The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

Zen Cho
Completed 2/21/2022, Reviewed 2/21/2022
3 stars

This is a wuxia novella, that is, it features superhuman martial arts, that takes place in a mythic Asian country and features characters on the margins of society.  But it is a light story with bandits playfully bickering over what to do with a young nun of the titular Order and a trove of sacred artifacts.  Unfortunately, I found the lightness of the story powerless to draw me into it, and the bickering just felt annoying rather than comical.  Still, the prose is nice and the worldbuilding is decent.  It was nominated for a 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Sci Fi/Fantasy/Horror as well as Locus and British Fantasy Awards for Best Novella.

The story begins in a coffeehouse where a customer accuses the waitress of casting a spell on him.  As soon as it becomes violent, a stranger, Tet Sang, steps in and saves the day.  The waitress, Guet Imm, turns out to be a young nun from the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water and from a temple that has been attacked and burned to the ground.  Feeling she owes a debt to the man that saved her, she finds Tet Sang living among a group of bandits and convinces them to keep her on.  While with them, she realizes they are trying to sell stolen sacred artifacts from her order.  But there’s something else.  Tet Sang has a few secrets of his own.

I hard a really hard time getting into this novel.  The opening sequence is intense, but then almost everything after that seemed rather dull.  There was the constant bickering over whether Guet Imm was bringing good or bad luck to the group of bandits.  I’m pretty sure it was meant to be somewhat comical, but I didn’t get the comedy part.  It just got on my nerves.  Every time something happened to the group, the bickering erupted.  I found myself losing focus in these parts, waiting for the plot to move along, or for scenes between Tet Sang and Guet Imm.

The scenes between the two main characters were probably the best part of the book.  Theirs is a strange relationship that doesn’t quite gel until secrets are discovered and revealed.  That play between the two helped develop those characters and their burgeoning love for each other.

I give this book three stars out of five.  For a book nominated for several awards, I found it weak and ultimately unsatisfying.  Despite being novella length, I found myself avoiding reading it, or putting it down every ten pages or so because it just didn’t grab me.  I give it three stars instead of two because the prose is decent, as is the world building.  And I did get into the banter between Tet Sang and Guet Imm.  I just wished there was more substance to the rest of the story.