Review: Warrior by Ellen Oh

Review: Warrior by Ellen Oh
Goodreads 
Release date: December 31st, 2013
Publisher: HarperTeen
Series: #2 in the Dragon King Chronicles
Source: e-galley
Rating: Flat characters, convenient plotting, and amateur "tell-not-show" writing make this an epic fantasy failure.



First an outcast, now a hero.

But her fight rages on.

Kira, the yellow-eyed demon slayer who fiercely protected her kingdom—and the crown prince—has been proclaimed the Dragon Musado of the prophecy. With the defeated the evil shaman.

But it wasn’t enough.

Hansong is in chaos. The Demon Lord’s minions have infiltrated the city, treason is brewing among the military ranks, and Kira is buried by the overwhelming loss of her parents. She’s also plagued by the annoying feelings that blossom whenever she’s around Jaewon. But she is determined that nothing will stop her from finding the second treasure needed to fulfill the Dragon King’s prophecy. Not even the army of half-breed demons hot on their trail. If only she could learn to trust others…

Her father always said one person can change the world. Will it be Kira?


Ugh. I wish there were another way to go about this, but the bottom line is that is book is terrible. It's flat, boring, un-engaging, and full of amateur writing. This series should be GREAT. It's fantastical ancient Korea! It has a bad-ass warrior girl and romance and a dragon and a prophecy! Why isn't this great? Well, sadly, it's not only not-great, but bad. It's not often I use that word to talk about a book in its entirety, but sadly I have to pull it out for Warrior. Bad. This is a bad book. It's badly written, plotted, and characterized, and I did not enjoy it on any level.

Basic plot overview: Kira is the cousin of the heir to the throne, small and useless Taejo, in a fantasy version of ancient Korea. She is a demon hunter/special snowflake/warrior with all the powers IN THE WORLD, including a healing tiger spirit, and she is the prophesied Dragon Musado who will SAVE US ALL for... reasons? I don't know? There's a demon invasion, and she'll stop it. Somehow. She has to collect the three Dragon King artifacts because... the prophecy says so. This will make her save the day because... the prophecy says so.



Can you tell I really hate plots that are driven by prophecies and not the characters? Kira goes on all the quests because the prophecy says. Because Brother Woojin says. Simply because. Well, she found the tidal stone, the  jewel that allows her to control water (MORE POWERS), in the last one, and this time she needs to find a dagger. Because the prophecy. She doesn't figure the steps out herself, mind; she just conveniently runs into a bunch of people who can tell her exactly how to accomplish the thing she needs to accomplish next.

I said this about Prophecy, but Warrior also reminds me of a really bad video game, in which you find the helpful character who then infodumps all the things and tells you what to do and where to go next. Level one: find the tidal stone! Kill X number of demons. Yay! You have found the lair of the Heavenly maidens! Now they will explain all the next levels to you in detail!

There's a rule they talk about ad nauseum in all writing classes: Show, don't tell. If you're ever confused about what that means, Oh's second book is a textbook example. Every single tiny thing is told to you. Even the action scenes are practically summarized. Not only is the prose awkward and stiff, but it's like everything is coming at you from a great distance.

Here is the part where I fling a bunch of examples at you and see if you understand my frustration. (Note: these quotes are taken from an advance, uncorrected proof. All quotes are [sic])

"He is just a boy! He cannot be king!" General Kim's voice was filled with anger and despair.

"But then where do we go?" Kira was frustrated and upset. 

The chief subsided, unhappy with the turn of events.

Kira was overwhelmed and moved by their gifts.


Stating the obvious.

The reader can figure these emotions out. They don't need to be stated! It makes already cardboard characters seem even flatter, because I'm not given the chance to feel what they feel. We're told of Kira's grief for her parents, who have even less personality than she does, but we're not shown it, and we don't feel it.

"The city's turned into a madhouse," Kwan said. "People are leaving Hansong because they don't feel safe anymore. And to make matters worse, more Guru soldiers are deserting and wreaking havoc."
"This is terrible news," Kira said.

WAY TO BE OVERCOME WITH EMOTION, KIRA. "This is terrible news." ARE YOU KIDDING? I HAVE MORE EMOTION TYPING UP THIS REVIEW THAN YOU DO FINDING OUT THAT YOUR HOME IS IN CHAOS.



"He's right, Oppa," she said looking up at her oldest brother.  "We don't have a choice."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he replied.
Kira shook her head. "No, Oppa, this is something I must do," she said.

They literally sit down and have a whole very boring conversation about all the treasures Kira must find because of reasons to save them from the bad guys because of... reasons? And for like twelve lines in a row, every one has a dialogue tag. It's annoying. Kira said, Brother Woojin assured, Kyoung cut in, Kwan asked. Kill the dialogue tags. Kill them all.



There's a mildly amusing scene where Kira has to dress up like a gisaeng in a hanbok and fancy makeup so she can flee the palace. It's the first time she shows any real personality, and those deadly but beautiful women were pretty fascinating. Their advantage came from being underestimated because they were female and pretty.

But it's also indicative of a serious flaw in the novel. Kira and company (Kira; her little cousin, Prince Taejo, who only exists so Kira can have a motivation to protect him; her elder brothers, Kwan and Kyoung, whose only personality traits seem to be wanting to protect Kira; Brother Woojin, who is a priest and therefore knows The Truth of The Prophecy And How to Fulfill It; Seung who... um, who even is he?; and lastly, the love interest, Jaewon, whose only discernible personality trait is that he gets really, stupidly seasick.) Anyways, Kira and company are always running into people who are super eager and happy to help them and never betray them and are always inconceivably boring.

More telling!

Kira gave him a deep, respectful bow from her waist. She was so proud of him.

Jaewon's face changed as intense grief overcame him.

Jaewon's face contorted with despair as it closed up.

Throughout the entire novel, Jaewon is competing in some sort of facial gymnastics.

She opened her arms and embraced him, letting him cry with wild abandon.

Wild abandon. Honestly. There's this weird juxtapositon of boring, flat prose and then BAM, a completely  melodramatic sentence, which just makes it seemed all the faker and less engaging. Wild abandon. Snort.

The two guardsmen who had gone after Jeong stopped in confusion. Just then, villagers poured from the center buildings and rushed forward. They attacked the guide first, ripping him apart as they gorged on their internal organs. The guards who tried to escape were also quickly surrounded and pulled off their horses.

 

What a thrilling action sequence. Did you feel like you were there? Didn't you enjoy all the details? Didn't you love the passionate way in which those gory, horrific sights were described? Couldn't you feel Kira's anguish and  horror at witnessing that?

What's that? You couldn't? Right. Because it wasn't there. It's never there. A second later, a major character gets his leg savaged. Do we hear screams of pain from him or Kira, who witnesses it? No. Do we see the blood? No. Do we even know which part of its body the demon used to savage him? NO! Teeth? Claws? Toenails? For all I know, these demons attack with their elbows! WE SEE NOTHING. Do we see the horses' eyes rolling, mouths frothing, hooves pawing restlessly against the snow? No. Instead:

Their horses were frightened and hard to control.

You are in the middle of a battle make me feel something anything please just one tiny emotion besides boredom and annoyance I am begging you

Kira was relieved to see (spoiler) but shocked to see that only two of their soldiers had survived.

I am blown away by the depths of your emotions, Kira. Truly. I can feel just how torn up you are about CONSTANTLY LEADING MEN TO THEIR VIOLENT DEATHS AND WATCHING THEM DIE OVER AND OVER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. People die and it has NO impact on the page. There is a core group of about seven characters, and various anonymous soldiers are always joining their ranks and helping them through the next obstacle on their bath to collect the MacGuffin treasures. These soldiers, of course, always all die awfully and then are replaced by more anonymous soldiers. The core seven? Totally fine and dandy, of course!

This book contains the driest action scenes I have ever read. The stakes are zero and the details are zero and they last about two paragraphs. Kira's freaking bathing scene is described more in depth, with all the evidence of Oh's evident research shoehorned in. "LOOK! In Ancient Korea women totally bathed in ginseng and honey and used this particular tool to scrub themselves and that particular isntrument to comb their hair and isn't this far more interesting than actually giving characters personality?"

The romance. Ughhhh. An actual note I made for myself during a sappy and ridiculous and cheesy moment was "angry noise in the back of my throat like a cat". Because that's the sound I made. It sort of made me want to die. Like watching two wooden dolls whose faces were being shoved together. I'm not even going to talk about the love triangle because we all have other things to do with our lives.

The comfortable friendship she'd had with him was now marred by a tension caused by her awareness of him as a man.

Kira is whatever the plot demands her to be in the moment. The most frustrating incident is when she's in the shadowy demon world place (let's not even talk about how narratively stupid and cheatery her "visions" of the demon lord are) and the only way to get out is to solve a riddle like it's the damn Ravenclaw common room. And this riddle? I had no damn clue what anybody was even talking about, but all of a sudden Kira is this fucking philosopher and excuse my language but the passage where she Confuciouses all over the place deserves all the fucking expletives everywhere. BECAUSE WHAT. You cannot just SUDDENLY become fucking Plato with no buildup!

Nothing that happens has any impact. One character gets impaled through the stomach and then apparently heals during the following conversation.

I don't even know what else to say. The plot is SO predictable and convenient and boring. The final "battle" is LAUGHABLE in its brevity. Oh managed to make a freaking dragon boring. I don't even know.

I'll finish this off with a gifset that speaks to my soul: