Wednesday, May 3, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Last of the Talons by Sophie Kim

 


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 September 27, 2022 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.

Last of the Talons is the first in a YA Fantasy Duology (I think) inspired by Korean Mythology. The story is largely stand alone and features a young woman, Lina, who is forced to continue her work as an assassin for the crime syndicate who murdered her own, under threat to her beloved younger sister....before being kidnapped by a Dokkaebi emperor, the Pied Piper who makes her a deadly bargain: kill that same ruler within 14 days or be killed herself. And so she struggles to find a way to possibly kill that man and to even understand his magical world, a world that the emperor seems eager to show her, even as it contains humans bewitched by him to work in a charmed state.

The result is a novel that reads really well, with a compelling at times main character even as she struggles with some pretty classical YA tropes and issues: like the Emperor she's supposed to kill being possibly a bit alluring and more alike her than she realized. There are some issues - particularly for me, I wasn't a fan that the book never really tries to interrogate the family that made Lina into the assassin she is and the book signals a late act betrayal so strongly as to be ridiculous. But it's a pretty solid and enjoyable YA novel that I found real easy to read, even if it never hits that higher level that would make it an automatic recommmend.


----------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------
Shin Lina was known as the Reaper, Sunpo's finest assassin, and a valued member of the Talons - a criminal gang who had the run of Sunpo. Now the Talons are dead and Lina is forced to work - at the threat of death to her beloved sister - for their killer, Konrarnd Kalmin and his heinous gang, the Blackbloods. She's starved and miserable and full of guilt in a city that has seemingly been abandoned by the gods...and even by the Dokkaebi who are supposed to still rule Sunpo's realm...like the legendary Pied Piper Dokkaebi emperor, who can lure away humans with his legendary flute. So when Lina is forced to steal a tapestry supposedly belonging to the Pied Piper...and then to shred it for the valuable jewels it contains, she worries less over punishment from the Pied Piper and more about how Kalmin's greed and his control over her will seemingly never end.

But Lina is very wrong, for the Piper is very real and Kalmin is far less dangerous in comparison...as Kalmin finds out when the Piper abducts him and takes him to the Dokkaebi realm of Gyeulcheon. Kalmin's second in command gives Lina 30 days to rescue him or else have her sister be killed...a feat that seems impossible even before Lina finds herself abducted by the Piper to Gyeulcheon. And that's when the Piper offers Lina a bargain: kill the Piper himself within 14 days and be released from Gyeulcheon, with Kalmin in hand.....or fail and die at the Piper's hand.

Lina has no choice but to take the Piper up on his offer, but killing him will be far from easy: as she soon learns Dokkaebi like him are supernaturally tough, and he of course always has the ability to compel her with his legendary flute. Even worse, the Piper just won't seem to go away and to give her a chance to act on her own, always seeming interested in her and in spending time with her. To kill him, Lina will need to find some way to lose him, obtain a weapon, and to catch him vulnerable, but the process of doing so may teach Lina that things about both the Piper and herself aren't quite what she thought they were....and what she truly wants may be unthinkable....
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Last of the Talons is a Young Adult novel that is hardly unique in its story-arc, character development, or plotting. You have a young woman heroine who is desperate to save her one remaining member of her family, who deals with grief and trauma over the deaths of the rest of that (found) family....deaths she blames upon her own actions. You have a seeming antagonist who is incredibly charming and attractive who stands in the way of that goal, which will cause that heroine to feel conflicted feelings about dealing with him on a permanent fashion (even if she can figure out a way to actually do that). You have some aspects of a mythology - in this case Korean mythology - which our heroine encounters and has to deal with in order to achieve those goals. You also have some potential allies who any reader can see super early on are probably not to be trusted (they literally talk about how they long for the days they ruled more of the Human realm). Any experienced reader will see what's going on with this book and have a pretty good and accurate idea about the way the story will wind up going.

That said, predictability is not always a bad thing, and Kim makes Last of the Talons generally a pretty compelling version of this story. The aspects of Korean mythology our heroine runs into are fascinating and will be very interesting to those with little experience of them (I have only a little bit from other similar books) and just as importantly, the voice of our protagonist, Lina, is really really strong - which is important because the book is told entirely from her first person perspective. Lina may not be unique, but her voice is compelling as the young girl turned assassin by her found family (her real parents died in a shipwreck, and the Talon gang took her in) whose last surviving grace is the younger sister she still has alive. Her grief and trauma over her found family's slaughter and having to work for their murderers is done extremely well, and her confusion and struggles once she's in the realm of Gyeulcheon are very understandable and well written. And the enemies to potential lovers trope (although there's no sex on page in this novel) is done really well here, with the antagonist Pied Pier Rui being compelling in his backstory and portrayal. The tropes here may be common, but that's generally because they work, and Kim makes this book a good example of these tropes actually working.

Still, the book has a number of minor issues that prevented me from really loving it. There's a subplot regarding a smoking addiction which honestly never really makes sense - Lina keeps her last cigarette because of the significance it has when her old love was the one who taught her to smoke and doesn't smoke it for weeks, and then is accused of being addicted....and then acts like she's addicted when she finds more material to smoke, which doesn't really work with how addiction works in the real world and just feels laughable. Lina's history as an assassin and how that's not a good thing isn't really dealt with in this book, which just treats the Talons and their molding of her as admirable, which well....no, a girl being orphaned and taken in by a crime gang who treat her well but teach her to kill people isn't really positive? It's possible that will be dealt with in the second book mind you. And the betrayal of the eventual antagonists is so blindingly obvious that it's kind of dumb, and why they decide to betray her and when doesn't really make any sense (or even honestly why they need to use Lina in the first place).

But overall I enjoyed Last of the Talons, which drew me in and made it hard to put down, such that I finished it in less time than I expected. That's the sign of a likable book, and one I wouldn't mind recommending, even if it's not quite a book I'd ever say was a must read. I'm not sure I'll try this book's sequel, but I'll be on the lookout for more from Sophie Kim if this is an example of her work.

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