Elizabeth Lim’s Six Crimson Cranes is a magical tale of a princess coming into her own

Much like her previous “Blood of Stars” duology, Elizabeth Lim’s Six Crimson Cranes is a beautifully written fantasy that effortlessly incorporates East Asian legends and folklore in a way that makes her work immediately stand out from other YA stories hitting shelves this summer. (Plus, there’s this gorgeous cover!)

The story may be loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Wild Swans”, but Lim makes the basics of the tale into something entirely new, forging them into a story about identity, family, and the (often incorrect) assumptions we make about others. Plus, there are dragons, magic, cursed cranes, a sassy talking paper bird, and an enforced betrothal that turns out to be true love.

Six Crimson Cranes follows the story of Princess Shiori, the youngest child and only daughter of the Emperor of Kiata. She’s becoming increasingly agitated about her impending betrothal to the son of a Northern warlord – she doesn’t know this boy, and marrying him will take her far away from the home and family she loves. But Shiori is also keeping a potentially deadly secret: She has magic, an ability that is forbidden in her kingdom.

On the day of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori meets a dragon named Seyru, who offers to help teach her to control her gifts. But when her magical education causes her to realize that her stepmother Raikama also has magic, the Nameless Queen banishes her stepdaughter and curses Shiori’s six brothers to become cranes by day, only returning to their human forms at night.

The princess, sent to the farthest corner of the kingdom, is forced to wear a wooden bowl on her head that obscures her face – and can’t be removed. What’s worse, she also cannot speak, because if she does each word she utters will immediately kill one of her brothers.

Alone and voiceless, Shiori – now going by the name Lina – spends months searching for her brothers and when she finds them they set on a complicated mission to break the curse that binds their family, even if it means the princess will have to risk her own life in ways she never expected. But not everything in this story is what it seems, and by the end of it she’ll have to learn to trust those she may have once assumed were her enemies – and trust in her own abilities to save the day.

Lim’s prose is lush and evocative, effortlessly weaving Asian folklore and culture into what is often traditionally presented as a very Western sort of story. The settings are beautifully described, from the run-down fishing village the disguised Lina initially finds herself in to the frigidly beautiful Northern territory of Iro, where she unexpectedly becomes a guest of the very family whose daughter-in-law she was meant to become.

Shiori’s slow-burn romance with Takkan – because fate always has its way, of course – is utterly charming, and somehow completely unexpected, despite being a twist that was spoiled in the original synopsis for this book! A completely heartfelt soft boy who composes poetry and loves food, Takkan is Six Crimson Cranes’ most delightful surprise and I can’t wait to see how his relationship with Shiori develops in the next book.

Six Crimson Cranes is available now. Let us know if you plan to give this story a look!