Monkey Around by Jadie Jang
JC Kang
Journey to the West meets Paternus meets The Greatest American Hero. Journey to the West is perhaps the forbearer of the xianxia genre, and its main character Sun Wukong is…
JC Kang
The Heretic Peacekeeper by Jeremy “Deathblade” Bai
“Blade Runner meets Cradle.” Falling under the umbrella of progression fantasy, the cultivation subgenre (also known as xianxia) has risen in popularity through Chinese webnovels. Centered around the concept of…
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Mulan meets Swordsman 2. As a mostly-audiobook consumer with little time to actually read, it had taken me two weeks to finish Nghi Vo’s short novella, Empress of Salt and…
Shadow and Bone: Netflix vs. the Books
The book isn’t better. With one huge caveat. Sucked in by the Grisha with their magical powers and vibrant worldbuilding equal to Game of Thrones, I binged Netflix’s adaptation of…
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
Frankenstein meets Hacker meets Solo meets Legend of Zelda, in an Asian family drama. Given my interest in Asian-themed fantasy, it came as a surprise that I didn’t hear about…
Testament of Steel by Davis Ashura
If Cradle were set in South Asia with elves and dwarves. I had been aware of Davis Ashura as an author of South Asian fantasy for several years and got…
God of Gnomes by Demi Harper
“eSports meets Civilization” I never understood the appeal of eSports, and my every attempt to read LitRPG could be described by Thomas Hobbes: brutish, nasty, and short (the attempts were…
The Brightest Shadow by Sarah Lin
“When Epic Fantasy Meets Cultivation” Sarah Lin is best known for revolutionizing the English-original cultivation (or xianxia) subgenre with her late 2019 release, Street Cultivation. Instead of cultivators wearing flowing…
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Reviewer’s Note: Upon finishing this novella, which took six days the first time around, I immediately wrote an initial review where I rated it 6/10 stars. Then, I re-read it,…
Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword by Henry Lien
Mean Girls meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…on ice! (or I, Tonya meets Jin Yong) As an wuxia film aficionado, and the parent of two competitive ice skaters (word of caution…
Nightblade’s Vengeance by Ryan Kirk with Live Interview!
Shogun meets the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. With over a thousand reviews on Amazon, Ryan Kirk’s Nightblade trilogy is perhaps the most popular Asian fantasy, with the exception of Will…
The Glamourist by Luanne G. Smith
The Last Jedi in Paris. Figuring the audience for a fantasy sequel is smaller than that of a book one, I haven’t written a review of one for Fantasy-Faction in…