Dragon of the Lost Sea, Laurence Yep (365 Books, Day 20)

[rushthatspeaks]

I've been familiar with Laurence Yep's rich and interesting realistic novels since I was very young, but for some reason I never came across any of his fantasy. In fact, I didn't know of its existence until I saw it mentioned on 50books_poc. At Wiscon, I scored an ARC of City of Fire, the first of his current fantasy series; I note that the book came out in early August, and I recommend it highly. It made me hunt down Dragon of the Lost Sea.

I enjoyed it. I'd have fallen head over heels for it at ten. There's a dragon princess, who is very prickly; there's a human boy, who is just as stubborn back. There's an ocean compressed into a little blue pebble. There's Monkey, who is just as Monkey usually is. There's an awareness that villainy is never one-dimensional.

City of Fire, which features equally interesting characters and worldbuilding so conceptually fascinating to me that I wouldn't have cared if there hadn't been any characters, is more the sort of book I read nowadays, but I read Dragon of the Lost Sea remembering the ten-year-old I was, and I will read the others in the series.

Assuming I can ever find them. I don't know what it is with the library systems I've run into about these. Kind of odd.

Comments

[octopedingenue]

I loved and still love the Dragon of the Lost Sea series fiercely since I was very young; elementary school age I must have been when I first found it. And it was my first encounter with Monkey, and he cemented himself firmly to that series in my mind. So it was beyond disconcerting (though certainly not in a bad way) to grow up and read manga and Asian literature and learn he had this whole other lengthy and colorful history as as a trickster in folklore and Buddhism and comics, from Minekura's Saiyuki to American Born Chinese. It felt very like fanfiction (only in reverse, I suppose?), discovering a well-loved character I thought I'd left sedately waiting for me to return in a book had in fact escaped and was off having adventures without telling me.

And oh, how much I wanted a magic pearl!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Although I haven't reread them since, I adored Dragon of the Lost Sea and its sequels when I was around ten or eleven. (I was the opposite: I read a great deal of Yep's fantasy as a kid and didn't come across his historical fiction until recently.)

[sovay]

but I read Dragon of the Lost Sea remembering the ten-year-old I was, and I will read the others in the series.

I remember Dragon Cauldron being my favorite, probably because it has the highest quotient of eerie and otherworldly—in ways that I would love to track down the antecedents for; or if they were wholly Yep's invention, more power to him—and Monkey takes over the narration, which position he will retain until the end of the series. Occasionally this goes as well as you might imagine.

Assuming I can ever find them.

I wish someone would bring the quartet back into print. Until Avatar: The Last Airbender, it was the only Asian-derived secondary-world fantasy I'd encountered that was not Generic China/Imperial Japan with the serial numbers filed off Magic.

[seishonagon.livejournal.com]

Have either you or rushthatspeaks read Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet? It begins with Shadow In Summer, and is absolutely awesome. It's set in a fantasy world clearly derived from India and its region.

[sovay]

Have either you or rushthatspeaks read Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet?

I have not; I believe Rush has.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You should read these. They are awesome.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I have! I told B. to read them and I think he told you. Pretty much the best fantasy series of the last couple of years.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

He's won the Newbery twice, so I've got my fingers crossed that you can find his stuff a little more easily in the library system because of it. I'm reading City of Fire right now, and really liking it.

[seishonagon.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to drop a quick note to say that I have been reading most of these reviews, and they're awesome. Quite a few of the books have free samples available for Kindle, so I've been downloading those samples like mad, since my samples collection is at this point my "to read in the near future" list (to keep myself from spending madly on books I won't get around to reading for a year, I read a sample before buying the book).

So yeah, awesome. Picked up the sample for this one just now.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Oh good. I am glad to hear that is working with the Kindle, I never know what the availability is like there. And I am very glad to be actually being useful!

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

That was one of my favourite series as a kid. One of the only fantasy novels I could find that wasn't generic middle ages, and the first time I encountered the monkey king.