Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix is a YA story based on Chinese legends/myths/superstitions... You'd probably label it fantasy, if you've not grown up on Chinese legends/myths/superstitions... =) I really wanted to read it, because I thought the cover was fab! I also wanted to read it, to find out if I still remembered the stories from my childhood...Well, let's start by saying the stories I remember, are not the same stories included here. Ok, with that out of the way...
Ai Ling is seventeen, and has just been rejected by her betrothed. Now her father has gone missing, and her mother is running out of money. When a dirty old lecher proposes to marry Ai Ling to pay off her father's "debts", she runs away, deciding to find him and bring him home. Along the way, she finds that the scary things that go bump in the night are not necessarily confined to the moonlight hours. Not understanding why or how, she can see through their human guise. Which comes in very handy when they start hunting her down.
Silver Phoenix is chock-full of adventure, and a fast-paced read. I can see it in a Hayao Miyazaki movie, like Spirited Away, but with more-real-than-anime characters. =)
Check out this trailer:
Title: Silver Phoenix
Author: Cindy Pon
ISBN-10: 0061730211
ISBN-13: 978-0061730214
Hardcover: 338 pages
Publisher: Harper Teen, 2009
