Phoenix Extravagant

This was a mildly frustrating read. It was on for a solid 4 in my rating until the last 20 pages...

The basic premise of the story is interesting - a magic system where grinding up artwork from dead artists produces magical pigment used to animate automatons, all set in an early 20th centuryesque Korea. Two very solid ticks with a cool sounding hard magic system and an interesting and less well known world basis. The non-binary gendering of the main character also added an interesting twist and the use of the plural pronouns to refer to the main protagonist gives an interesting reading experience. Even the family units are interesting, apparently consisting of three adults in a parenting role. The oppressive occupation and the cultural world building all gave this a very cool flair.

Unfortunately this did not stick the ending. It all just went a bit too whimsical and strange. Whilst there was a gritty realism to much of the rest of the book, this ending ended up feeling way to off tone. A shame, as the rest of the book was really good.

DNF - PG 103

Why?

Mostly because my library borrow expired without me even realizing it, but also because I was bored out of my mind. It was super fun to see a non-western based fantasy setting. And the steampunk-esqu touches were nice. ... But it was so slow, with nothing happening. And Jebi was...difficult for me to like. At all. I also didn't like what felt like hints of romance between Jebi and their ‘bodyguard' (more like just a guard).

The hints in the synopsis of something big and horrific going on, turned out to be quite a non-issue for me. I can see why Jebi found it terrible (they are, after all, such an artist) but for me personally, I was expecting something worse so it was kind of overly dramatic that that was the thing that convinced Jebi to do something. (I assume. I didn't actually reach the point where Jebi did anything. And, honestly, at nearly a third of the book down, something should have been happening.)

(Though, to be far, if I had liked Jebi as much as the two leads from Ninefox Gambit, it wouldn't have mattered to me that nothing happened. ... Because I would be more than happy to read Jedao and Cheris verbally/mentally sparing for 500 pages.)