Book thoughts

The Lies We Conjure by Sarah Henning

Genre: YA, fantasy, mystery

I can't help picking up any book that comps to Knives Out, even if I find all of them to be disappointing. This one was no exception. Although a murder happens, the plot becomes less of a murder mystery and more of a, for lack of a better term, fetch quest for a bunch of artifacts hidden around the mansion. And the puzzles the characters have to solve to find said artifacts aren't particularly interesting, either. On top of that, I found the pacing to be quite slow, and I ended up DNF'ing halfway through and skimming the ending.



Prince of Fortune by Lisa Tirreno

Genre: YA, fantasy, romance

I picked up this M/M romantasy out of curiosity, but I DNF'ed out of boredom around a third of the way through. To be fair, this book had the feel of a Regency romance (the fantasy setting was clearly inspired by Regency England), and I don't read those. But I just found the pacing really slow and I felt like nothing interesting was happening.



The Blood Orchid by Kylie Lee Baker

Genre: YA, fantasy

I ended up enjoying this book a lot, far more than the prequel, but the more time passes, the more research failures I pick up on. The book does some things right compared to the first book (e.g. no more 小姐/xiaojie used as an honorific), but there are still a bunch of very basic facts that I can tell were wrong, without even researching the time period/locations in the book. Here is the list:

- Zilan and Yufei should not refer to Wenshu as "Wenshu-gē" (this problem was carried over from the first book).
- Zilan shouldn't refer to her aunt and uncle as "Auntie So" and "Uncle Fan," but rather just as "Aunt" and "Uncle". Attaching a name after "auntie" or "uncle" denotes that they're not related to you. (Another problem that was carried over from the first book.)
- The characters are journeying in the northwestern deserts of China; they probably should not be eating congee all the time, since rice is grown in the south of China (and a desert absolutely would not have enough water to grow rice).
- A number of facts about Tang Taizong's life are wrong (which is unfortunate, considering he's only one of the three-ish most famous emperors in Chinese history). The book says that he was dreaming of becoming emperor at 16; however, when Tang Taizong was 16, China was ruled by the Sui Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty hadn't even been established yet. Also, while I get wanting to portray him as an underdog for the purposes of the story, the fact was that Tang Taizong was a talented general starting from his youth, and once the Tang Dynasty was established he very quickly emerged as a threat to the crown prince, so it's weird to describe him as being viewed as "no threat" by his brothers.
- Tianzi (天子) as a title for the emperor is treated as some arcane title when...it's not. Literally every emperor is called Tianzi during his reign, so it's weird that (a) Zilan wouldn't know this referred to the emperor, and (b) the characters decide this definitely refers to Tang Taizong and not the most recent emperor, Tang Gaozong, or any other emperor.
- A consistency error: silver is referred to as a metal stone and then later as a water stone.
- Another consistency error: Zheng Sili's pouch is described as made of silk twice but made of velvet once.

( More/spoilers under the cut )