Water Moon - Samantha Sotto Yambao
It took me a long time to finish this one which is strange because the story itself isn't too difficult to parse or navigate. I wondered if it was a case of fatigue because I read a lot of stories like this - I love Japanese lit (or in this case Japanese-inspired lit, the author is actually Filipino! And particularly this calm and almost self-helpy brand of story characters go to a library/restaurant/bookshop and get life advice that they didn't expect. WELL BAM THIS ONE IS A BIT DIFFERENT. I was expecting it to be a book about different' cases' that go to the pawn shop but nope! This is a whole ass contained story about the family that operates it!
I'm in a really weird place where I had a ton of problems with this but also I really liked it? I was genuinely refreshed by the worldbuilding, the synopsis doesn't really do justice that this is a Ghibli-esque fantasy adventure story more than a 'person goes to magical mundane place and it fixes problems'. It's very creative and genuinely kind of a breath of fresh air in a sea of magical cafes and enchanted book shops. Really fun imagery and very dreamlike to match - it operated in it's own sense of rules but it didn't feel so outlandish that I couldn't just nod and go "ok sure".
I did enjoy the characters a lot when it came down to it - Hana is a little bit flat but I get the vibe that's kind of an intended element from the place she's from. Keishin is quite a lot of fun and I preferred him - small shout out to Hayato too. I didn't love these characters but I enjoyed reading about them is the best way I can put it. I could have done without the romance I think, it felt a bit unnecessary and accelerated imo, they had some cute scenes but I think I would have preferred an element of friendship more than romance - maybe romance hinted at or realized at the end? That being said I loved that Hana had this manipulative element in the reveal at the end when she admits that she was going to turn Keishin in after realizing he was the regret at the beginning.
Tonally, I rated that the author didn't resist in killing her darlings too much, characters do die and suffer in this book - often tortured by these strange, otherworldly beings that seem to rule Hana's world. Hayato straight up sacrificed himself. There's quite a lot of bleakness to how this world works and I really dug that, particularly about the role of harvested souls and how fate is inked onto skin. I think it would have won me a bit more points if the ending was more ambiguous? Like if Hana hadn't randomly appeared again but that might be my general sad seeking behaviour.
So why the fatigue? I worked out that what was putting me off with this book was the writing. It's a little too... fanfiction coded for me? This isn't necessarily a bad thing but more a preference. It felt very monotonous and clunky - I initially thought this might be a debut novel but it seems that the author has definitely got other works under her belt. The dialogue was just... not very good. Plus the general premise of "we need to go see X because we're looking for Y in order to get Z but we went to X and they were no help so now we're got to see Q instead who might know something more than X-" If that example was a chore to read now you get how I felt following along with this story. I don't know if it's the technical term but I always consider books that do this as a tourguide or haunted house method of story telling - you jump to one place to another just because, you enjoy the scene without a lot of meat and potatoes before moving on and it's a big detriment to me.
Overall I fluctuated hot and cold on this book but in the end I rated it a 3.5 stars - I loved the creativity but not the means it was delivered to me. I think I'd love to read more books like this in terms of premise.
