I'm giving a go at reviewing more and wanted to start off a post series of book talks with one of my favourite authors, Richelle Mead and her book Soundless. This book is about a Chinese village atop of a mountain that is controlled by a town below them as they send up their food in return for the villagers' metals from their own mines. There is also no way of them getting down to the town that controls them as their food is sent up by a zip line. The story follows a girl called Fei who lives in this village of deaf people who communicate through sign language and her journey to find a cure for her sister Zhang and the rest of the villagers that are going blind and losing their ways of communicating.
I was super excited when I heard about this book as I've read all of the Vampire Academy books and the Bloodlines series by Richelle Mead (which is actually my second favourite book series). Also, considering that both these series have 6 books in them, it was amazing to hear that this book would be a stand-alone one. I had also never read a stand-alone fantasy-fiction book before this one. As you can tell, I had quite high expectations going into this book.
Fortunately, it didn't disappoint. I've read many bad reviews about this book and only a few very positive ones, but I'm clearing my mind of them and going straight in with my own views.
Firstly, what an amazing concept! I thought the idea of this was so original and different to anything I'd ever heard of and anything I'd ever read. It was so interesting to read it from this deaf characters experience and when she did begin to hear (not a spoiler, it literally says it on the back cover) the way she described the sounds were so unique and made me think about having the ability to hear. The fact that Fei was a type of artist was also nice, as it gave something more to her character and it was an interesting way of her describing things.
The Chinese folklore was very cool as well. A lot of people are saying that it's not accurate or isn't "realistic" at all, but I wasn't looking for accuracy in this fantasy book and as someone who's never read even any sort of folklore-type book, I don't feel like I can judge this factor fairly.
The few main characters (Fei, Zhang and Li Wei) in this book I enjoyed thoroughly as I thought they were clearly focused on and well built up, with a lot of character development from the protagonist, Fei. However, many other characters are introduced shortly, but you can tell the difference between the depth of the main characters and them as you didn't connect to them like you did with Fei and Li Wei and therefore didn't really connect to the village as a whole. I did enjoy Fei and Li Wei's relationship as I became connected to their stories and their progress, despite some of their super sappy moments.
Onto more of the setting of the book, I really enjoyed both the journey up and down the mountain as they were adventurous but not quick, so you did get as much detail as you could for them. The lower town bit wasn't my favourite though, as I thought there might be more action that Fei was involved with but it was really just a lot of "talking". Another factor which is probably the main criticism of this book is that it did lack in world-building. I felt that some areas didn't include a lot of descriptive detail, particularly about the village, and this could've been fixed as the book is less than 300 pages long. This didn't really take away from the excitement of the book as I read it though, it only made it a bit confusing when trying to imagine the setting.
Overall, the book was fun, interesting and a super fast read. I did get invested in it but maybe would've liked a longer book with more world-building or possibly a dual or multiple-perspective book so that you could hear from Zhang's point of view back in the village. It was a very enjoyable and certainly unique book though. I rate it at about 3.5 stars and urge fantasy readers to give it a try as it's a short read that is so different from any other book.
Love Imi xx
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