Thursday, February 23, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong

 


Foul Lady Fortune is the first of a new Historical YA Fantasy Duology from author Chloe Gong. More specifically, it's the first in a duology that follows up on Gong's earlier duology, These Violent Delights/Our Violent Ends, which were adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, except with the story transferred to 1926-1927 Shanghai, a city divided by Imperialist outside powers and facing a coming internal struggle between local communist and nationalist Chinese forces, with a magical fantasy touch added alongside it all. And the combination of it all was fantastic: for example, the altered versions of Romeo and Juliet (Roma Montagov of the Largely Russian White Flower gang and Juliette Cai of the Chinese White Flowers Gang) were terrific unique characters on their own, especially the incredibly vicious and deadly Juliette, and had tremendous chemistry even as the book took their romance for a different spin than the original and the side characters and depth and developments of their own. Meanwhile the setting allowed Gong to deal with real life issues like the imperialism and colonialism of the time and historical atrocities (like the Shanghai Massacre) carried out by the factions in power, as the characters found themselves caught up in the middle of it. It was a really well done duology and I do highly recommend it (My review of the first book in it is HERE). 

Foul Lady Fortune doesn't require you to read that duology, but I suspect you probably should first as the story takes place 4 years later with one of the side characters of that duology, Rosalind Lang, who was dramatically altered by the events of that duology (which it somewhat spoils), and now finds herself an assassin/spy for the Nationalists in a Shanghai no longer just beset by Western foreign powers, but also now more menacingly by the Japanese, as the Japanese begin to ramp up to full on invasion. Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well as the former duology - the story attempts to use similar historical background to ramp up the tensions and show the struggle with outside power colonialism, but the story doesn't really make much of the Japanese's impact on Shanghai unlike the prior duology (although that will likely change in book 2), and the story's attempt to use the communist/nationalist conflict struggles because there's no emphasis or explanation of what these factions actually were (and the characters we know on each side tend to cooperate with each other anyway). More importantly, while the book focuses on a new couple in Rosalind and new character Orion, neither is anywhere near as interesting on their own and their romantic chemistry is not nearly as strong as in the first book, with the side characters similarly not clicking for me as being really that interesting or having much about them that doesn't revolve around the main duo. The result is a book that is kind of a disappointment and which I was very tempted to not-finish at one point.

Spoilers for the original duology do exist below, but I'll try to minimize them to the extent possible.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
4 years ago Rosalind Lang should have died - after the man she had fallen in love with and betrayed her own family for betrayed her and threw Shanghai into chaos and destruction. But her sister Celia brought her to a White Flowers scientist who found a way to save her....at a cost. Now Rosalind's body is stuck in time, unable to age and constantly self-healing, leaving her stuck as those who survive around her move forward.

To make up for her own actions back then, Rosalind has thrown in with the Nationalists to try and secure Shanghai against the forces who would try to seize it and China, and the Nationalists have made her into a weapon: the infamous Lady Fortune, an assassin who can't be stopped and who has killed many of the White Flowers and foes who remain at large. Rosalind doesn't have much care for the Nationalist cause against the Communists - her beloved sister Celia has of course joined the communists and remains in secret contact - but helping them is the only way she can think of to atone, especially with the Scarlet Flowers now gone, even if she doesn't like life as an assassin.

But when foreign outsiders, believed by the Nationailsts to be the Japanese, begin a sequence of serial murder by chemical injection in Shanghai, Rosalind finds herself on a new mission outside her comfort zone - to act as a spy inside a Japanese Propaganda Newspaper alongside another Nationalist agent, Orion Hong. Orion is like Rosalind in many ways - his brother is a Communist and he too feels the need to prove his loyalty after his father was once accused of being a traitor. But when he and Rosalind, or as he knows her under her alias Jane Mead, find themselves under the cover of a married couple, they find themselves struggling against the others' actions more and more...even as that tension comes at a time they can least afford it, when the killings are growing to a crescendo that may throw Shanghai into yet another upheaval....
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Like its predecessors, Foul Lady Fortune is told through chapters that each are written through the third person eyes of a different character, with the majority of chapters coming from its two lead protagonists, Rosalind and Orion, and a few others coming from side characters - most notably Rosalind's sister Celia. Unfortunately, these characters aren't nearly as interesting as the characters from the prior books.

Let's start with the main duo: Rosalind's story, the girl turned into a freak immortal who seeks to atone for a past mistake done in the name of love, is hardly unique, and while her mentality makes a lot of sense given what happened in those books to some extent, it isn't really that interesting or fresh compared to say Juliette in the prior book. It isn't helped by the fact that she is sent on this spy mission despite being badly ill equipped for the job and slips up repeatedly by saying things she shouldn't for the character she's playing and has to try to get away with it...and why she of all people is sent on this job really never makes sense (although I guess there's some justification for that later). Moreover, her falling in love with Orion doesn't really work as there's little chemistry between them here, something which makes that love hard to really understand given the lack of flirting or interesting situations that seemingly put them closer together romantically (and it's not pure physical attraction as Rosalind seems to be Demi-Ace?). Of course this isn't helped by Orion himself kind of being a stick in the mud? Yeah he wants to prove himself to show that his father's treason doesn't define him, but he has little other about him in terms of interests and depth, other than perhaps his younger sister Phoebe and his friend and fellow agent Silas.

The same is a problem this time around with the secondary characters, who in the prior books had depth and sort of background going-ons of their own for development. Here, Celia (formerly Kathleen in the last books, a trans girl who was struggling with her identity as she tried to support Juliette, her cousin) is a communist agent where she is accepted mostly for who she is and she largely just stays on the sidelines watching alongside Orion's brother Oliver, who there's some attraction to but whom is clearly keeping secrets. But Celia's plotline amounts to nothing, nor is there any reason for her romance with Oliver to be anything interesting; and Oliver's character is just mysterious with nothing else going on (he has no problem with her being trans and gives her advice on covering up at one point, but otherwise he's just boring). The other major side characters are Oliver/Orion's sister Phoebe, who is a precocious teenage girl who wants to follow and support Orion and gets into trouble as a helpful agent and who is enjoyable as a result and Alisa Montagova, formerly her own precocious self but now largely a girl trying to keep everyone alive as she's a communist agent. These characters are all fine and not offensive, but none of them have any depth or any point other than to revolve around the main duo here, which just makes them of limited interest.

And this lack of depth to anyone extends here similarly to the setting and the way the plot goes on - with the Japanese invasion being a clearly underpresent threat but not one that ever really hits home here (I guess it'll really hit home in book 2, like events in the first duology did), nor does the impact of colonialism feel that impactful when we barely see it here. We also don't really get a feel for what the conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists is - reading the first duology may educate some readers about that, but the book just treats the two factions like interchangeable opponents with friends and family on both sides, making the treasonous actions of some characters hard to really care about. And the plot mystery relies upon a late act twist that just lands with a thud (having been done before better in other books) and relies upon revealed antagonists that aren't really setup well or of the type I wound up caring about?

Again this all stands in contrast to the first duology, which did everything here so so much better, and this book just feels like a shadow of that one. The result isn't bad, but it's just kind of meh, which is disappointing given how great it was before.

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