The Crystal Ribbon

3.5 Stars

Jing is first sold at 11 years old, at the insistence of her Aunt Mei, who I came to despise. She is sold as a bride to be to the Guo family for their 3 year old son, and it turns out he is quite nice to her, but everyone else in that family is horrible to her. One night during a ghost festival she learns that she can see and speak to jing, which are spirits that can be in animal or bug form, or... apparently any form in this book, later there is a tree form. I guess it is more accurate to say they reveal themselves to her, since her sister in law apparently heard one of the jing and freaked out. She endures most of her time there stoically, but when her sister in law accuses her of stealing, she is basically tortured. It was horrible, ugh!

Then she is sold again, poor girl, and this time she is 13. She is sold to a courtesan house. I felt really bad for her by now, tortured, separated from everyone she has come to love again, and she calls upon a jing for help, and escapes! She meets a jing from her previous household, and together they meet another traveler, and they end up saving a village and then Jing finds her way home. She does not get the happy welcome she wants, and her Aunt Mei is terrible. I am so glad I do not have to deal with this kind of shit.

I liked this book mostly, but however it is aimed towards a younger audience and I could definitely tell. There were a few times where the word lass was used instead of girl, and that was just odd to me, since it is based in medieval China, and I the thrown in Chinese words were hard to keep straight, so sometimes I had to pause to remember what a word was. I cant imagine as a 5th grader this being a particularly easy read. Another thing that kept me from really enjoying the book was in my doc there were supposed to be pictures at certain parts, but they were just little black boxes, or I think they were pictures, but since there was just a black box I don't know. This took me out of the element when Jing was “reading” her letter from her brother. Also, at the beginning of each chapter there was a big ugly white page that took up 3/4 of a page. This just annoyed me, because there were still a few lines under every one of these white pages.