Review: A Clash of Steel by C.B. Lee

 

A Treasure Island remix that is historical fiction set in the South China Sea. This is the first in a new series where classics get a remix. The second book that is coming out this year is So Many Beginnings which is a Little Women remix. I ended up giving this a three out of five stars and I have to read the original classics before I read the remixes. I have never read Treasure Island and after reading this, I really want to pick it up to see what similarities there are.

We meet our second main character Anh in the prologue as a little girl while she is on a ship with her mother and little brother. From the first chapter onwards, we follow the perspective of our main character Xiang. Xiang lives in a tiny village on the river and she is under the guardian ship of a woman who runs the tea house that is owned by Xiang's mother who is a ship captain who is well known and respected and feared. Xiang wants to make her mother proud and follow in her footsteps, so one day her mother takes her to the city Canton so Xiang can learn to take over the family business. But really, her mother is trying to marry her off so she doesn't have that "burden" anymore. 

When Xiang steps foot in Canton, she is attracted to a girl who lives on a ship and is a smuggler and thief. Xiang and Anh hang out one day and at the end of the night, Xiang loses her most valuable possession from her dead father and that is where this story really begins.

While reading this, the author was so descriptive with everything. The sights, smells, food, and the people. It was a little too much description and I was bored and skimming and also the food mentioned made me really hungry. I was also bored with the repetition of Xiang's day on the boat with Anh and how she was doing her chores. There is only so much I can read about swabbing the deck and pulling ropes and masts and stuff. 

There was the big action scene at the end that I flew through and I was disappointed when it ended because once it did, the story dragged on once again. I ended up giving this a three out of five stars because I loved the adventure and the secrecy and the betrayal at the end. I loved learning about some of Vietnam's history. I just wished that there were more action scenes.