Fiction / mystery / Asian Historical Fiction
Feiwel & Friends
April 20, 2021
ASIN : B08K752BR4
6117 KB
ISBN-10 : 1250229588
ISBN-13 : 978-1250229588
384 pages
Grade level 7 – 9 (and up)
5 Stars
I don’t remember why I downloaded this book, probably because it was a Korean historical fiction, with a YA designation which told me there wouldn’t be a lot of gratuitous blood, gore, or sex.
I was hooked on page one. Hwani Min is 15 and has been living with her aunt while her father is off solving mysteries (her mother died earlier), and then he disappears and becomes his own mystery. Aunt is old school and wants to marry Hwani off.
Hwani Min is very modern (for her time) and educated and wants to find her father, who is one of the greatest of all detectives in Joseon (Korea). She dresses as a boy, takes enough money to live on, and catches a boat to the village where her father disappeared, her younger sister is apprenticed to a Shaman, and where she was born and raised. It doesn’t take long before she is recognized. Due to the fact she is her father’s daughter, she is granted a certain amount of liberty to find her father and while she’s at it to find the person or persons unknown who has been stealing beautiful young girls from the forest, and why.
Of course, the mountain streams abound with red herrings. I did not figure it out until the very end, but it’s a mystery, and I do not try to figure out the who or the why. I like to be surprised.
This book reads like the first in a series, and I hope it is. The time and place is different, but it reminds me a bit of Laura Joh Rawlins books about the woman detective in feudal Japan, although there, she is married to a detective who delights in having his wife help him solve the mysteries.
This is the kind of book teens and parents can read and talk about. Different times, different culture, and while sad (the girls are stolen, after all), the ending works, beautifully. I shall look for more books by this author.
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