I read this book when I was 9 and I'm still pissed off that the sequel was never written. So pissed that I look up news of it every few years and 11 years later, write this comment. ( )

The book started disjointedly and a bit slowly. While I enjoy a good YA fantasy, I will admit that I started the book to try to draw the interest of my voracious, but picky son, who likes martial arts and fantasy. It worked. He saw me reading it and then I couldn't get it back out of his hands.

I had to give the book back to the library, since we ran out of renewals. I've got enough else on my TBR shelf, that I don't know when this will come around again on the guitar.

( )

Bass creates a wonderful tapestry of myth and legend coupled into a new story. The characters and what they represent in Chinese mythology is engaging, but the story moves along too quickly. The writing is often educational, providing a backdrop for the myth Bass is using in order to tell the story, but everything is almost a complete blur. The book should have been split into two stories relatively around the same length so that the great battle scenes and other key elements to the story could get more description and be fleshed out more. As it is, the only glaring issue with the story is that the pacing is just too fast. It would be amazing if Bass could have taken more time to expand the vast world he created through the story.-Lindsey Miller, www.lindseyslibrary.com ( )