“The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water” by Zen Cho

Main Index / Reviews Index / Fiction Reviews Index / 2020 Reviews Index

Rating: 3/5 Stars

A mild fantasy novel apparently set in Peninsula Malaysia, the story tells of a nun from the Order of the Pure Moon who decides to join up with a gang of bandits (who prefer to call themselves ‘roving contractors’) after a fight at a coffeehouse where she was working, when one of the bandits backs up her version of events that lead to the fight.

For much of the story, the fantasy elements remain muted but the characters, their banter, and the situations she and the gang end up in drive the story. But things start to change when the nun discovers what the bandits are trying to sell to a third party. When the sale goes sour due to her intervention, a different plan is proposed by her, and this is where the story starts to give out twists to the characters, revealing that some of the bandits are not what they may appear at first, and also that she may also have been more than just a nun in the Order and that it may have granted her more than the normal abilities to see and affect the world in the usual ways.

By the end of the story, more is revealed about her frightening powers and she has to make her own way in the world again, but she may not be going alone.

An interesting, light fantasy tale that starts off sounding like a tale of a misfit trying to fit into a group but ends up being another kind of story, revealing it to be a tale about relationships and different genders that feels quite normal in the context of the tale.

Book read from 2020/08/03 to 2020/08/07