Book-Thirsty Thursday: Forest of a Thousand Lanterns, Julie C. Dao

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is perhaps a little uneven, but it comes with enough twists and turns to engage a reader and make things fascinating.

To talk about Forest of a Thousand Lanterns without ruining every single twist of the plot may not be the easiest job in the world. Still, Philomel Books sent it to yours truly, this is Book-Thirsty Thursday, and we’ll keep it to the level of the official Penguin Teen synopsis.

Xifeng, our protagonist, does not make it easy to relate to her. There’s something about the narration that makes finding empathy with her difficult, even when you take her situation into account — born poor, but supposedly with the potential to become Empress of all Feng Lu, just so long as she makes some difficult choices, to put it mildly.

Even though Penguin Teen explicitly says that this is a “reimagining of The Evil Queen”, shows like Once Upon a Time have made it clear that audiences can find things to like or empathize with when it comes to characters we’re supposed to view as antagonists. Dao doesn’t quite find that balance between good and evil.

Is it the narration talking about her beauty and how she has to be smart rather often? The former we can understand. The latter, though, veers close to the obvious, because Xifeng has displays of her cleverness. We don’t need the narrator reminding us that she’s quick as well as pretty.

And oh, Xifeng is pretty, and she has suffered, and she has big dreams. If this were a different novel, this would all be cloying (instead, it just skirts a bit close but gets bolstered by the turns towards the end of the novel). Yours truly wouldn’t have finished it otherwise.

Even so, things seem a little too easy. There are reasons to justify how the plot unfolds. However, Dao’s society seems to suggest that Xifeng’s boldness shouldn’t get her as far as it actually ends up doing, and the explanation wears thin.

However, the plot holds a few turns. It’s the depths to which Dao is willing to go that turn Xifeng from a difficult protagonist to a surprisingly fascinating one. This may be a young adult novel, but the plot doesn’t shy away from some pretty dark themes. It’s these choices, more than Xifeng, more than the worldbuilding (which is also uneven in that there’s not enough of it, and what is there gets repeated a few times), that make the book better.

Ultimately, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is perhaps a rougher debut than some of the others yours truly has read this year, but there are still sparks there to draw readers in. If Dao tightens up her characterization in particular and is still willing to take those risks, the next book in this Rise of the Empress series (because yes, it’s a series) could end up being better than the first, and that’s what we always hope for.

Next: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, reviewed

Have you picked up Forest of a Thousand Lanterns just yet? Let us know what you’re thinking about it and your current book-thirst quenching read.