As I mentioned last week, I took the opportunity to actually visit the local library to pick up Bride, by Ali Hazelwood from the new book section. While I was there, I browsed the section, and the book below as displayed cover out. I am familiar with fox spirits in Chinese folk lore, so I picked up the took, and it looked promising, to I checked it out as well on a whim. It was a good whim.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo A-
The story is set in Northern China in 1908. It tells two converging stories in alternating chapters, each ending with little cliffhangers. One is a first person narration, the other, a third person narration, so there's never any confusion on what story line you're reading. However, it was this duo structure that earned it the "-" in my grade. I like straight narratives, and found the constant switching back and forth mildly irritating. Both storylines included flashbacks as well, one more than the other, but they worked well with the flow of the story- you're not jumping back an forth willy-nilly, so you always knew where your were in the story. As the story progresses, all the various connections between the two story lines slowly become evident - which, of course, sparks your curiosity as to how they will get tied together in the end - by design. While I'm not a fan of stories as puzzles, but given that both story lines are more or less straight narratives, I'm not complaining too much. And with that, I guess I gotten all my mild criticisms out of the way.
The first person narrator is the title character, Hu Snow. She is a fox. A special type of fox, a werefox, as it were, a fox spirit. Being somewhat familiar with fox spirts from my interest in Chinese culture, I was intrigued by a story that featured a fox spirit as the main character, which is why I picked this book up. Snow is on a quest for vengeance. A hunter hired by a photographer killed her baby daughter, and she has vowed to kill the photographer, and has been seeking him out for the previous two years. This line of the story follows her quest to find him. As she says, "I exist as either a small canid with thick fur, pointed ears and neat black feet, or a young woman. Neither are safe forms in a world run by me." She must navigate that dangerous world to have her revenge. I found her to be a engaging and convincing character.
The second story line is told in third person. It tells the story of Bao, a retired and widowed scholar and teacher who has the strange power - he is able to tell when people are lying. He hears a buzz when someone says a falsehood. With this strange talent, and nothing better to do, he becomes something of a detective. His story begins with him being hired to discover the name of a young lady found frozen to death in the side doorway of a restaurant. The restaurant owner fears that the death of his unknown lady will cause bad luck for the restaurant, so he hires Bao to find out who she was, so that the proper rituals can be performed to ensure that she does not return as a restless ghost. As we follow Bao in his investigation, we learn about his childhood and how he came to have this special talent. Slowly, step by step, he finds that his investigation seems to be involved with foxes - and though he doesn't believe in fox spirits - he finds things that he can't explain, with one investigation leading to another, which in the end, leads him to cross paths with Snow - as the reader knows will happen eventually - wherein the story lines collapse into one, though still told in alternating chapters.
I found this book to be compelling reading. It has many interesting characters, including a second not particularly good fox spirits and another mysterious one, as well as various Chinese characters in a variety of positions within Chinese society. It is a nice blend of historical fiction, light fantasy, adventure, and romance with two compelling main characters. For me, it was a lucky find, and I highly recommend it, if you intrigued with the premise.
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