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rushthatspeaksThe novelty of having the second book of a Laurence Yep fantasy series appear at the library was so huge that I had to pick it up. Seriously, I had read the first book of three separate fantasy series of his, and there the availability stopped. Fortunately, one of those series was this one.
The main problem I had with the first book, The Tiger's Apprentice, was that it felt very rushed and condensed and tell-not-show, so it was mostly just a travelogue with cool bits. This one has a fair amount of that as well, but substantially less; there are huge chunks where it feels like a book instead of an outline for a book. Consequently it is much better, although still nothing I would call spectacular.
Also, the protagonist is chasing around an undersea dragon kingdom for most of it, so if you like undersea dragon kingdoms this is quite a good one. It reminds me somewhat of L. Frank Baum's The Sea Fairies in that the undersea things (except the dragons) are based entirely on things that actually exist and aren't magical, but which are so strange and visually interesting that the text treats the distinction as fairly academic. The Sea Fairies, though, has a horrible case of twee, so it's nice to see someone doing this without it being actively nauseating.
I don't think you'd need to have read the first book to follow this, as previous things were pretty well summarized and also in some ways not much happened earlier. This jumps to 'would recommend for a very low energy day or to a young kid' from 'would not recommend except as interesting failure or if doing research on this mythology', so though it's still nowhere near as good as the non-fantastical Yep I've read, it might be worth starting here if you're interested in his fantasy. If I run into it I'll certainly read the third one.
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The main problem I had with the first book, The Tiger's Apprentice, was that it felt very rushed and condensed and tell-not-show, so it was mostly just a travelogue with cool bits. This one has a fair amount of that as well, but substantially less; there are huge chunks where it feels like a book instead of an outline for a book. Consequently it is much better, although still nothing I would call spectacular.
Also, the protagonist is chasing around an undersea dragon kingdom for most of it, so if you like undersea dragon kingdoms this is quite a good one. It reminds me somewhat of L. Frank Baum's The Sea Fairies in that the undersea things (except the dragons) are based entirely on things that actually exist and aren't magical, but which are so strange and visually interesting that the text treats the distinction as fairly academic. The Sea Fairies, though, has a horrible case of twee, so it's nice to see someone doing this without it being actively nauseating.
I don't think you'd need to have read the first book to follow this, as previous things were pretty well summarized and also in some ways not much happened earlier. This jumps to 'would recommend for a very low energy day or to a young kid' from 'would not recommend except as interesting failure or if doing research on this mythology', so though it's still nowhere near as good as the non-fantastical Yep I've read, it might be worth starting here if you're interested in his fantasy. If I run into it I'll certainly read the third one.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
