thistlechaser | Book #70 of 2024: Fox Snare

Fox Snare (A Thousand Worlds Novel) by Yoon Ha Lee.

Quick synopsis: In the final book of this trilogy, Min the fox spirit girl and Sebin the tiger spirit trans teen end up shipwrecked on a hostile planet.

Brief opinion: For some reason, I just didn't connect with this book, it didn't hold my attention at all. Every time I tried to read, I found myself looking at the ceiling, my hands, the clock, anything but the page. That being said, it seemed fast paced, so the issue was probably me.

Plot: Min now "owns" (is owned by?) the Dragon Pearl, an item that can be used to terraform worlds. Sebin is serving honorably on a space ship (after the events of book 2). Min is part of a group that ends up on the ship Sebin is on so they can go to some peace talks.

The peace talks are with the Sun Clan (Japan, as Thousand Worlds is Korea).

Things go awry and the teens (Min, Sebin, and the dragon spirit Haneul) end up shipwrecked on a hostile planet.

Luckily there's a responsible adult with them! Or is she..?

Writing/editing: Better than book 2! There was just one small editing issue that happened repeatedly (and I've seen it here and there in other books), so I'm not sure if it was some kind of ebook issue or not. Sometimes when one word was in italics, the space was lost before the next word. So it appeared like:

"...uncle. Hewas..."
"Maybe formerfriend..."

In one place, the author used "pic" instead of "picture" (not in dialogue), that made my eyebrows raise a little.

Like in the second book, I think sometimes the author lost track of what they wrote in earlier ones. Sebin hadn't been permitted to play video games, other than one aunt who let them see games rarely. But near the end of this book they thought to themself: "Because they reminded me weirdly of a puzzle video game I'd become obsessed when I was a cub".

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I had a couple issues with the plot. For some reason, two prankster kids were permitted into Space Force (when in book 1 it seemed it was really hard to get in, the bar was high). They left the ship without permission and the officers were concerned the two would play a prank that derailed a diplomatic mission. So who did they send to fetch them? Seasoned officers? Responsible adults? Nope, Sebin the 14 year old kid.

I think I just don't like Sebin as a character. I didn't like book 2 (their book) and their chapters in this book (every other chapter) killed my reading momentum. The odd thing is I'm not sure why I dislike them. Usually I could write a whole essay on why I don't like a character! Maybe they were too perfect?

I did like the ending of the book a lot.

I really liked hearing, if only briefly, about other nations. There's so much room in this universe for more books!

It was really fun seeing