Is It Worth Reading? Song of the Crimson Flower by Julie C Dao
September 12, 2020
"People make mistakes. Hearts get broken, but somehow we forget the pain. Or choose the chance of happiness in spite of the pain"
― Bao ―
Hello everyone! This is the chapter two of our "Is It worth reading?" series which i will rate the novellas from the certain series whether it's worth it to read or you can just skip it. Last chapter i talked about the novella from The Folk of The Air series, just in case you missed it, you can read my review by clicking the picture below.
So this Song of the Crimson Flower is the novella form The Forest of a Thousand Lantern and Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix duology, or they call it as the Rise of the Empress Series, which is a snow white retelling. I've review both of the book so you can check out my post for that.
Reading Order
As always, based on our "book bible" the Goodreads, this book is labeled as Song of the Crimson Flower (Rise of the Empress #2.5) and since the main works of this series is actually duology (consist of two books) so you can read this one after you finish reading the duology first.
What is it All About?
Just like it explained before about the timeline, the story set after Jade become the empress (please read my previous book so you won't miss a thing) but set not in the Imperial City, but in River Market to Gray City which is far from Imperial City.
The story start when Bao, an orphan, a physician apprentice got called to check out someone who got a bloodpox. Bloodpox is a deadly illness that hasn't have the cure and some said it's contagious, but that doesn't stop Bao to help, although there's nothing he could do to help. After that encounter, for a chance he might die by bloodpox also, he determined to confess his feeling to Lan, the Minister daugther who's always to treat him kindly unlike the other, but she's waiting for Tam (the physician son whom he work for) to choose their wedding date.
Knowing that Tam doesn't have same feeling to Lan, Bao confess that he's the one that plays song with flute every night for her, not Tam and how he feels about her. Feel embarrassed because Tam doesn't feel the same for her and got lied she refused him in cruel way.
Brokenhearted, Bao decided to leave the river market to find the river witch, ask her to erase his memory of Lan. Accidentally find the witch, the witch believe that he's not an orphan and curse him to take revenge.
In other side, Lan ashamed for what she has done to Bao, want to apologize, find his flute in the ship down the river, found out that Bao is cursed, she decided to help Bao to break the curse.
My Short Review
I
like the idea of the story, but i don't really like the main male
character Bao, because he kind of swimming in the pool of pitying
himself and hurt other people because they hurt him first. Lan for
example, just because she made a mistake once, doesn't mean that she can
be treated so badly over and over again
"I'm sick of apologizing. I'm sick of your insult and petty remarks, and i'm sick of you holding one mistake over my head for the rest of my life."
― Lan ―
But i like that Wei also taking part in this book which i would say become the scene-stealer in this book.
Is It Worth Reading?
For me, based on the number of pages (288 pages), this book can't be called as a novellas, but can be counted as a book. But since it's not based on the main character in the series also doesn't relate to the whole snow white retelling, this can be counted as a companion novel to the series.
1. Skip it : doesn't really related to the whole series, in meaning you can totally skip this one without feeling missing a puzzle from the series. Kind of waste your time to read it.
2. Neutral : Kind of related but kind of not. It depends on your perspective, you can either read it or skip it.
3. Read it : Totally a must to read this one, you might miss a piece of puzzle if you skip this one in whole series.
My Verdict
Skip it! You won't miss a thing by skipping this book in terms of is it related to the series or not.But it's a reading worthy tho. I really like the idea of the book, definitely recommend it to you to read (am i saying two different things right now to you? i hope you find the differences) you can read it although you haven't read the first two book too for me, but of course some of character from previous book will be mentioned but well... not that it really do with the plot. You got what i mean right?
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