Out from Under - Incubus

Stormdancer
The Lotus War, Book 1

Author: Jay Kristoff
Pages: 313
Publisher:Thomas Dunne Books
Publication Date: September 18, 2012
Source: ARC from St. Martin's Press

Description from Goodreads:
A DYING LAND
The Shima Imperium verges on the brink of environmental collapse; an island nation once rich in tradition and myth, now decimated by clockwork industrialization and the machine-worshipers of the Lotus Guild. The skies are red as blood, the land is choked with toxic pollution, and the great spirit animals that once roamed its wilds have departed forever.

AN IMPOSSIBLE QUEST
The hunters of Shima's imperial court are charged by their Shōgun to capture a thunder tiger – a legendary creature, half-eagle, half-tiger. But any fool knows the beasts have been extinct for more than a century, and the price of failing the Shōgun is death.

A HIDDEN GIFT
Yukiko is a child of the Fox clan, possessed of a talent that if discovered, would see her executed by the Lotus Guild. Accompanying her father on the Shōgun’s hunt, she finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in Shima’s last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled thunder tiger for company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved his life, all she knows for certain is he’d rather see her dead than help her.

But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.

First Sentence: "As the iron war club scythed toward her head, Yukiko couldn't help wishing she'd listened to her father."

Review:
Holy epicness Batman. Stormdancer is, perhaps, the most talked about book of this summer, and, having now finished, I can tell you that all of that anticipation and expectation is well-deserved. However, Stormdancer is also not what I was expecting. Not at ALL. Partly, this was my fault, but partly this was because of the way books are marketed.

What I didn't find in Stormdancer was the sort of Joss Whedon-esque humor that I was anticipating from communicating with Jay on Twitter and Goodreads. There is humor of a sort, but that's not a driving force by any means. That was my incorrect expectation. I was also expecting, from the way this book was marketed, a young adult dystopia about Yukiko. Well, sorry, guys, but that's not what this book is.

Jay Kristoff actually wrote an incredibly insightful post that got me thinking about the distinctions between young adult fiction and adult fiction, and how, much of the time, the lines are entirely arbitrary. In fact, there have been several books recently that I never would have guessed were 'young adult, and this most definitely falls into that category. I wonder whether some readers will be disappointed and dislike this book because it's so unlike most of the other novels published under that unclear heading.

Although Yukiko is undoubtedly the heroine of our piece, Stormdancer is definitively not just about her. Told in third person, the narrative does not even follow her alone. Many important characters left their teens behind years before. This book does not tackle issues that face a teenage girl. The scope of Stormdancer is broad, and I think that, were this not a dystopia and were YA not so popular, this book would be marketed as epic fantasy, where I personally feel it belongs (if we feel the need to push labels onto our books).

Moving on from that rant, let's actually talk about Stormdancer. You may have noticed that this book (or at least the ARC version) is but 313 pages. Don't let this fool you. Stormdancer is not a short book. The ARC is larger than a traditional trade paperback, the font is not large, and the margins are small. Published in an ordinary fashion, Stormdancer would probably be somewhere from 500-700 pages. If published the same way Divergent was, it would be IMMENSE.

All of those words to read are not a struggle, though, or were not for me. Jay Kristoff can write. His language is ornate and complex, with some of the best diction I've seen from a modern writer, yet all quite natural. Seriously, this man is a genius.

The best part of the book, most definitely, is the world building. Jay Kristoff has built a truly epic world, a steampunk Japan full of demons and fantastic creatures. A young, merciless shogun, Yoritomo, rules as tyrant over Shima, allowing the country to fall to ruin. In this steampunk world, machines run on lotus (think opium...only with the ability to power machinery and to pollute the environment). The mass of the populace is dying from the lotus, breathing the smoke of the polluted air into their lungs. Shima's soldiers (Iron Samurai) and priests (The Guild) are encased in metalwork, safe from the environment.

Set within this dying world, addicted, one way or another, to lotus, Masaru, Yoritomo's master hunter, receives orders to capture and deliver to the shogun an arashitora, a thunder tiger (half eagle, half tiger, as seen on the cover). Though they are believed to be extinct, Masaru and his crew, including Yukiko, set out on the fruitless search. What could, in a lesser book, be the whole of the first volume, this quest takes only the first third or so of the novel. Once they find the arashitora, Buruu, that is when the book really (pardon the pun...or, actually, don't) took off.

At first, I was appreciating the language and the mastery of the world building, but I wasn't particularly involved yet. This is a big part of why I would call this epic fantasy: good epic fantasy takes some time, because there's so much that has to be set up since the world is so different. Once Yukiko and Buruu began to bond, I really became attached to their characters and caught up in their fates. Yukiko is, as the cover promises, a BADASS, with the all-caps completely necessary to convey the degree of her ability to be awesome. However, Buruu totally stole the show from her, I thought. He is definitely my favorite character, because he's funny and loyal and A FRACKING THUNDER TIGER! It does not get more hardcore than that.

The other characters are also fascinating, interesting in how unclear they are. I really don't know how to feel about most of them, unable to figure out whether they're trustworthy or not. Pretty much by the time you figure that out, it's too late. This is not a world where good and evil are always bathed in black and white, and both are generally bathed in red, either from blood or from lotus.

So yeah, Stormdancer is just as crazy cool and full of action and steampunkery (like chainkatanas...think chainsaw + katana and accept the fact that Kay Kristoff is better than you) as you could possibly want. I advise you not to get to hung up on what Stormdancer is, and just to sit back and enjoy the ride through the storms.

Favorite Quote...er, Scene: 

"'You forget where you are, Yukiko-chan,' Daichi waved his hand across the vista. 'The haunted valleys of the Iishi Mountains. Demons are as real as the trees or the sky to the children who grow up here.'
   'Then why do you stay?'
   'Long shadows. Dark nights. As far from the Shogun's throne as a man can be, and a thousand and one myths to keep superstitious eyes away.'
   'I thought oni were just that.' Yukiko looked at her hand, curling and uncurling her fingers. 'Stories to frighten the simple and the young.'
   'I am afraid not.'
   'Where do they come from?'
   Daichi blinked, as if he didn't quite understand the question.
   'From Yomi, of course.'
   'Yomi?' Her voice fairly dripped skepticism. 'The deepest hell?'
   'Hai.' His reply was flat. Iron. 'The deepest hell.'
   'But the old tales...' Yukiko shook her head. 'Even is they're true, the gate to Yomi was sealed shut. And the stormdancer Tora Takehiko gave his life to see that it would remain forever closed. My father used to tell us that story all the time.'
   'It was a great sacrifice,' Daichi nodded. 'But the cracks are big enough for the little ones to slip through.'
   'Cracks?'
   'The great boulder that the Maker God pushed into place over the Devil Gate is only stone. Stone breaks under enough force. Enough hate.'
   'So it's all true? The old stories? The myths my father told us at bedtime?'
   Daichi tilted his head and frowned, motioned toward Buruu.
   'You walked into this village with a thunder tiger beside you. You have slain demons with your own hands. Are the old myths really that hard to believe?
   'They wouldn't be myths otherwise, would they?'
   'Then have a care, Yukiko-chan,' Daichi smiled. 'Keeping the company of the last arashitora in Shima sounds like an excellent way to become a myth yourself.'

"To resist is to piss in the wind
Anyone who does will end up smelling
Knowing this, why do I defy?
Because my inner voice is yelling
There is a fist pressing against
Anyone who thinks something compelling
Our intuit we're taught to deny
And our soul we're told is for selling

Get out from under them
Resist and multiply
Get out from under precipice and see the sky
Get out from under them
Resist, unlearn, defy
Get out from under precipice and see the sky"