Forest of a Thousand Lanterns Review

Ebook, 377 Pages
Dark Fantasy/ YA/ Retellings
By: Julie C. Dao

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“I believe our lives have already been decided, and it is our purpose to make the choices that lead us to that fate.”

🌟 I have taken the decision to read and not read this book multiple times. I am a big fan  of Dark Fantasy but most of my friends said that it was mediocre/ Meh. I finally decided to give it a chance since book 2 is out now.

🌟 The book started very good. It also had a prophecy which is my favorite trope and seeing how things fall in place to make a prophecy come true is always a something that puts me in awe. Mix that with good writing and it is a recipe for a great book. But there were some things that dampened this excitement.

🌟 Xifeng apparently  starts as a poor weak girl and to see her transformation was great. But sometimes she didn’t know what she wanted to achieve and she had like multiple personalities, I think the author intended it to be that way. I also loved the Empress, I like a good character who knows what’s happening around her and who isn’t oblivious. But I can’t say that I was a fan of the rest of the characters!

🌟 I was warned that this had slow pacing and that was part of why I kept procrastinating it till the right time and I was finally in the mood to read something slow but it was even slower than expected, the middle part was a bit boring and I am not surprised that many readers DNFed at that point.

🌟 This is a retelling of the Evil Queen with Asian setting which means there is not much plot twists and it is a character driven story. The world building was average and I felt that I needed to know more about the fantasy settings and rules.

🌟 Summary: A slow-paced, dark fantasy book with a morally grey characters. It had defects almost in all aspects but still was addicting enough to finish it and consider reading book 2. I recommend this to fans of Asian settings and Dark fantasy! I ended up giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars!

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