Dragon Pearl - March 2

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks…and then you get sick on top of it, making it worse. Now where were we?

Oh yes, back in December 2018 we talked about Rick Riordan as well as some of his new friends/co-authors/etc./whoever. This time, let us talk about yet another suck person – Yoon Ha Lee and his YA novel, ‘Dragon Pearl’. Whereas Cervantes’ novel was on Mesoamerican myths and Chokshi’s – on Hindu, Lee’s is about Asian myths, Korean to be exact, only – not. Her take is different – it is a sci-fi pastiche.

Oh, certainly, there are Korean goblins, and fox spirits (i.e. kitsune) and dragons and ghosts in her novel, but also space ships and laser guns, for example. The great, late and lamented Terry Pratchett once commented how sci-fi is fantasy with literal nuts and bolts put on it, and Mr. Lee must agree with him, since this is what he did.

…What did we find out, back in December 2018, when we discussed Cervantes and Chokshi’s novels in relation to Riordan’s? That Cervantes’ novel feels like a distorted imitation of Riordan’s own ‘Lightning Thief’, whereas Chokshi’s feels like…an independent novel of her own, with just a few homages to Riordan – and to J. Ro. Lee’s novel feels even more so than Chokshi’s, as the ‘Dragon Pearl’ has nothing in common with Riordan’s, not at all. Yes, the main protagonist is a young kitsune woman, who goes on a quest to find her brother and finds much more than what she has bargained for, in a format that is reminiscent of Riordan’s, and of Chokshi’s, and of Cervantes’, but one main element – the gods – are missing. There are plenty of novels, YA and grown-up, that feature deities of one sort or another, and that brings us to Tanya Huff. These days she seems to be fairly obscure, but back in the 1990s, when she was writing and publishing her ‘Blood series’ about a vampire and his detective friend with benefits, cough, she was big, and she was famous, and as a Canadian she had no qualms about writing novels that featured sexual minorities as main characters, so Lee’s take on ‘Dragon Pearl’, with its’ gender equality and the like feels like an imitation of Ms. Huff here – Canadians were here first, (Lee is Korean American). What’s next?

As we said already, Lee’s ‘Dragon Pearl’ differs from Riordan’s, and Chokshi’s, and Cervantes’, period. It has sci-fi elements in it; it has no gods; it has plenty of gender equality elements in it and it does not follow the trend established by Riordan. …Yes, Riordan did begin to work with such elements as sexual and racial minorities in his second story arc, ‘The Heroes of Olympus’, but he seems to have abandoned them in his last ‘Apollo’ book because of reasons, upon which we have speculated in the past as well – but, regardless, Riordan’s logo – two Rs, one of them inverted, is on the jacket of ‘Dragon Pearl’, and…

In addition, Riordan himself is described, however briefly, inside the book jacket, and his introduction is there too, as it was in cases of the previous two novels. This makes ‘Dragon Pearl’ potentially into a shared intellectual property of the two men, and-

And in case of both Chokshi and Cervantes, there are indications…no, not indications, statements and promises, that sequels to ‘Storm Runner’ and ‘Aru Shah’ will be coming…this year, 2019. ‘Dragon Pearl’ doesn’t have it, making its’ future sequels – or is it the future of its’ sequels? – more dubious. Again, we do not know the relationship between Riordan and Lee as the ‘Dragon Pearl’ was written, but seeing how Riordan has abruptly changed his approach to minorities in his last novel (the next ‘Apollo’ novel is also coming out in 2019, BTW), and Lee, well, promptly didn’t and rather went Huff’s route, by making them obvious, odds are that they didn’t get along, hence no promise of Min’s future adventures. (I.e. the main character of ‘Dragon Pearl’, here). We will just have to wait and see.

In addition, is ‘Dragon Pearl’ good? It is certainly no worse than ‘The Storm Runner’ is, and can be enjoyable to read. However, even more so than a TV show or a movie, (cough, AoS, cough), a book is a property slash commodity, it has to appeal to its’ audience or it wouldn’t sell – but it also has to appeal to the sales’ people, and contrary to what many people think, not everything within the U.S. is about the money, it got its’ ideals too – but that is a talk for another time…

For now, though, this is it. If any of you out there have also read the ‘Dragon Pearl’, (or ‘Aru Shah’, or ‘Storm Runner’), feel free to respond and discuss. Otherwise, see you soon!