Book Review: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
An author must know when to put the pen down.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. Narrated by Natalie Naudus. HarperAudio, 2022. 15 hours (approx.).
Daughter of the Moon Goddess is Sue Lynn Tan’s debut novel and the first of a duology. It is based on a Chinese myth in which a woman, Chang'e, drinks an elixir and flies to the moon where she becomes a goddess.
The novel picks up the story there, reimagining Chang’e’s residency on the moon as imprisonment, indeed, a punishment by the gods for having allegedly stolen their elixir. Unbeknownst to the gods, she is pregnant with Xingyin.
Xingyin is a secret. When she is almost discovered, she is forced to flee the moon but vows to return and set her mother free.
This is a fantasy set in fantastic locales like Chang’e’s moon palace and, later, an underwater kingdom. Tan’s descriptions of these places, as well as other details, are exceptionally well done. The world of the gods is beautiful and brought to life by Tan’s floral prose. Sensory details are particularly appreciated, such as the scent of the cinnamon wood furniture. At times it’s a bit heavy handed: we need not know the “velvety” texture of every soup Xingyin eats.
But world building is a tricky thing. There is information the reader - a stranger in this land - needs to know. Tan handles this with considerably less dexterity than her descriptions. There are horrendous examples of expositional dialogue serving as info dumps. Some of them go on for an entire paragraph.
One example comes near the end of part two. The kidnapped Prince Liwei tells his captor, a flower goddess, “You were one of the greatest immortals of our kingdom until you chose to live in seclusion.” The villainess in question surely knows her own biography. This dialogue is there for the benefit of the reader.
After her flight from the moon, Xingyin becomes the companion of Prince Liwei. Part one of the novel primarily details their budding romantic relationship. Xingyin also studies magic and fighting. She becomes “first archer” in the celestial army.
Xingyin also learns of the crimson lion talisman, a MacGuffin awarded to an exceptional soldier that also comes with a favor granted by the emperor. Part two concerns itself with a variety of military campaigns that Xingyin embarks upon. She at last earns the talisman by rescuing Prince Liwei from the aforementioned flower goddess.
The fighting is well written, although Tan is no Robert E. Howard (but who is?). However, after the defeat of the flower goddess, the cave in which she made her lair falls in on itself. Well, of course, it does. Why wouldn’t it? RPG cliche #86 Wait! That was a load-bearing boss! tells us:
Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.
Anway, there is a presentation ceremony where Xingyin receives her MacGuffin, reveals her identity as daughter of the moon goddess and requests the emperor grant her mother a full pardon.
The emperor agrees. Everyone cheers and there is a big party. The end.
Well, that’s where it should have ended. Unfortunately, Tan didn’t know when to put the pen down, and the resulting part three is the worst train wreck I’ve seen outside of Ohio.
It begins with a cliche: drunk jerks get their comeuppance. This trope is so overused it needs to go away. Moreover, Tan adds an additional wrinkle. Xingyin is forbidden to use magic, yet she does use it in this scene. One would expect this insubordination to come back and bite her. But it never happens. A scene’s purpose is to serve the narrative, but Tan uses this one to indulge in revenge fantasy.
The cliches keep coming. The ultimate villain reveals his secret machinations, and it is convoluted and depends upon Xingyin making a number of specific decisions. What if she didn’t make those decisions? What if she never left the moon? It is another RPG cliche, #168 Way to go, Serge:
It will eventually turn out that, for a minimum of the first sixty percent of the game, you were actually being manipulated by the forces of evil into doing their sinister bidding for them. In extreme cases this may go as high as 90%. The clear implication is that it would have been better to not get involved in the first place.
Not to have gotten involved in the first place, indeed!
Part three is also teeming with bad dialogue and two-dimensional characters. The worst offender of both is the emperor. His plot to control the dragons being thwarted, he reacts as a petulant child might: “His fist slammed the arm rest of his throne. ‘The dragons belong under my rule. They should submit to my authority!’” Bad dialogue and weak character motivation.
Was author Sue Lynn Tan up against a deadline and so slapped together part three of her novel? I hope so. She showed in parts one and two that she is capable of writing a good fantasy. Maybe the sequel, Heart of the Sun Warrior, is better. Personally, I’ll wait for a few more titles to drop before giving Tan a second chance. By then she will have either smoothed out the kinks or proven herself decidedly incompetent.