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bluejayreads's review
4.5
I was a little concerned about all those trigger warnings going in. They are there, but they were handled well, and overall this turned out to be a very enjoyable book.
The story is very much focused on Lei and her emotional journey. She didn't want to be a Paper Girl, but she has to under threat of losing her last remaining family. And the first half to two-thirds focuses on her emotional journey dealing with being kidnapped and basically sold into sex slavery, navigating court life, making friends and enemies among the other Paper Girls. It's well-written and feels real.
The plot morphs quite a bit. It starts off with Lei being taken to the palace to be a concubine for the king, trying to survive that and hoping to maybe find her mother along the way. Then she falls in love with a fellow Paper Girl (I'm not going to reveal who, because I think that counts as a spoiler). And the last third is her love interest dragging her into a full-on revolution plot, which is not at all what I counted on from that back cover. The back cover makes it sound like a small story about romance and dealing with sexual assault. And then it takes an abrupt left turn into violent uprising and assassination. Don't get me wrong, it was good - to the point where I had to take a break because the tension was killing me - but not what I expected.
My biggest criticism is that I'm not 100% on board with the world. The caste bit was creative, and I liked the idea of anthropomorphic animals, part-animal-part-humans, and actual humans all living together in a society. And I liked that it was trying to have an East Asian atmosphere, but it felt thrown together with other elements that didn't quite mesh. For example, one of Lei's fellow Paper Girls is named Wren, which sounded jarringly Western to me. (Perhaps Wren actually is an East Asian name. Perhaps I'm not the best person to judge a multicultural author's efforts in combining multiple cultures. But every time I read Wren's name, it jolted me out of the atmosphere of the book).
All things considered, this is a very good book. I don't think I'm going to read the sequels though, mainly because I don't really think it needed one. Everything wraps up nicely at the end, and though you know there's more trials to come for Lei, it has a hopeful note and it's a great place to end. Then after the last chapter there's two paragraphs - not even long enough to be called an epilogue - that undoes most of what Lei accomplished in the climax. It feels more like "my agent sold this as a trilogy" than "this story needs to continue." So I'm pretending those paragraphs weren't there and taking my happy ending - because let's be real, Lei and her love interest deserve one.
The story is very much focused on Lei and her emotional journey. She didn't want to be a Paper Girl, but she has to under threat of losing her last remaining family. And the first half to two-thirds focuses on her emotional journey dealing with being kidnapped and basically sold into sex slavery, navigating court life, making friends and enemies among the other Paper Girls. It's well-written and feels real.
The plot morphs quite a bit. It starts off with Lei being taken to the palace to be a concubine for the king, trying to survive that and hoping to maybe find her mother along the way. Then she falls in love with a fellow Paper Girl (I'm not going to reveal who, because I think that counts as a spoiler). And the last third is her love interest dragging her into a full-on revolution plot, which is not at all what I counted on from that back cover. The back cover makes it sound like a small story about romance and dealing with sexual assault. And then it takes an abrupt left turn into violent uprising and assassination. Don't get me wrong, it was good - to the point where I had to take a break because the tension was killing me - but not what I expected.
My biggest criticism is that I'm not 100% on board with the world. The caste bit was creative, and I liked the idea of anthropomorphic animals, part-animal-part-humans, and actual humans all living together in a society. And I liked that it was trying to have an East Asian atmosphere, but it felt thrown together with other elements that didn't quite mesh. For example, one of Lei's fellow Paper Girls is named Wren, which sounded jarringly Western to me. (Perhaps Wren actually is an East Asian name. Perhaps I'm not the best person to judge a multicultural author's efforts in combining multiple cultures. But every time I read Wren's name, it jolted me out of the atmosphere of the book).
All things considered, this is a very good book. I don't think I'm going to read the sequels though, mainly because I don't really think it needed one. Everything wraps up nicely at the end, and though you know there's more trials to come for Lei, it has a hopeful note and it's a great place to end. Then after the last chapter there's two paragraphs - not even long enough to be called an epilogue - that undoes most of what Lei accomplished in the climax. It feels more like "my agent sold this as a trilogy" than "this story needs to continue." So I'm pretending those paragraphs weren't there and taking my happy ending - because let's be real, Lei and her love interest deserve one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Slavery, Sexual assault, and Torture
Moderate: Death, Blood, Kidnapping, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Gore and Body horror
Executions, forced sex work, sex slavery/concubinage, starvation
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