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Title: The Sky Village
Authors: Monk & Nigel Ashland

Thoughts: I enjoyed reading this book and I think it’s an okay book for the YA crowd. I can’t fully evaluate the book because it is only the first one in the series.

The ideas of both the Sky Village and the demonsmiths are fascinating ideas. The Sky Village is a very fantastical sort of place that is very focused on its traditions and rituals. This interested me, especially since traditional cultures interest me normally. However, like many other traditional societies, they are wary of strangers, particularly one of the protagonists, Mei. Even though she was born in the village, she is still a stranger to them. This is simply because her mother left the village with her and she was raised on the ground as a land-dweller.

The other main protagonist, Rom, turns out to be a natural demonsmith like his father and is able to summon his demon Spot (named by his sister) without all the required equipment that other demonsmiths need. This makes him much more versatile and valuable than others, which is noted by Diamond Teeth, the man who basically runs everything in the underground gambling scene.

This book certainly isn’t on my list of favorite YA books, but it’s a decent read and I would recommend it in case a person would find it to their liking. After all, I have my own YA series that I love and that I love and that I still love even as a 22 year old. Perhaps this series will mean the same thing to others. I can see the potential for that. As for me, I will likely keep my eye out for the rest of this series as it comes out because I like to finish reading the series that I’ve started on.

(Written for LibraryThing)

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Title: Dragon War
Author: Laurence Yep

Thoughts: This is the last book in Yep’s Dragons Quartet and its conclusion is not entirely unexpected, but it was interesting in how the Nameless One was finally defeated. However, I did find it odd that Sambar agreed to Shimmer’s deal far too quickly. Perhaps it was because they were under a tight deadline as dictated by the humans’ ultimatium. I mean, if you’re only given 48 hours to answer the humans or else.

I can’t really say much about this book because I just simply don’t know what to say as it’s not as memorable as the other books. I say this because I remembered more of the events of the first three books than in this book.

Finally, this book has stones Chinese warriors coming to life far before that newest Mummy movie was ever thought of. That movie is just weird from what I’ve seen on the TV trailers.

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Title: Dragon Cauldron
Author: Laurence Yep

Thoughts: This is my favorite book in this quartet because this is really where the story starts to pick up the pace. More interesting things happen in this book than in the other three, in my opinion.

Yep also continues with the use of Chinese cultural history in this one. Two examples that I can identify are the Jade burial suit used at the tomb under the lake and the stone soldier statues of the unused tomb of the Nameless One. Both are inspired by actual archeological discoveries found at Chinese burial sites and I assume most people are familiar with the army of terracotta statues found in the tomb of the first Emperor of China. I also think that also people have at least heard of the jade funerary suits.

A lot happens in this book for someone accidentally frees a great evil from its island prison and what transpires after this are influenced either directly or indirectly by this release. The war between the Human Kingdom and the Dragon Kingdom is made worse, not just because the great evil possesses the Butcher (the man who grabbed power and made himself king), but because the Butcher had discovered the unused tomb and was working on obtaining its secrets. That discovery along with the Butcher being possessed afterward made the war far, far more possibly dangerous and destructive for the evil being would destroy everything, not just the dragons.

One also finds out what Shimmer’s brother had been doing since he had disappeared and let’s just say that he is definitely not working in the best interests of his clan. It seems instead that he looks out only for himself.

My favorite part in this book was the part that took place in the tomb under the lake and Civet’s prophecies. It was just a very surreal and magical moment in the book and I like that in a story. I also liked the part at the end when our heroes were in the Smith’s forge and what transpired there moved me.

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Title: Dragon Steel
Author: Laurence Yep

Thoughts: This book is okay compared to the others in this quartet (I have read them before). Actually, to be honest, the series doesn’t get exciting for me until the end of this book (most of which I am somehow missing from the used book I bought). Other than the raid on the Dragon treasury, what interested me the most was the part where Shimmer meets with her clan after centuries of exile from them (dragons live a long time, obviously) and finds that in their own status as a people without a homeland that they have become exiles of a sort as well. They are given the most dangerous and health threating jobs and they live on the borders of the dragon kingdoms, far from the glided pomp and circumstance of King Sambar and his court.

The constrast of the battle-scarred dragons of Shimmer’s clan and the privileged dragons of the royal court is remarkable. Shimmer’s clan said they once acted the same before they lost their sea and learned of hardship. They welcomed her when the court did not even though it was them who was responsible for her exile. She gave them some hope that they haven’t had for centuries because of the news Shimmer gave them, which Shimmer feels as if she doesn’t deserve to have that faith in her. But it did feel more right to her that she be welcomed by her own clan who could now sympathize with the hardships of exile than being welcomed with splendor by the over-pompous lizards of Sambar’s court as she first imagined. And while King Sambar, Shimmer’s uncle, throws her in jail (partly due to Thorn’s outburst), Shimmer’s clan gives her their most precious possession, a flower that no longer grows anywhere for the only place it grew was on the shores of their now lost sea and they gave it to her knowing that they might never get it bad and that Shimmer is giving no guarantees about being able to restore the sea. Yet they still had faith in her, especially since she came back to them even though they treated her poorly before while her spoiled brother Promfret ran away from his people in their time of need.

So that trust that the clan put into their princess was rather touching and it wasn’t misplaced for Shimmer already knew hardship like they did. She had also already fought and captured Civet for her clan, and finally promised to do all she could to restore the sea. They saw her conviction, something that their king, Pomfret, didn’t give them.

So yes, I think the most important thing that this novel did for the story was that while Shimmer was rejected by the court of the Dragon High King and his court, her own people accepted her even though she came with little but the news that she had captured the witch Civet and that their sea was now covering the town of River Glen. I like that because people who are in bad situations always need some form of hope when they had previously had none.

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Title: Dragon of the Lost Sea
Author: Laurence Yep

Thoughts: I’ve loved the quartet that this book belongs to since I was in Elementary School and I thought that it was nigh time that I’d re-read them again.

This book introduces us to most of the main protagonists of the quartet, including an enemy who changes their way at the end. So it’s basically a lead into the rest of the quartet, setting up the situation and background of the characters. You learn of the loss of Shimmer’s homeland and of her exile. You meet Thorn, the orphan boy who is both brave and stubborn (you have to be stubborn to deal with Shimmer). Then there is Civet, the “witch” who stole the sea that was Shimmer’s homeland, with her story of being sacrificed to the River God to be his wife. She becomes a sympathetic character once you hear her story. And finally, there is Monkey, whose character is obviously inspired by the Monkey King from “Journey to the West.”

I like how Yep uses inspiration from Chinese mythology and legend in this book and while I only recognize a few (the royal five clawed dragon and the inspiration for Monkey for example), I still love it. Mythology and legend in general is something I find interesting and I enjoy figuring out references in the books I read. It’s like finding an easter egg in a book instead of a video game. I also find it rather fascinating because it deals with a culture that I’m not exactly that familiar with (not out of lack of interest, I’ve just never researched Chinese legend a lot).

It’s a good start to the quartet and makes you want to read the next one to see if Shimmer eventually succeeds in restoring her homeland. The story gets better later on as more things layer onto the plot, but you can’t implement all of those things in the first book. You have to give your readers a reason to keep reading after all.

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Title: Empire of Unreason
Author: J. Gregory Keyes

Thoughts: At first I thought this series was a trilogy because my library only had the first three books and I saw no other indication that there was a fourth book. Then I got to the end of this book and found that the story wasn’t quite over yet as there was quite the cliffhanger. So I looked up the series “The Age of Unreason” on Wikipedia and discovered that there was one more book to the series.

I also found out that my local library inconveniently does not have it, even though the book series is clearly not finished at the end of this book. Thankfully, I’m visiting a good friend of mine in a few days and her library system has the book and she will let me borrow it on her card. It’s always kinda annoying when a library has all the books of a series except the last when the last book has been out for several years.

Anyways, about the book itself. A lot of strange things are happening in it, including what appears to be the beginning of that world’s version of the American revolution and Russia is invading the American continent from the west while also trying to do the same under the cover of a new English King as the previous king had perished with London.

Honestly, those parts of the book weren’t too interesting to me and I was more interested in the parts of the story that focused on Red Shoes’s travels to the west with his companion, Tug. It intrigued me because he saw the spirits of that world in a non-christian context. Speaking of, I wonder why some spirits in the books appear “angelic” (by angelic, I don’t mean winged humans with halos, but winged beings with many eyes or other descriptions mentioned in the bible) while others are like the spirits that Red Shoes see. Perhaps it is because different people “see” the same beings in the ways they would expect or maybe it is just that there are different species of spirits as suggested by Adrienne’s students and that like earthly creatures, there are many variations.

What interested me the most about Red Shoes’s portion, however, was how much he was on the edge of becoming the same thing he that he hated and fought and ultimately becoming that thing without realizing it. Him realizing what had had happened and Adrienne’s contact with her lost son at the end of the book are the two things that make me want to read the last book and finish the series. This book does leave you at quite the cliffhanger.

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