Descendant of the Crane: He Joan

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Sometimes in books like these you KNOW things aren’t what they seem, and you’re smart enough to go into reading it with some amount of suspicion towards every character in the book. The main arc is complete – we know who killed the king and found out more about the truth behind the Tenets.

They’d follow the points of views of characters you haven’t yet met (while bringing in the old cast), and complete the bigger story that’s introduced in the epilogue of DESCENDANT OF THE CRANE. I’m not sure I would definitively say it’s worth reading the whole book for, but the ending leaned into the exact type of messed up, lovely character dynamic I adore and it was so fun to read. I stopped reading the Descendant of the Crane and already, I'm mixing it with multiple, similarly plotted fantasies.

I also love how He mercilessly probes her characters’ underlying motivation, and explores the lines between good and evil, who monsters are, and what makes them so. I found myself looking forward to seeing how the other mysteries in this book would be resolved and finding myself pleasantly surprised each time. I think the novel could have been better curated, as it sometimes feels less like a story and more like a haphazard sequence of things happening.

It feels almost deliberately cleaned up for a younger audience, and I think it is a shame that a sexy character like Akira is wasted on a romance lacking in steam. In this shimmering Chinese-inspired fantasy, debut author Joan He introduces a determined and vulnerable young heroine struggling to do right in a world brimming with deception. The story begins with Hesina illegally visiting a soothsayer for information about her father's - the former king's - death.Plus, there’s also politics with another country (I definitely hope to see more of this in a potential sequel if it happens) and I was devouring it all. Literally the first thing she notices is how handsome Akira is, even though she's there in a position of power to strike a deal with him for finding her father’s killer. Nothing felt to much or not developed enough, all the relationships felt normal and something one would expect in that context. The plot twists are indeed as good as everyone says, though some of them just didn’t hit as hard as I wanted them to, because at that point I had really stopped caring what was going on. I felt a bit lost at times when the girl who was effectively Empress seemed to be free to wander at will without any guards/pages/entourage ghosting her every turn, but it worked out well.

As Hesina adjusts to her new power as queen, she finds herself relating to her enemies and questioning the purely benevolent view she always held of her father. Other characters such as Caiyan, Lilian, Sanjing and Akira (heart eyes) were also amazingly written. While I am an absolute glutton for political intrigue fantasies, that in itself isn’t usually enough to leave me as emotionally raw and vulnerable as Descendant of the Crane did and that’s because this book, in a very natural manner such that you don’t even notice, transitions from a generic political/historical fantasy to a tale about morals versus duty. Dare I say that "Asian-inspired" fantasy novels in kingdoms where magic is forbidden seems to be the new trend?Even though she didn't always make the right decisions and she had many misconceptions about her kingdom, it was admirable how she believed in herself and had the courage to pursue the things she thought were right. But she also uses her words and tone to create an atmospheric effect when her main goal isn’t to describe the scene.