Traitor's Hope

Another excellent novel from Virginia McClain. Although I sometimes struggled with some of the names being so similar (fun fact: most people don’t read the entirety of proper nouns but rather parse the length, first couple letters and maybe last couple letters - the general shape of it - when they read), this was an excellent follow-up to Blade’s Edge. I liked where the story went. The new characters were great additions but I liked that we continued to focus on key characters from the first book instead of getting overly entangled in the needs of characters we didn’t already have a relationship with. My only other criticism here is that the glossary is a bit anemic. There are plenty of words (eg “hifu”) that aren’t in the glossary but are used frequently throughout the book. I know the author is fluent in Japanese so these might not be very noticeable to her but I’d like to see this expanded OR contracted. Either the glossary should include EVERYTHING (things any anime/manga fan would know, too, like “ne?”) OR it should almost not be there, trusting the reader to pick up meanings from contextual clues or else look them up. I’m inclined to make the glossary bulkier rather than slimmer, but I find the current state of the glossary a bit perplexing. But yes, this is a book I would absolutely recommend. It’s striking to me that, with the exception of manga and anime, I have not encountered a great deal of science fiction or fantasy focusing on Asian cultural touchstones. It seems that this should be prevalent! A sub-genre! Especially for East Asian-obsessed young adults!