Book #52 of 2024: The Siren, the Song, and the Spy | DNF: Villain's Vignettes

[thistlechaser]

The Siren, the Song, and the Spy by Maggie Tokuda-Hall.

Quick synopsis: Set on a fantasy-Earth, the world is a bad place. Fantasy-Japan's Empire has taken over most of the world, murdering and enslaving its way to profit. A ragtag army of pirates, fantasy-Africans, and fantasy-Irish need to take the Empire down.

Note: This is book two of a series, but it's a companion book, not a sequel. It plucks a handful of minor characters from book one and tells their stories. With rare exception, I didn't feel lost because I hadn't read the first one.

Brief opinion: While this book may have had more POV chapters than any other book I've read in my entire life, I generally liked them all, so that was fine. The book's overall message though, especially its ending, was extremely heavy handed.

Plot: In fantasy-Japan life is good... as long as you're not a poor person. Life around the palace is great, even if you just work there. Elsewhere in the country people are starving.

In fantasy-Africa, noble warriors who battle with hyena-partners at their side are trying to defend their land against the Colonizers (Capital C, that's what fantasy-Japan was called by them through the book).

While in Fantasy-Ireland, a young girl is taken in (fooled) by an Imperial/Colonizer/Fantasy-Japanese woman and made into a spy against her own people.

While on the Sea (which is a sentient being in this world), the pirates are trying to muster the world's various resistance groups against fantasy-Japan.

In the end, a deus ex machina dragon (all of which were supposed to be dead) shows EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the planet the error of their ways. Other than a small handful of psychopaths, the dragon made every single human on fantasy-Earth feel the pain of those they directly or indirectly hurt.

Writing/editing: Technical-wise, the writing was great. There were two trans characters though, one she used they/them for and the other xe/xyr/xem ("And xe turned on xyr heel and stepped into the ornate carriage that awaited xem.") As I've said in other reviews, I have zero issues with trans people, I just wish the English language had some better way to handle this, some native singular neutral pronoun.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I really liked all the storylines, it's just the ending didn't work for me. Even in a fantasy world, it felt too much like a fantasy of what our-world people would like to happen. Too perfect. Too unbelievable.

I really, really liked the Thistle/Genevieve character (the girl who became a spy). It's just the kind of plotline I like: Twisting someone to believe in something they shouldn't. Another reviewer (madeline on Goodreads) described her arc as "it was one of the most well-written case studies in colonial brainwashing and subsequent decolonization that I’ve read in years".

The Sea and mermaid chapters didn't work for me. (This might be the one place not reading the first book hampered my enjoyment, but also I just don't like mermaid stories.) The sea as a sentient creature was just a real reach for me.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ / 4 and a half stars. On to the first book next!

-------


DNF #48: Villain's Vignettes: Volume 1 (Villains' Code) by Drew Hayes. I really like a book series by this author, so I picked up this book randomly (I always like villain stories!). Turns out it's a collection of novellas set in his superhero series. I'm really not into superhero stuff and I had no idea who these characters are. I pushed through the first novella, but gave up after that. DNF about 40% in. Not at all the author or book's fault though!