
You know that trite little saying about what happens when you assume...yeah, spot on. Lemme say it loud “I was wrong.” Ok, I still think that ‘Silver Phoenix’ needed to include more detail about Zhong Ye and Silver Phoenix’s to make their relationship feel emotionally real in the context of that book. However, the sequel, ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ is so much more than a weak spin off, add on. It is so fun and satisfying that I can’t imagine it not existing.
‘Fury of the Phoenix’ has two parallel storylines. Ai Ling hurries to board the ship Chen Yong is taking to Jiang Dao because she had a dream he’s in danger. And when I say hurries to board, I mean she engages a fisherman with the seafaring equivalent of ‘follow that taxi’, jumps from one vessel to another and grapples her way up the side of the deck. And just like in ‘Silver Phoenix’ Pon gives us a heroine who is determined, but at the same time is rather daunted by her task, as many of us would be if we had to jump from a boat and climb up the curved side of an effing, great ship, while it is moving:
‘With trembling arms, Ai Ling took agonizingly slow steps upward. The ship rocked across the sea, riding over a large wave so its bow slanted to the heavens. Ai Ling was flung backward and dangled helplessly, the sky filling her vision, then was bashed back into the ship’s side. Unable to breathe, she squatted like a bruised toad against the ship as it slammed down, and the water surged up to meet her. Focus. One hand over the other, then shuffling with her feet. The rough rope bit into her slick palms. The crew would disperse soon. She began to shake with the effort and bit her lip hard. She would get on board this ship or die trying.’
Realistic heroics are my favourite kind.
Ai Ling is swiftly found aboard. Actually she’s found rather too fast, which feels abrupt. The author needs to get Ai Ling into a particular situation quickly, so she has her discovered by chance as soon as Ai Ling boards the ship. This sudden discovery undermines the tension of the whole boarding episode, as that scene set the reader up to become invested in the drama of Ai Ling’s attempt to aid Chen Yong secretly and then ends the tension so hastily.
When Ai Ling is found so quickly by a crew member and taken to the Captain without much drama, the boarding scene feels like wasted effort, like Ai Ling has already failed so soon after spending so much time stealthily getting on the ship. I was left feeling a little flat and a tad resentful that Pon hadn’t found a more natural feeling way to get her heroine where she needed to be for the plot to continue.
However, after Ai Ling is found, her storyline becomes so quietly fascinating. Her travels this time are much less monster filled and dangerous than they were in ‘Silver Phoenix’, although Pon still includes one very cool shipboard battle with some Sea Shifters. Instead Ai Ling spends time training in a martial art called shuen, dealing with her feelings for Chen Yong and making new friends on the ship. And all this is taking part on a ship, which is fabulous. Ship board is a setting that means characters can’t escape from one another so resentments, or loving feelings inescapably bubble to the surface leading to a big emotional payoff for a reader like me. And all the time that Ai Ling is engaged in this almost commonplace, but fascinating ship life she has the feeling that there are memories in her head that aren’t her own, but she doesn’t quite know what to do about them. Pon weaves contemporary and fantasy together without one element taking over the book. By balancing the dynamic, fantasy conflicts and more active plot points with more scenes of quieter downtime, she creates a novel that feels much more comfortable in its pacing, world building and structure than ‘Silver Phoenix’, which was at times so enthusiastic to show off fantastical ideas that it neglected the basic underpinnings of its story.
As Ai Ling struggles with strange memories aboard ship the novel also follow a second historical storyline. The second storyline shows Zhong Ye, the villainous necromancer from ‘Silver Phoenix’ as a nineteen year old eunuch, who wants to increase his standing with the Emperor. To do so he must find a courtesan who can give the Emperor another son. He selects the young Mai Ling, whose lady in waiting is the beautiful former song girl (prostitute) Silver Phoenix. Slowly, as Zhong Ye advances Mai Ling’s interests, he and Silver Phoenix fall in love. Their growing affection for each other is tender and believable. Oh, how I wanted them to be happy, but sadly I already knew how their lives turn out because I’d read ‘Silver Phoneix’.
The real proof of Pon’s skill is that she almost makes the reader forget about the fate of these two lovers. She situates the reader so firmly in the present, by concentrating on humanising both her characters and focusing the reader on their feelings. It’s hard to feel the connection between Zhong Ye, the evil, obsessed character in ‘Silver Phoenix’ and the Zhong Ye of the sequel, because they’re so different and this Zhong Ye is such a simple, yet engaging character. The third person narrative supplies a high level of detail character detail, by describing his past, his ambitions, his feelings and by showing him interacting with characters in a personal way:
‘He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingertips. “I never made a good farm boy.” She smiled, but he suddenly couldn’t return it. He had meant it in jest, but it was a poor joke. His throat closed and he glanced away.
“What’s wrong?”
“I ran away when I was eleven years. Worked, studied, apprenticed, became a palace eunuch.” He waved a hand. “All of this. So I could become better than a farmer and give my mother what she deserved in life.”
“You’re a filial son,” she said.
“Am I? Perhaps what they needed more was for me to be there to plow the fields.” He tried to picture his mother’s face. “I send coin back each month, but not letters. No one can read them.” He could remember only his mother’s eyes, light brown as a walnut shell. “I just wanted to escape. I haven’t seen them in seven years.”
Silver Phoenix bent over him, cupping his face with a cool hand. “We have each other now.” '
The humanisation of Zhong Ye’s character makes it easy for the reader to like him and later when that feeling has been comprimised by his misdeeds, to empathise with him.
That’s not to say that Zhong Ye is a tragic innocent, brought down by circumstances. He’s interested in status; in fact that’s why he became a eunuch (although his greedy interest in status is tempered by the fact that he sends money to his poor family). His desire to rise higher brings him into contact with a foreign alchemist who claims he can grant the Emperor immortal life and this contact sets Zhong Ye on to the evil path that leads to his fate in ‘Silver Phoneix’.
What is so interesting about Zhong Ye’s fall is that even as he loses his soul and becomes a bad person who will kill to extend his own life, his character never degenerates into a monster. Pon could have to make it easy for her readers to hate Zhong Ye, as she does in ‘Silver Phoenix’, but Pon keeps the reader focused on the positive aspects of his personality. His love for Silver Phoenix continues to exist in a pure form and it’s hard not to sympathise with him through his troubles, although it’s obvious that he is being corrupted by alchemy, power and self-interest.
Personally I prefer ‘Fury of the Phoenix’, to ‘Silver Phoenix’ because it feels much more assured, like a second novel by a writer who has really worked on improving their craft. I’m especially glad that I think the repeated word use that I found so annoying in ‘Silver Phoenix’ has disappeared. Pon makes the more complex dual storyline format work for her novel, when it’s a hard structure to get right. Neither of the storylines is ‘the dull one’ that readers will flip through to get to the one that is more interesting and the switches between stories felt like they came at the right point without leaving huge cliff hangers, or unnatural shifts. There are still some odd plotting blips in this book that seem to rely on the reader to unnecessarily suspend their disbelief, when reasoned plot development could have been included to make these moments seem more organically created, for example Ai Ling knows just where to find something of Zhong Ye’s at the end of the book without being told where it was.
‘Fury of the Phoenix’ could be described as a more conventional book than ‘Silver Phoenix’, with its romance and its dual plot line. Sure it has a heroine who battles demons, gets possessed and makes a trip into the underworld (which is vividly described and I can still see images like ‘the wide river of molton lava’ and ‘the warren of endless catacombs, a wasp’s nest hewn from rock.’ in my minds eye) which seem to argue against it being conventional. However, compared to ‘Silver Phoenix’ which is so focused on Ai Ling’s physical and emotional journey the concentration on romance in ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ seems traditional and less subversive than a story of a girl stabbing monsters. I feel obliged to explain that it still doesn’t feel traditional at all when you’re reading it, it’s just more quietly subversive than ‘Silver Phoenix’. We still see Ai Ling eating and solidly doing what needs to be done while being aware of the dangers she faces, it’s just that she’s in love while she gets on with the rest of her life. And there’s this respect between both members of each couples, as well as a joy in their partners when they eventually get together that is charming to see, for example when Zhong Ye walks on his hands around Silver Phoenix. Sensible, secure love doesn’t sound very exciting, but somehow these two couples make it just as interesting to watch as an tortured relationship. Likewise being compassionate to your enemy doesn’t sound as exciting as vanquishing them with balls of fire, but the part where Ai Ling meets Zhong Ye again is full of intriguing emotions:
‘ “The demons are keeping score,” he said with a wry smile, not bothering to glance up. “I’m losing.”
He was glad to see her, she could sense his pleasure. It only terrified her more.’
I’ll leave you with that and a recommendation to read both ‘Silver Phoenix’ and ‘Fury of the Phoenix’ close together, so that you can see the comparison between the special powers of both books.
Other Reviews
Reading in Color
Tags: