Fox and Phoenix
The Long City series, Book 1
Beth Bernobich
Viking Books for Young Readers
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A year ago, the former street boy Kai Zou lived an adventure worthy of a fairy tale, helping the princess of Long City achieve her heart's desire and becoming her lifelong friend. After a series of adventures and the solving of three impossible riddles, she was able to leave home to study at the prestigious university in the Phoenix Empire, while he and his street rat friends were handsomely rewarded... but that was a year ago, and life after a fairy tale isn't at all what Kai had expected or hoped. His friends have grown into their own lives, their gang nothing but a memory, while he struggles with his studies in his mother's magic shop alongside Yun, the girl he once thought might become more than a friend but who seems to be drifting away from him. Yes, he has his reward money still and the honorary title of Prince of the Streets of Long City, but what does it even mean when he feels left behind by everyone and everything?
When word spreads of the king falling deathly ill, a wary sense of foreboding falls over the city and Kai. Why has the princess not returned from the university? What sickness could evade the best healers in the kingdom? Does it have anything to do with the web of courtly plots and intrigues that grow thick as smoke around the palace? Then Kai's mother disappears, and the king of the city's ghost dragons charges the boy with traveling to the Phoenix Empire himself to fetch back the princess. If he fails, not only will he have failed Long City, but the whole of the Seventy Kingdoms may succumb to a dark and terrible fate...
REVIEW: Another audiobook to kill time at work, this one intrigued me with its mix of magic and high technology; not only does everyone have spirit animal companions, but magic flux is used to power all sorts of gizmos and gadgets, everything from silk viewing screens broadcasting news and entertainment to computers and mobile phones and even enhanced mechanical eyes in the city's royal guards, creating a world reminiscent of our own but with many fantastic twists. Within this world, Kai finds himself adrift, caught between the adventures of his youth and the expectations and confusion of adulthood. He keeps longing for the comfort of yesterday, when he knew who his friends were and where he belonged and didn't have a care in the world, even as he knows that he can't go back, for all that he can't seem to figure out how to move forward. Being shoved into another adventure forces him to do some growing up, especially when he picks up unexpected companions in the form of an undead griffin from his mother's magic shop and Yun, whom he attempted to leave behind but who tracks him down on the road... just in time for more trouble to catch up with them, letting them know that there's a lot more at stake here than just finding a wayward princess. The plot moves fairly well with a nice character mix, Kai experiencing breakthroughs and setbacks both in the main quest and his own growth as he learns to see the world and his companions for what and who they actually are rather than the ideas of them he'd formed in childhood. There's fun and danger and some fledgling romance, building to a nice (if mildly abrupt) climax that leaves the door open for future installments. The whole makes an enjoyable tale.
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