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MY ⭐️ RATING: 3.25/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there. Guet Imm, a young votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, joins up with an eclectic group of thieves (whether they like it or not) in order to protect a sacred object, and finds herself in a far more complicated situation than she could have ever imagined.
MY REVIEW
I love exploring different types of books within the fantasy genre so when I saw this 155 page wuxia fantasy set in a barely fictionalized, Emergency-Era Malaysia about found family on sale, I jumped at the opportunity. But by its definition, I wouldn’t exactly call this “Wuxia”, it’s borderline or at least Wuxia-adjacent. Some of the core definition is there, but the actual action is lacking, which is pretty fundamental to Wuxia, I would just say it’s Asian historical fantasy.
The writing is very well done, it’s easy to read but it flows lyrically. The plot of the story was interesting but a bit lacking because the story is so character focused. The best way I can describe The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is Sword of Kaigen meets Legends and Lattes. It’s a warm Asian historical fantasy about a found family group where personal histories slowly collide.
This is a traveling story for the most part, so Cho focuses heavily on the characters. Their relationship with one another, the camaraderie and banter, for a novella there is some incredible character work. She introduced a couple of characters that stood out like Guet Imm and Tet Sang. The story is told from a third person limited narrative where Tet Sang is essentially the POV. Cho did a wonderful job navigating the story through this style, but it was probably why the story felt so lacking in the other areas.
The story was engaging and there was a sense of adventure, but at the end of the day it just felt like there was a lot going on with nothing happening. Maybe the best part of this was the narration by Nancy Wu, she did a tremendous job of making this story work because there was a point where I wanted to stop, but I kept going because of her narration. I would also say that the ending was a bit anticlimactic but it was a nice little happy ending.
