Dragon Pearl - bookwyrm.cincodenada.com

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published Jan. 15, 2019 by Rick Riordan Presents.

ISBN:: 978-1-368-01335-2

(1 review)

THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD MIN comes from a long line of fox spirits. But you'd never know it by looking at her. To keep the family safe, Min’s mother insists that none of them use any fox-magic, such as Charm or shape-shifting. They must appear human at all times.

Min feels hemmed in by the household rules and resents the endless chores, the cousins who crowd her, and the aunties who judge her. She would like nothing more than to escape Jinju, her neglected, dust-ridden, and impoverished planet. She’s counting the days until she can follow her older brother, Jun, into the Space Forces and see more of the Thousand Worlds.

When word arrives that Jun is suspected of leaving his post to go in search of the Dragon Pearl, Min knows that something is wrong. Jun would never desert his battle cruiser, even for a mystical object rumored to have tremendous power. …

THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD MIN comes from a long line of fox spirits. But you'd never know it by looking at her. To keep the family safe, Min’s mother insists that none of them use any fox-magic, such as Charm or shape-shifting. They must appear human at all times.

Min feels hemmed in by the household rules and resents the endless chores, the cousins who crowd her, and the aunties who judge her. She would like nothing more than to escape Jinju, her neglected, dust-ridden, and impoverished planet. She’s counting the days until she can follow her older brother, Jun, into the Space Forces and see more of the Thousand Worlds.

When word arrives that Jun is suspected of leaving his post to go in search of the Dragon Pearl, Min knows that something is wrong. Jun would never desert his battle cruiser, even for a mystical object rumored to have tremendous power. She decides to run away to find him and clear his name.

Min’s quest will have her meeting gamblers, pirates, and vengeful ghosts. It will involve deception, lies, and sabotage. She will be forced to use more fox-magic than ever before, and to rely on all of her cleverness and bravery. The outcome may not be what she had hoped, but it has the potential to exceed her wildest dreams.

2 editions

Ell reviewed Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

Review of 'Dragon Pearl' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I'll preface this by saying it's been a while since I've read much YA, and this book feels very YA, so...I'm not sure how to evaluate it well!

My last few books have included Broken Earth, Too Like the Lightning, and Machineries of Empire. Those are, uh, extremely different books and hardly a fair comparison, but that's my context.

So this book felt very linear, like I was just kinda on rails, with some twists and turns, but never really concerned that it wasn't gonna work out. Despite the galactic and personal fates in play, it never really felt particularly high-stakes to me.

I also recently read Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and this felt more in that vein, altho perhaps lighter still. Here it kinda felt like we just floated around making friends and resolving the obstacles as they came without much effort. It's very much a …

I'll preface this by saying it's been a while since I've read much YA, and this book feels very YA, so...I'm not sure how to evaluate it well!

My last few books have included Broken Earth, Too Like the Lightning, and Machineries of Empire. Those are, uh, extremely different books and hardly a fair comparison, but that's my context.

So this book felt very linear, like I was just kinda on rails, with some twists and turns, but never really concerned that it wasn't gonna work out. Despite the galactic and personal fates in play, it never really felt particularly high-stakes to me.

I also recently read Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and this felt more in that vein, altho perhaps lighter still. Here it kinda felt like we just floated around making friends and resolving the obstacles as they came without much effort. It's very much a MacGuffin hunt for the titular Dragon Pearl, albeit with good motivations for the hunt.

It was a quick read, I read it over a couple days. I did appreciate how the Korean mythology was integrated with the spacefaring society - there are definitely echoes of Machineries of Empire here in how well the mystical is woven in, and it does feel like a society where the mythology is very real and just taken as a fact of life.