The Black Tides of Heaven

I want to start this review by saying that I acknowledge this is a novella, as is the rest of the series.

But I was expecting more than I got. I think this book really suffered with the timeskips. The whole overarching plot I liked. I think it was a satisfying arc and it made sense with the world that had been built, but cutting out the meat of the plot and character development to get to those plot points quicker just hollows out the whole thing. Having finished and seeing the story as a whole I can confidently say this is not the type of story that can be told in novella format. It NEEDED to be a long-form book to make the impact it was trying to make. We didn't spend enough time with the characters, we didn't see more than the very base levels of the things that they went through that shaped them to be what they are, and we didn't get enough depth into the world to make the culmination of the plot meaningful. If it was given proper time and space this could be an incredible story. That being said, I enjoyed it but it left me more disappointed than anything else.

But to speak on the positives instead, since there were things I enjoyed here: the atmosphere was particularly lovely. The blending of a traditional Asian setting and adding in the introduction of technology and engineering running on magic–always fascinating to play around with. What we saw of the world was lush and I would've loved to see more. The way gender is approached is also probably my favorite part of the book because I always adore alternate approaches to gender in fantasy books, especially when magic is a factor in that.

I don't regret reading this book, but I most likely won't continue the series.

Twins Mokoya and Akeha have some serious family baggage to sort through. Traded to a monastery by the ruler of the Protectorate–and their mother–to be raised, it’s not until their gifts start emerging that their mother starts taking an interest in them again. Unfortunately their mother being who she is, she’s only got selfish and power-hungry reasons for wanting to break the twins up after being raised together for so long. Frustrated and angry, Akeha begins to explore his own path away from his upbringing and his twin. A rebellion is growing within the Protectorate, and Akeha wants to be a part of it to free them all from his mother.

This book had some serious world building going on for something that’s just a novella’s length. I almost wonder what we would have gotten if the author had given themselves the space to expand on it all some more, because as it was, it felt very rushed and undeveloped in some areas. We handwave away a lot of cool sounding things, jump years in a matter of pages, and accept that anyone outside the small cast of main characters is a name and that’s it. As an example, (plot spoiler) at one point a character is sent on a quest to go to the top of a mountain and retrieve a phoenix feather to prove their willingness and worthiness to a cause. Rather than go with them on this quest, we get the resolution wrapped up in a single sentence, saying that they did the thing successfully. I get it, it’s a novella in length, but it really felt like the author was trying to do novel-length things with a novella number of pages making everything feel rather frantic.

It also kind of felt more like a family drama in a fantasy setting, as nothing really fantastical happens. Sure they have cool powers and all, but the bulk of the book was (plot spoilers here) Akeha coming to terms with being left behind by his sister, his mother being a right bitch, and feeling comfortable with his own gender and in his own body. These are all good things to explore, but everything being so down-to-earth made the rest of the fantasy book feel rather ordinary.

But that cover art though, right? I wish I liked the book more to have better things to say because of the art alone, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series.

This was a pretty fun, wuxia-inspired fantasy world about carving out a destiny for yourself. I picked up this book because I'd like to support more LGBTQ+ authors from Singapore, and I'm very happy to find that this is a series that I'd definitely want to read more of in the future.

Mokoya and Akeha are twins born to the cruel, ruthless Protector, leader of the Protectorate. They grow up discovering that they each have their own talents, though it is Mokoya's gift of prophetic dreams that catches their mother's attention. No longer willing to be a part of their mother's machinations, Akeha strikes out on his own, aligning himself with the Machinists, the rebels fighting against the Protectorate, and realises that he can swim against the black tides of heaven.

This book is largely told from Akeha's perspective and is very much a coming-of-age story. In this world, all children are gender-neutral until they are old enough to be “confirmed”, that is, choose their gender identity. When Mokoya eventually decides to be confirmed as a woman, Akeha feels a sense of loss and struggles with their own gender identity until they eventually decide to be confirmed as a man. I suspect that some of the struggles that Akeha goes through might also have been a bit of an authorial self-insert, given that they are queer and non-binary in a society which is largely ignorant of such movements.

Then there's also the question of how far one should go to carve out an identity and a path for oneself, even when one is bound so intimately with a twin who is more like a soulmate. Akeha is always treated as the spare, the one who isn't even a disappointment because his mother does not have any expectations of him at all. This might be any journey of self-growth but I read in this specifically the journey of a LGBTQ+ person trying to break away from the status quo and deciding to go against the grain.

Overall, definitely a series I'd like to continue and would recommend to anyone looking for wuxia fantasy or just simply a bildungsroman with a gender-fluid protagonist.

a short, fast paced, high fantasy. loml

Arg!!! I wish this book was longer with lesser time jumps and more world building! I wanted to really experience and understand the Slack ‘cause it's so freaking cool!
It took me a while to feel connected to the story and characters because of all the jumping around but I really appreciate the representation and story line and themes explored.
The author has done a really good job with this. I especially enjoyed the writing. It was beautiful and atmospheric. The writing pushed this novella from a 3.5 to a 4 star read for me.
I'll definitely be trying out more of their work.
Also my goodness! The cover art is so stunning!!!

This is another one of those novellas where I'm shocked by what an author can do in a short amount of pages. This is a heart-breaking and loving story focused on some very magically inclined siblings, with some political intrigue sprinkled in. Based on the mixed reviews I didn't think I was going to love it as much as a did, it's been a couple days since I've finished it and I'm still thinking about it.

Just a really refreshing read. It's not often (as a South East Asian) that we can go into a fantasy world and see glimpses of our home reflected to us in the setting. Really enjoyed it :)

Supposedly this could be read as a stand alone book from the Tensorate series, but it felt like a book written around the action. There was not much backstory, no foreshadowing and no building up to the action. It was fine, not a bad read, but it just felt rushed and unfinished.

Apparently [i]The Red Threads of Fortune[/i] which actions happen after this one, was written before it, yet both books were released together, and that might be the reason why this one felt off to me?

I've known about this series for a while now and having read the reviews, I felt intimidated because I thought it might be way too outside my comfort zone or maybe not my kind of writing style at all. But I also wanted to read it and appreciate it as much as others have. So when we decided upon this novella as our April BOTM for Stars and Sorcery book club, I was ecstatic and I devoured it as soon as I picked it up.

The major drawback of this book is it's too short size. I know I have to read the next novella as well to get a full picture of the story, but it could have been so much more wonderful if it was longer. And I say this with all my heart because I loved it and just wanted more. The world building that we get is limited in the amount but so expansive in scope and described so beautifully that I felt myself immersed in it. The elemental magic system is both familiar and new, but I also wanted to see so much more of it in action. The East Asian elements in the culture, world building and philosophy were integrated very seamlessly and that was some of my favorite part of the book. And the way gender is handled is wow. I have personally never seen gender being undefined and chosen by every single person in any fantasy novel before, and I was amazed at the author's brilliant idea and how this choice affects the paths of the characters in the story.

Akeha and Mokoya are great characters and it was fascinating to see the way their relationship change as the years went by and due to the choices they made, but I also wanted to get to know them better. Would have especially liked to know more about their lives without each other, their partners and their role in the rebellion which ends up being such an important part in the second half of the book, but which we only get glimpses of. The sibling relationship made me quite emotional, and I think it's some of very good relationship arcs I've read in recent times.

On the whole, this was brilliant for what it was, but it did leave me wanting in the best possible ways. This is a world I didn't wanna leave, and I know I'm gonna be binging the rest of the series very soon. If you are someone who loves unique fantasy worlds, I think you won't be able to put this down just like me.

short, beautifully written, unique, draws from Asian traditions and language.

i appreciated the story's take on gender, even though it did sometimes feel too explicit that it was a metaphor for transness. also wished there were any characters who continued to use they/them pronouns in adulthood– and Akeha's eventual choice felt a bit of a cop-out in that sense. i especially enjoyed the narrative device of a language with masculine, feminine and neutral pronouns and how one of the protagonists used it to figure out their gender by “trying on” different pronouns.

in a longer format, things could have gotten a bit bogged down in cliché: the two twins who end up on different sides of a political situation had the potential to feel formulaic. in this shorter format much of the story happens “off screen”, with many long jumps in time, which kept it interesting and allowed it to have a tight focus on a few characters, and on the nuances of their emotions and relationships. the competing philosophy/religions were also interesting, and again i think that benefited from the brevity, as lengthy philosophical discussions between characters can get quite tiresome. as it was, it trusted the reader to fill in the blanks, and was better for it.

overall it had a lot of depth and beauty for its short length and i'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

This is the story of twins Mokoya and Akeha. They are the children of the Protector. Owing a debt to the Grand Monastery, the Protector gives her twins as payment. We watch as the twins grow up and decide which side of the rebellion they will choose.

I have to say that this started off weird for me. The way pronouns were used was kind of confusing and it was making it difficult for me to focus on the story. Once I got to the part that explained that, I couldn't put it down. I really enjoyed this. I usually feel like I need more from a novella, but I thought this was perfect. I loved the characters. Mokoya and Akeha are two of my new faves. I am going to start the second book tonight!

Love the world building. Love the characters - for all that Akeha and I started on very shaky ground.

However... I feel strangely cheated. This book - 240 pages is what my kindle says and to me, that is a book, not a novella - covers 35 years in four separate parts. Any single part could have easily been a book of it's own, save maybe the first part, because I don't find reading about kids under 9 particularly entertaining.

But the other three parts? Age 17, age 29 and age 35? It seems like we jumped out of 17 and 29 and there was still a lot of story left to tell. Also, I don't really like it when stories cover that much time. This one did it okay, but I still wasn't thrilled.

Fast paced plotting and character driven story set in an amazing world. First time I had heard of this thing called “Silk Punk”, and partly because of that, this book got me out of some reading ruts and looking into places that I hadn't before. For the story telling and the world building I recommend it, for the characters and their interactions allowing me to go outside my normal cultural comfort zone -I say thank-you and highly recommend it overall.

I couldn't put a finger on why I loved this story so much until I read the back and a reviewer said something to the effect that it was as if Black Tides was a Miyazaki movie in a book. That about sums it up. Prepare for wonders, a super cool plot, and heroes that you can really get behind. It's super short, I read it over 2 days only because I was trying not to rush it. I heard the 3rd book will be out this summer, so I'm going to wait on the second one for awhile to space the story out.
I'm currently trying to read all of the Nebula nominees for 2018, and man, oh man, is the bar set high with this one.

I will be honest, the only reason I was eagerly awaiting the release of these books, and the reason I own them in hard copy, paperbacks is because I absolutely loved the covers.


So JY Yang's Tensorate series begins with two books, novellas really - The Black Tides is Heaven and The Red Threads of Destiny. The two are stand-alone novellas but are the beginning stories in the Tensorate series. One can read them in any order. I began with this one, because Goodreads marks this as the first in the series.

JY Yang is a Non-Binary, Singaporean author and I've loved their short fiction for sometime now, so I was excited to start their new series.

The Black Tides Of Heaven follows twins Mokoya and Akeha- but focuses on Akeha- as they discover their powers and go about their lives. Their mother is something called the Protector, in a very Asianesque, Silk-Punk, Fantasy world, something like a Queen, I assume.

Akeha is sort of a runaway, and Mokoya goes to the Monastery. Akeha, working with the rebels, and the Machinists, develop new technology to try and overthrow the Protectorate. Mokoya, on the other hand, gets visions of the future, and therefore, Mokoya's life is under constant threat. Akeha, therefore, is torn between wanting to take their mother down, and staying in touch with Mokoya.

JY Yang's world building in this series is wonderful, truly striking. I love how they've condensed such fascinating world building in such a short book! The magic and the politics of the world is also amazing. Another thing I liked about this is how much it reminds me of Singapore (where I now live), a mix of several Asian people - Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Koreans.

Given that Yang is NB, I loved the introduction of a society who brings their children up gender free, using the pronouns of “they/them” and then, once they reach a certain age, they can undergo confirmation, where they eventually pick their gender. The children are also given gender free clothing. I really think that's amazing, and its a pretty unique universe that they have created, and it makes me feel so good that such books exist. I really don't think I've read a book with such a society, unless you count LeGuin's Left Hand Of Darkness.

I really liked the story and the characters, and loved how the prose flowed almost like poetry. It's was a very easy read, and I thoroughly lost myself in the world. I can't wait to see where the series goes next! I believe that the second book is Mokoya's part of the story, while this was predominantly Akeha's. I reckon this series will be so much fun!

I might have pre-ordered these books solely for the covers, but I really did end up liking this one, and I think I'll like the other one too.

So I've been super-excited to get my mitts on this book and its twin The Red Threads of Fortune almost from the moment Tor announced they were publishing them, and the wait was so. Totally. WORTH IT. The twins are absolutely lovely, and their story is heartbreaking (AKEHA!), and I may have a wee bit of a crush on Thennjay but hey, who DOESN'T have a wee bit of a crush on Thennjay?

Now, to be fair, this novella is a wee bit skinny on the story, but I'm guessing that's because I've only literally read just one-half of the whole, since as I post this I'm only about to start the other half. But I'm super-duper excited to do that now, and will do so as soon as this goes up :D.