Kinda bummed that I didn't enjoy this more, there were definitely really good things about this book and I had fun, but:

Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao | Goodreads Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao | Goodreads

a b "Canadians C.L. Polk & Fonda Lee nominated for 2022 Hugo Award for best series". CBC Books. 11 April 2022 . Retrieved 11 May 2022.A Form You Are Comfortable With: Downplayed. Qin Shi Huang puts up qi meters over characters because explaining what's actually happening would take too long. Recognition Failure: Zachary didn’t know who Qin Shi Haung was until Simon talked about him. Qin Shi Huang is livid about this, particularly when Zachary can name Alexander the Great, Ramses II, and Genghis Khan, his mahjong buddies.

Zachary Ying Series by Xiran Jay Zhao - Goodreads

Morrissy, Kim (6 June 2022). "How DARLING in the FRANXX Inspired a New York Times Bestselling YA Novel". Anime News Network. News . Retrieved 9 June 2022. Historical Hero Upgrade/ Historical Villain Upgrade: In-Universe. The spirits are based on legend, not fact, so even stories made up to smear their names or glorify them after the fact are true to them. The emperors often discuss murky parts of their legends and whether they really did something or not, but it doesn't matter: as long as people believe they did it, they will act like the people they're believed to be. While it is still a middle grade book, it doesn't shy away from exploring heavier important themes and morally grey characters. I adore that about Xiran's writing.Scott, Alec (2022-06-16). "Xiran Jay Zhao uses the power of #BookTok to find new audiences". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved 2022-06-26. I started reading it and finished it in a day! There are so many things I adore about the book from the characters to the amazing and hilarious facts about Chinese history. It had me grinning all the way! It's a wonderful book and I will be raving about it to everyone I know for a long time.’ Xiran Jay Zhao immigrated to British Columbia from a small town in China in grade five. [2] Their father is of Hui heritage. [3] At the age of 15, they would imagine stories growing up, but did not put any on paper until being encouraged at an anime convention. MacGuffin: The heirloom seal, a legendary and long lost symbol of the power of the Chinese emperors. Touching it will grant the three emperors the power to reseal the gates to the spirit realm. It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.

Xiran Jay Zhao – Sci-Fi / Fantasy Author

Alec Scott, for The Globe and Mail, compared Zachary Ying to Zhao's first novel Iron Widow (2021) and commented that "the two books speak to Zhao's obsessions – both with anime, the visual storytelling popularized in Japan that's gone global, and with Chinese history and mythology. [...] In both novels, the mythic past gets translated into the future. [...] But these similarities are superficial: The first book is a primal scream brimming with horror at the world its young heroine inherits, while the new novel plots a tween's journey from zero to, if not hero, then someone of substance. [...] For all their differences of mood, the novels rescue what is valuable to Zhao in Chinese history and myth, and project it forward – creating artistic acts of cultural reappropriation". [15]TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The magic system (alongside Zhao's sci-fi subversion) was absolutely brilliant. I adored how the powers of the characters were influenced by legends and belief and by legacy. These factors granted all of it a deeper meaning as it questioned the truth behind these legends and asked the question of what we leave behind when we're gone.