Dragon Pearl

Dragon Pearl is an imaginative fusion of space opera and Korean mythology about a thirteen-year-old gumiho who leaves her planet to find her brother Jun???and clear his name after he's accused of deserting the Thousand Worlds Space Forces to pursue the powerful Dragon Pearl. I loved the premise of this book and thought it had some great elements, but it never quite came together as a whole for me. It bounced from situation to situation after Min left home, and there were too many characters with too little characterization for it to be an engrossing read. However, I suspect it will resonate more with middle grade age readers and those who enjoy plot-driven stories over character-driven ones.

My Rating: 5/10 ??? It's Okay

Full Review on My Website

I'm usually not much of a middle grade reader, so this book wouldn't have even been on my radar if my friend Dini had not recommended it to me for one of my 2020 yearly challenges, as well as it being chosen as a BOTM for our Stars and Sorcery book club. So, I was very excited to start this and have some fun, and that's exactly what happened.

Like any MG novel, this one too was very easy to read and I just breezed through it in a few hours. The writing style is pretty lighthearted despite some of the deeper themes being explored, it's very fast paced and everything happens so quickly that you never want to put the book down. The world building is also just perfect, giving us enough information about the different lands and star systems as well the government, without ever overwhelming with too much detail. As someone who is pretty new to the sci-fi genre, that's very important to me and I was happy that all the scientific terminology and elements didn't go over my head. And as always, one of my favorite parts of the book was how the author was able to integrate both Korean mythology and culture into the story and how seamless it was in context of the story. The representation is also quite amazing and very matter of fact, which is how it should be, and I just love that younger readers will get to read books with non-binary characters as well about the importance of using correct pronouns.

Min is such a delightful character to follow. She is a sweet girl who is a bit annoyed that she has to do so many chores at home and is bullied a bit by her aunts and cousins, but she also loves her family and will do anything to find her brother. The literal journey she goes on turns into a metaphorical one, with her finding herself, realizing what's important to her and thinking about her future. In the meantime, she uses her intelligence, resourcefulness, wit and magical abilities to get through many tricky situations and I was just cackling at most of her shenanigans. She is just thirteen, so she does do impulsive and reckless things but she also quickly accepts her mistakes and figures out how to do better.

This journey is also about her making new friends outside of her family and it was nice to see her form such important relationships and planing trust in others. Both Sujin and Haneul are fun to be around and I loved the camaraderie between them. Even the characters we assume are bad guys are written with nuance and there is always hope for redemption.

In the end, this is a fun space adventure with characters you fall in love with and root for, and a world that you want to explore more of. But ultimately, it's also just about friendship, family and having hope. If you love middle grade adventure novels or space operas, I think you'll love this one. It's also a Nebula award nominee for this year, so its a perfect choice if you enjoy reading highly acclaimed books.

Although I've loved all the other Rick Riordan Presents books, I was a little skeptical about this one because the premise seemed like A Lot?? Like I'm here for Korean trickster fox spirits, and I'm here for space opera, but both of them combined seemed like....a lot?? But it actually all worked together really well, and that will teach ME a lesson about doubting Rick Riordan's empire.

It's a really fun story and a great example of how easy it can be to make a story inclusive! (eg in the space army, everyone's nametags have gender pronoun identifiers, making it simple and easy for the narrator to identify the nonbinary characters).