of Hunter keeps drawing her closer....

Hunter Yee deals with an acrimonious family all the time, with parents who constantly berate him for not living up to their impossible expectations, and who can't understand why he acts out.  He just wants to be the best brother to an equally misunderstood younger brother in Cody, a boy who is plenty smart but just shy and afraid, not that anyone else is willing to realize that.  And so the only joys he tends to have is taking out his bow and arrow and shooting at trees, always with his usual perfect aim.  But then he meets Luna, and keeps seeing her school...a girl his parents would hate, but who he just can't stay away from.  

Both Luna and Hunter will find themselves drawn together by supernatural forces and by the secrets of their families' pasts.  Secrets that are coming back to haunt them, and to force them to make choices for their futures, and each other.....
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An Arrow to the Moon is told via a large number of chapters, ranging from 2 (maybe as few as 1 pages honestly in some formats) to 10 pages long.  Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character - mostly Hunter and Luna (the protagonists), but assorted others as well, such as Hunter's brother Cody, the two protagonists' parents, as well as the antagonist, with much of these secondary viewpoints being used to tell the history of the characters that informs their current actions.  I think this is a Young Adult thing, so maybe this type of writing works better for younger audiences, but for me, this style of writing drove me a bit crazy - the book's constant shifting of perspectives every few pages made it hard for the plot to keep momentum....and it isn't helped by so many of the secondary characters just not being that interesting.  

That said the main characters Hunter and Luna are the star attraction here, and for the most part, they work really well.  Those who have heard of the story of Hou Yi and Chang'e will recognize some of the traits they each have and where certain things are going (and if you haven't heard of it, Cody's chapters feature him reading the story in bits and pieces), but the story's adaptation of it into a Romeo and Juliet-esque romance works extremely well.  Both Luna and Hunter, despite being from Chinese/Taiwanese American backgrounds, have very different families: for Luna, that family is seemingly loving and perfect....and yet Luna finds that her parents seem to assume what she wants for her future, like college at Stanford, and finds herself chafing under that pressure.  And when Luna discovers that her parents aren't as perfect as she thought, it's devastating to her.  By contrast with Hunter, he knows his parents aren't perfect - after all they yell at him and treat him horribly for him not living up to their expectations, when all he wants is to just be a good brother to his misunderstood shy/cowardly (and maybe autistic) brother Cody, whom his parents don't understand either.  Hunter knows that his parents are on the run from someone coming after their debts, and that his situation isn't good, and so he's better equipped to help Luna handle learning that things aren't quite as good as they seem than someone else can.  

And so the book steers Hunter and Luna towards each other, and their story is awfully cute and enjoyable, as they fall further in love, even as they both have to sort of keep their romance secret due to their parents' stupid hatred of each other (really stupid sort of academic rivalry aided by misunderstandings of each others' actions).  The parts of their romance that incorporate the original myth sometimes feel kind of perfunctory, but the two are really cute together as they discover how magical their connection is, and I suspect many a young adult audience will enjoy it quite a bit.  

Still, even there there is just a lot that just feels either patched together or kind of artificial instead of natural, and thus knocked me a bit out of the narrative.  For example, the two leads have a fight over Luna's family thinking of themselves as Taiwanese while Hunter's think of themselves as Chinese, and Luna needs to have it explained by a friend how such a thing can be and how it's just a difference in conception of one's culture rather than something wrong, which just seems incredibly patronizing and impossible - there's seemingly no way Luna should not understand this already herself as she was raised (or if she didn't understand it, it would be due to her having really strong feelings about being Taiwanese and not Chinese, not just her sort of not understanding any of it).  Then there's how the antagonist sort of hovers around the plot and has a connection to Luna's family that really doesn't matter, and all he really serves to do is to trigger the ending to this romance, which turns it into the myth once more.  

Really, I kind of wish An Arrow to the Moon was just a Chinese/Taiwanese-American YA Romance novel, without the incorporation of the myth, because that's where it often works really well.  But everything else just kind of distracts from that strong core, which prevents this from being a serious winner honestly.  

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