Tuesday, January 24, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Strike the Zither by Joan He

 



Strike the Zither is the third novel by Joan He, a writer of largely young adult novels who has really impressed me with her two prior Young Adult works, Descendant of the Crane and The Ones We're Meant to Find. This book is the first half of a young adult fantasy duology* which adapts the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTTK). I have only passing familiarity with ROTTK, mainly from other adaptations, but I really loved He's other YA works because He managed to fill those works with really interesting deep characters, especially in her protagonists, and in how she subverts your expectations a great deal in the process and rarely takes the obvious route with the plot. So I was very excited for this book.

*He's first YA novel Descendant of the Crane might've also been meant as the first book in a series, but that was abandoned seemingly for financial reasons as best as I can tell. That said, this novel does appear to have a follow up scheduled for next year, so it's not in danger of suffering a similar fate.*

And Strike the Zither isn't quite as interesting as the other two prior He works, due perhaps to how the story is bootstrapped to the setup of the original work, but it's still a very solid first half of a duology that makes me want to read the conclusion. The story begins as a genderflipped version of ROTTK, but as you should expect from this review and from He's other works, takes a turn after the first act to branch off from the original and to subvert expectations. Its main protagonist, a strategist teenage girl named Zephyr, is really well done as she tries to support her chosen righteous leader with strategies that isolate her and suggest she's changed sides...or worse, and struggles with her allegiances (and other things) in the process. And the story deals well with questions of fate and destiny that come up along the way, as the characters struggle with prophecies and declarations in the process. It isn't quite as unique or special as He's other works just yet, but there's still time in the second half for this story to hit that mark....


-----------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Zephyr is trying to work her biggest miracle yet. As the strategist for Xin Ren, the righteous Lordess she's given her loyalty to in the conflict to restore the Xin Dynasty's rule, she is tasked with organizing and saving the forces of a Lordess without land and with plenty of support from commoners but much less from any people of military strength...and with making that work against the forces of Prime Ministress Miasma, who holds the rightful Empress Xin Bao in her "protection". Miasma's forces are far greater than Ren's, and Ren's insistence upon not leaving the common people behind has had her own people hamstrung and at their life's end....especially if Zephyr can't come up with some plan to save them. Zephyr isn't helped by Ren's closest allies, the swordsisters Cloud and Lotus, being boisterous fighting fools who don't trust her and keep messing things up.

To save everyone, Zephyr is forced to sacrifice her own loyalty and to go over to Miasma, in an attempt to lure Miasma to attack not Ren but the powers of the Southlands, led by the Lordess known as Cicada. But in doing so, Zephyr finds herself allied with and fighting against individuals she never could have expected, such as a dying strategist of Miasma's who seems to see through her and the strategist of Cicada...a girl who has ties to Zephyr's own past. And these pains of her heart may be nothing in comparison to the influence and actions of other beings, beings with their own beliefs on the fate of the Empire, beings who may not actually be human.....
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Strike the Zither follows the perspective of Zephyr, Strike the Zither follows the perspective of Zephyr, a young woman known for allegedly being a brilliant strategist*, who carries some traumas from her past - her masters and tutors all died and her sister Ku was seeming lost to her - resulting in her hiding away in solitude until she was recruited by Ren, a leader she believes in with all her heart. There are other prominent characters here - you have Ren, who is the only potential leader of the Empire to be truly selfless and righteous...even if that code of honor and moral righteousness is not the strategically best thing to do for her aims, you have Cloud and Lotus, her more martial swordsisters, who are often impulsive and brash even if they share a code of honor, you have the enemy lordesses in Miasma and Cicada who have their own plotting and less morals between them, all of whom have some developed traits here. But these other characters aren't really deep usually, and mainly serve as the tools, opponents, and purpose for Zephyr, who is the star here.

*Despite this book focusing upon a strategist protagonist who is meant to be brilliant, and who has to deal with connections to two other strategists from opposing forces, this is really not a book that includes duels of strategy and great brilliant tactics - so if you're looking for that here, you'll be disappointed (as was one friend who reviewed this book). I didn't mind that the brilliance was more an informed trait than actually shown given everything else*.

And Zephyr is an excellent star in carrying this book, as she struggles to use her tactics and brilliance, which often demands moral compromises that her lordess wouldn't countenance. Zephyr's whole life at this point is trying to support Rena and to ensure Ren wins, which is why other factors that come into play from her past - a reunion with Ku, who for reasons that are eventually revealed wants nothign to do with her - and her present - her working with Crow, the enemy strategist who is dying and for whom she might have feelings and guilt over betraying - throw her for a loop and cause her tremendous distress and regret. Zephyr believes that she is the smartest and cannot be outsmarted...but of course she isn't perfect, and that combination of her struggles with relations from the past and present, her need to outsmart everyone and what happens when she fails, makes her a fascinating and really strong protagonist to read through at least this book's first half.

And then comes the twist in the second half, which I will not spoil here, because it spins everything around (there are some hints that I picked up on that something of this sort was coming but I was still surprised in what exactly occurred). That twist throws Zephyr into a conflict with fate and destiny and really sets the book into a different gear, one which makes it more interesting than the standard ROTTK inspired YA plot that it began with. Suddenly she's fighting not just against enemies, but with the idea of fate, destiny, and whether we have control of our own futures, and the book takes this struggle and the plot in some interesting different directions, directions which the plot has not concluded by the end of this novel.

The result is satisfying but cliffhangery, with this book clearly ending after part 2 of what I suspect is going to be a four part story (this book is divided into two parts). The lack of deeper side characters and the seeming need to marry some of the characters to ROTTK archetypes keeps this from being as much of a winner as He's prior novels for me, but the story still goes in interesting directions that are not quite where you'd typically expect them to me, and ends in a place where I have little idea how it can take it from here....but I'm interested in seeing how it will do so. Zephyr's story isn't done, and I suspect many YA readers will be interested in seeing where it goes from here in the conclusion.

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