Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan | Spoiler-Free Review

    Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan is a YA mythology retelling of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e, and her daughter Xingyin. Exiled to the moon after obtaining the elixer of immortality, Chang'e wills the moon to rise each night, while her daughter Xingyin grows up in secret. But when Xingyin's magic draws the Celestial Empress to the moon, she is forced to flee her home and her mother. Determined to free her mother from her lunar prison, Xingyin strives to become as strong as possible, learning everything she can about combat and magic. 

    This book follows the classic Hero's Journey, the same as Odysseus and Achilles from Homer's epics. There is a call to action, which Xingyin at first refuses but eventually answers; the beginning of adventure which thrusts her into the unknown; a series of challenges and temptations, some completed alone and some requiring outside help; a great revelation when all seems hopeless and the hero (Xingyin) nearly gives into despair; transformation, when she comes into her own as a true hero; atonement, sitting in the decisions she made during the time of darkness; and finally, a return to her life beforehand. Truly the book follows this template to a T, but there is a reason that time and time again authors return to it - it works. 

"Why was it that the times which called for greatest strength were when we were at our weakest?"

    

    Despite being in a terrible reading slump, I really flew through this book. This was mostly thanks to the lyrical prose, about as purple as it can get. Each sentence was lush and vibrant, the settings, clothes, and food described so beautifully and in such exquisite detail I could nearly see them in the back of my mind, and I could practically smell all of the scents mentioned. It made it so much easier to pick the book back up when the last thing I wanted to do was read. 

    I also found the characters extremely well-developed. Well, mainly only the three main characters, but a couple of the side characters had full personalities too. Even though this was Sue Lynn Tan's debut novel and there were so many names, faces, places to juggle, I feel she did a fantastic job. Xingyin felt very real to me, with ambition and flaws and moments of pride and delusions of grandeur, so she was an extremely well-rounded character in my opinion. 

"Their unkindness only had as much power as I gave it, and I would wrench back my tattered pride from beneath the soles of their feet because . . . it was all I had left."

    My favorite thing about this book was of course, the mythology woven through it. I don't know any Chinese myths really, aside from the dragons, but that is more general rather than any specific legend, like what they look like and how they act, how they are sacred to the people. I don't know any of their gods or monsters, so this was especially fun for me, as I got to learn so much. I haven't looked to see if every story and legend mentioned in the book is a true myth or something the author came up with on her own, but I do know they were expertly crafted. 

    If there is one big thing I will complain about, it is the love triangle. As far as love triangles go, this one was pretty well-balanced, you truly didn't know which love interest was endgame, until the plot twist of course (which I won't get into, obviously). But as we all know, I really don't like romance in general in my fantasy books, and love triangles are especially irksome to me. Did I know that there would be a love triangle in this book when I first picked it up? No. That probably would have swayed me from reading it so quickly, to be honest. I'm of course glad that this wasn't the case, but I would have been happier if there was no love triangle (or romance at all, but we can't have everything). 

    Overall, I really did enjoy this book. I gave it four out of five stars, with a score of 7.71 on CAWPILE. The sequel, Heart of the Sun Warrior, is expected to come out in November of this year.