A Thousand Steps into Night

A review here had me at, “Ghibli fantasy fans, listen up.” It's a Japanese-influenced YA fantasy adventure where you meet a young girl from the countryside who feels she has no say in her life as a female in her patriarchal society. Our protagonist Miuko is immediately cursed and starts to transform into a demon. By the first third I thought it would be a simple quest story with friendships similar to “Shadow of the Fox” by Julie Kagawa. Well, in some ways it was, but the twists and turns, darkness and depth of themes wonderful for a teen to explore bump it up beyond a simple quest. My personal enjoyment was probably a 3-4 stars, but based on my two main parameters for rating YA/teen books (page-turner and thematically strong) I'll rate this on here as 5 stars.