Book Review of A Mortal Song
Sponsored by The Fantastic
Flying Book Club
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BOOK DETAILS
Genre: Young Adult,
Contemporary, Fantasy
Synopsis:
Sora's
life was full of magic—until she discovered it was all a lie.
Heir
to Mt. Fuji's spirit kingdom, Sora yearns to finally take on the sacred kami
duties. But just as she confronts her parents to make a plea, a ghostly army
invades the mountain. Barely escaping with her life, Sora follows her mother's
last instructions to a heart-wrenching discovery: she is a human changeling,
raised as a decoy while her parents' true daughter remained safe but unaware in
modern-day Tokyo. Her powers were only borrowed, never her own. Now, with the
world's natural cycles falling into chaos and the ghosts plotting an even more
deadly assault, it falls on her to train the unprepared kami princess.
As
Sora struggles with her emerging human weaknesses and the draw of an
unanticipated ally with secrets of his own, she vows to keep fighting for her
loved ones and the world they once protected. But for one mortal girl to make a
difference in this desperate war between the spirits, she may have to give up
the only home she's ever known.
BOOK LINKS:
Barnes & Noble (B&N): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-mortal-song-megan-crewe/1124297644?ean=9780993980695
BOOK PLAYLIST:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Like many authors, Megan Crewe finds writing about herself much
more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts: she lives in
Toronto, Canada with her husband and son (and does on occasion say
"eh"), she tutors children and teens with special needs, and she's
spent the last six years studying kung fu, so you should probably be nice to
her. She has been making up stories about magic and spirits and other what ifs
since before she knew how to write words on paper. These days the stories are
just a lot longer.
Megan's first novel, GIVE UP THE GHOST, was shortlisted for the
Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her second, THE WAY WE
FALL, was nominated for the White Pine Award and made the International Reading
Association Young Adults' Choices List. Her Fallen World trilogy (THE WAY WE
FALL, THE LIVES WE LOST, THE WORLDS WE MAKE) is now complete and she has a new
trilogy forthcoming in October 2014, beginning with EARTH & SKY. Her books
have been published in translation in several countries around the world. She
has also published short stories in magazines such as On Spec and Brutarian
Quarterly.
AUTHOR LINKS:
GIVEAWAY:
A Huge Japan-Themed prize:
The
prize includes all of the following Japanese media and treats (all books in
English translation and all DVDs with English subtitles):
Books: Moribito:
Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi and Death Note Vol. 1 by
Tsugumi Ohba
Anime series (DVD,
complete collections): Cowboy Bebop and Princess Tutu
Anime movies (DVD): Grave
of the Fireflies and Princess Mononoke
Live action movies (DVD): Battle Royale and Hana and
Alice
3-month Japanese snack box subscription: WOWBOX (your choice of type)
A Mortal Song excerpt
Chapter 3
I slept first while Takeo kept watch,
both of us holding several birch bark ofuda in our sleeves. Or at least, I
tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw the mass of ghosts surging down the
hallway and the guard I’d watched falling under their knives in my parents’
room. His form shifted into Mother’s, Father’s, their lips pressed tight to
keep from crying out as the blades stabbed them again and again.
They would be that stoic. They
wouldn’t want to give their captors the slightest bit of satisfaction while
they bled and healed, bled and healed, feeling their energy ebbing, waiting for
rescue.
When it was my watch, I stalked the
edges of the clearing, fingering the rough edges of my ofuda. The scattered
stars cast too faint a light to penetrate the forest’s shadows, but a ghost’s
ki should glow brightly enough that I’d be able to spot it in the darkness if
one came near.
Dawn was just touching the horizon
when thin wings whirred by my ear. I glanced up, and my heart leapt. A metallic
green dragonfly was hovering in front of me, her multifaceted eyes fixed on
mine.
“Midori!” I said. “You got away! Did
anyone escape with you? How did you find us?”
Midori extended a tendril of ki to
me, and images flitted through my mind. I got the impression she had darted
beneath the swing of a sword and through a gap in a net, and then bolted down
the mountain. In one flash I glimpsed two figures racing ahead in the distance,
the shimmer of ki making them briefly visible through the trees. Takeo and me.
That particular image came with a trickle of relief at finding she wasn’t
alone.
She’d followed us—only her.
Was every other kami who’d been in
the palace for the celebration still trapped there?
I reached out to give Midori’s head a
gentle stroke of welcome, but she circled me and dropped onto my hair. She
tugged me as if urging me downward with an urgency that held none of her usual
playfulness. “What?” I whispered as I crouched behind a cluster of bamboo
plants. Her wings buzzed anxiously.
A moment later, twigs cracked under
stomping feet. Several paces from our clearing, a group of hunched figures
stalked through the forest in the faint dawn light. I squinted, trying to make
out their faces. My hand jerked to the sword I’d borrowed from Takeo.
The nearest creature was easily eight
feet tall, with bristly gray hair sprouting down its neck and across its
hulking shoulders. Two immense fangs jutted from its upper jaw over its chin.
The one just behind it was shorter and squat. Wide horns protruded from its
shaggy mane and five scarlet eyes scattered its forehead. Their companions were
similarly monstrous.
Ogres. I’d never seen them
before—they were too wary of Mt. Fuji’s power to set foot there—but I’d heard
enough tales. They might not be as powerful in their maliciousness as demons,
but they enjoyed causing what harm they could. They were certainly no friends
to the kami.
As I watched them pass, my spirits
sank. They were heading in the direction Takeo and I had come from, toward the mountain.
Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe they meant to join the demon and his
ghosts while the mountain’s guardians were incapacitated.
When the last of the ogres had
vanished from sight and hearing, I scrambled to Takeo’s side and grasped his
shoulder to wake him. As I described what I’d seen, he leapt up, hefting his
bow.
“They’re gone,” I said. “But I don’t
know if more will come.”
“They might,” he agreed. “We should
move now. I’ve rested enough.”
A smudge of dirt marked his cheek and
stray pine needles clung to his uniform, but he looked as dauntless as ever. I
squared my shoulders. At least I still had him.
Midori, my equally faithful
companion, settled onto her usual spot on the back of my head. As we ran, my
hair tumbled over my back. In the rising heat of the day, it stuck to the sweat
dampening my neck. My ceremonial robe dragged at my arms and legs. The strap of
my flute case dug into my shoulder, which had started to radiate a dull ache.
None of that would have affected me
if I had slipped into the ethereal state, but except to avoid human eyes when
crossing the highways, train tracks, and villages that broke the stretches of
wooded land, I was using all the energy I had for speed. If we encountered more
ogres or ghosts, I didn’t want to be as drained as I’d been last night. Even
now, after sleeping, the flow of ki through my body felt muted, like a stream
shrunk by dry weather. I thought of the mountain, of the warm thrum of its
embrace, and had to blink hard to keep tears from forming.
If Takeo noticed, he didn’t let on.
When he spoke, it was about Rin.
“What exactly have you heard about
this sage?”
“Mainly that her advice is always
difficult to follow,” I said, grateful for the distraction. “She used to let
humans know about her, and they would go looking to get her advice. But she
would just confuse them. She told a commander that the best time to strike was
when darkness fell, so that night he sent his army into battle—and they were
slaughtered. Because it turned out Sage Rin had meant they should take
advantage of the eclipse two days later.”
Takeo grimaced. “I remember that
story. We’ll have to hope she’s mellowed in her old age.”
Just after the sun had reached its
peak, we crossed the ridge of a low mountain and looked down into a narrow
valley. Below us, a waterfall burbled over pinkish-gray rock into a series of
egg-shaped pools, shaded by stands of bright green bamboo. A delicate floral
scent mixed with the crisp smell of cypress in the breeze. No roads cut through
the forest below us, and no roofs showed through the trees.
“The valley of the doves,” Takeo
said. “I don’t think we should draw too much attention to ourselves. We don’t
know what else might be lurking.”
I eyed the forest. “I suppose it
would make the most sense for Sage Rin to live near the bottom of the
valley—close to the water and sheltered from the weather.”
We hurried down the steep incline
into the thicker vegetation, grasping saplings and bushes to keep our balance.
Leaves hissed against my robe. When we reached the waterfall, we walked along
the slick stone around the pools. Seeing no sign of Rin or her home, we pushed
deeper into the valley. The mountains rising on either side blocked the
harshest of the sun’s rays, but the summer heat still hung over us. I was wiping
my forehead with my sleeve when a tiny object flew through the air and pattered
at my feet. Midori let out a spark of bemused consternation as a small face
with a shock of red hair disappeared amid the branches of a nearby beech tree.
“A nut,” I said, nudging the object
at my feet with my toes.
Takeo nodded. “Tree fairies like to
play, but they don’t mean any harm. They’re simple, friendly creatures.”
I was about to ask Takeo whether the
fairy might direct us to the sage when the ground beneath us shuddered. I
stumbled backward into a cedar. Takeo grabbed its trunk as the earth swayed,
shivered, and stilled.
“Just a small tremor,” he said.
A throat cleared behind us. “Small or
not, the cause is what tells,” said a rusty voice.
I flinched and spun around, my hand
dipping into my sleeve for my ofuda. My arm stilled when I saw the kami
standing on the log beside us.
The short, pot-bellied woman studying
us was so old that old hardly began to describe her. The sunlight seemed to
shine right through her colorless hair, and the lines on her face ran so deep
it was hard to make out which were wrinkles and which her mouth and nose. Her
shoulders were stooped within the thin robe she wore, which, though scuffed,
looked like silk. Shriveled toes clung to her leather sandals. She must have
been thousands of years old., but her dark eyes glittered with a vitality
completely at odds with her appearance, and the air around her rippled with ki.
I didn’t have to ask her name.
“Sage Rin,” I said, and bowed. “It’s
an honor.” The hem of my robe was splotched with dirt. I bowed lower, suddenly
wishing I’d at least been able to wash before meeting with this most respected
sage, obtuse or not. I couldn’t tell anymore, but I probably smelled. And not
of cherry blossoms.
Takeo bowed too, his tanned face
forming an expression of grave deference. When we straightened up, I knew which
line was Rin’s mouth. It was curved into a smirk.
“I can see your purpose well enough,”
she said, “though I hadn’t anticipated you arriving so soon.” She hopped down
from the log and started to shuffle away from us.
We followed her along a path we’d
missed, which wound tightly through the trees at the base of the slope. “Do you
know what’s happened?” I asked when I couldn’t take the silence any longer. “My
mother—Kasumi of Mt. Fuji—she told Takeo something about a prophecy and that
you would be able to help.”
“I know very much and very little,”
Rin said.
“But you know what we have to do to
save the mountain?” I said. “To rescue my parents, and everyone else?”
“Hmmm,” she replied. “Possibly you
have to do nothing at all.”
“But—” I caught myself, swallowing my
impatience. This was Rin the Obtuse. We’d be lucky to get a clear answer out of
her on her own terms.
She stopped at a huge cypress that
looked as though it might have been as old as she was, and tapped her knuckles
against the gnarled bark. A door swung open in the trunk.
Inside, the sage’s house looked like
a pavilion, round-walled and high-ceilinged, with winding wooden steps leading
up between its levels. Takeo and I padded after Rin to the second floor. There,
she motioned for us to sit. A ceramic teapot was already set on the low table
beside a single cup. The pot started to steam as she took another cup off a
shelf and squatted down across from us.
“First, it is you who must talk,” she
said. She poured the golden liquid into both cups, passing one to Takeo and
keeping one for herself. Takeo frowned. I didn’t understand why she’d neglected
me, but it was hard to be very bothered when we were so close to getting
answers.
“We’ve come from the palace on Mt.
Fuji,” I said. As I explained about the ghosts’ attack, the demon who
apparently led them, and the ogres that had passed us in the morning, Rin
sipped her tea.
“Ghosts and a demon,” she said when
I’d finished. “Not what I would have guessed. But my guesses are far less
accurate than my prophecies. And even a prophecy is far from fact.”
“Then the prophecy Her Highness
mentioned, it was yours?” Takeo said. “You foresaw this attack?”
“I will share with you the same words
I said to Kasumi and Hotaka years ago, after the vision came,” Rin said. “I
have seen a darkness that rises up over the mountain, engulfing it and nearly
devouring it.”
“The ghosts,” I murmured, remembering
the dark wave of them in the hall.
“So it would seem,” Rin said. “I knew
nothing other than it would be a force terrible enough to overwhelm even the
sacred mountain as never before. But that is only the beginning.” She fell back
into her reciting voice. “I have seen a powerful kami striking back against
that darkness and driving it away. A young woman, bearing the three
kami-blessed treasures of human imperial rule: the sword, the mirror, and the
jewel. And the girl herself was a marvel, with more power than I’ve ever seen,
air lifting her hair and fire in her eyes and water flowing through her
movements and earth holding her firm. A kami born of the elements combined.”
“Like Mother and Father.” My
grandparents on my mother’s side had affinities to air and water, and on my
father’s side to earth and fire. Which would have passed from my parents on to
me. Which meant that—
“So it is clear that a daughter of
Mt. Fuji’s current rulers will save it in its time of greatest need,” Rin
finished, folding her hands in her lap.
That had to be the reason they’d
tried so hard for a child. Why Mother had sent Takeo here with me. So that I
could make Rin’s vision come true.
“And that’s me,” I said, looking up
at her. I really was going to save them. It had already been decided.
“You think you speak the truth,” Rin
said, “when you know none of it?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “If
there’s more, please tell me.”
“You have no place in this at all,”
Rin replied, her wizened face implacable.
For a second, I could only blink at
her. “But... everything you mentioned,” I said. “Those are my parents. I am
their only child. How can the prophecy not be about me?”
“She is the daughter of Their
Highnesses Kasumi and Hotaka,” Takeo said. “I can attest to that. I’ve known
her since she was a child.”
“Yes,” Rin said. Her smirk returned.
“You’ve known this girl. But this girl is not a child of Mt. Fuji. She is not
even kami.”
Review:
Different mythos with interesting Japanese flair. Similar to an aname my daughter is watching.
I give this 4 out of 5 clouds.
I give this 4 out of 5 clouds.
This
product or book may have been distributed for review; this in no way affects my
opinions or reviews.
