Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!
Update: I do have something nice to say, so I’ll say something. Beyond the heinous Studio Ghibli AI trend (and if anybody here thought that was “cute,” even when the White House twitter did it, get thee away from this blog), people tend to narrow Studio Ghibli down to a very shallow, cutesy aesthetic that discounts the heart of Hayao Miyazaki’s incredible visions. Rebel Skies was one of the few pieces of media inspired by Miyazaki that clearly gets him—rich worldbuilding with whimsy and darkness in equal measure. Yet even if you take that comparison away, Rebel Skies is a YA book to be reckoned with, full of heart, spirit, and skyships.
Enjoy this week’s review!
Rebel Skies (Rebel Skies, #1) – Ann Sei Lin
In the Sky Cities, no one is more revered—and feared—more than Crafters: those who possess the power to draw magic from paper and make creatures come to life. Kurara, a young servant aboard a flying ship, has barely honed her powers, only using them for party tricks. But when her best friend, Haru, is revealed to be a Shinigami—a creature made of paper—and grievously injured, Kurara flees to a skyship in order to find answers. There, she hones her Crafting with Himura, an ornery Crafter with secrets of her own. As she gets to know the motley crew of her ship, Kurara discovers that Haru’s identity isn’t the only secret that’s been kept from her—and that there are enough to bring down the Empire.
TW/CW: fire, animal death, torture, death, descriptions of injury
Ann Sei Lin seems to know as well as anyone that we need a bit more whimsy in YA fantasy. The edgelord stuff has gotten boring. It’s fantasy, come on now! I get that if magic was the norm, people might not be impressed by it, but there has to be some wonder in your life, right?
First off, the worldbuilding was tons of fun! Though the Studio Ghibli-inspired elements are plentiful, if I had to summarize the world of Rebel Skies, it wouldn’t be with that. If anything, it’s more of a steampunk version of Kubo and the Two Strings. You’ve got Nausicaä-esque airships and floating cities (which both felt very Philip Reeve as well) combined with paper-based magic, and all of the possibilities you can think of along with it—paper animals, paper people, and monstrous paper beasts. (Oh, and the paper animals can talk. Gotta toss some talking animals in there.) I’m not usually one for steampunk, but this isn’t your garden-variety “slap gears and tiny hats on everything in Victorian England and call it a day” steampunk—not only is the world inspired by Asian cultures (mainly Japan), the blend of magic and machinery married easily, and often whimsically. Though the colors I imagined trended towards rusty and earth-toned, Lin couldn’t have made her world more vibrant—and multilayered; not only were there base-level divisions between the people who lived on the ground and the people who lived in the sky, there were all sorts of customs, stereotypes, and quirks that were given to each, which in turn influenced how all the mismatched patchwork of characters interacted with each other.
For me, it doesn’t get much better than the worldbuilding informing the themes of the book. Not only did I love all of the intricacies of the paper magic in Rebel Skies, I love how Lin used it to explore the theme of autonomy, and especially the lack of it. Kurara herself has been ordered around as a servant, and she sees the same thing being done to the magical beings around her; she sees how Himura treats Akane, his shikigami fox, and questions whether or not he’s really so content to devote his entire existence to serving Himura. Add that to the visceral trauma of discovering that her best friend is made of paper and has been seemingly puppeteered from afar, and the reigning empire is performing cruel experiments on its shikigami, and Kurara’s ultimate motive to both her personal journey and her journey to wrong the rights of her world lies in autonomy, and having a reciprocal, ethical relationship to her magic. It’s an excellent metaphor and an excellent addition of nuance to the worldbuilding—if the world relies on unbalanced relationships, how can I shift them so as not to do to others what others have done to me?
You all know by now how much of a sucker I am for a good found family story, and while Rebel Skies didn’t completely fulfill that promise, I love the group dynamic between all of the characters. Even though the subplot of Sayo and Kurara warming up to each other felt a bit rote, I liked the progression that their characters had. Kurara and the rest of the pirates were lots of fun, and they gave the skyship a lively, lived-in feel. I’m also a sucker for the trope of older, gruff characters taking excitable younger characters under their wing; Himura was a solid addition to the canon, but I feel like he’s hiding too much to truly be a mentor to Kurara. I’m interested to see where it goes in Rebel Fire, but my gut says that it’s going to be some kind of subversion. We’ll see. Either way, Rebel Skies’ motley crew lived up to its description, making the setting all the more lively and adventurous.
As someone who read voraciously in my childhood and longed for some kind of bridge between middle grade and the too-broad age range of YA (12 to 18 is so arbitrary and baffling, you’ll not hear the end of it from me), Rebel Skies automatically won me over. It’s categorized as YA, but it feels right in the middle of MG whimsy and adventure and more YA stakes and themes. Kurara, even as a teenager, has a childlike sense of wonder, and although some of her interactions came off as slightly more childish than her age, it hits a charming balance of innocence and discovery that feels like the ideal bridge between the age jump between the two categories. As a longtime YA reader, it hits a natural sweet spot, but in its balance of darker, more YA elements with the same kind of voice as older MG, Lin has written a book that could serve as both a younger YA reader’s introduction to the genre and an easy pleaser for the YA reader.
That being said, the one major flaw in Rebel Skies is that I didn’t see why Himura’s POV was necessary. He was a solid character, but this novel was clearly Kurara’s story. I enjoyed hearing his voice and Lin wrote it well, but I don’t think his input to the story served a purpose other than giving his side of events…that we’d already been shown through Kurara’s POV. We get that Kurara’s been slow in her training, and then Himura repeats it as such. We do get plot information that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten from Kurara, but if that’s the only reason that Himura gets his own chapters, then what’s the point? There could be multiple interesting ways for Kurara to get this information that could deepen or complicate the relationship she has with Himura—she could overhear a conversation or sneak a look at some of his documents, for instance, and he could catch her in the act, adding more conflict to the plot. Again, he was a perfectly fine character, but aside from the interludes, Rebel Skies wasn’t meant to be a dual-POV novel. It’s the Kurara show, c’mon!
Overall, a memorable fantasy book with lush worldbuilding, a lively cast of characters, and a unique voice that balances middle grade adventurousness with the more matured nuance of YA. 4 stars!
Rebel Skies is the first book in the Rebel Skies trilogy, followed by Rebel Fire and Rebel Dawn. Rebel Skies is Ann Sei Lin’s debut novel.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 