I will not be prey

Nine years ago, Àn’yīng’s life was transformed when a demon, a mó, attacked her home. The Kingdom of Night, the realm home to the mó, had breached the borders of the mortal realm, the Kingdom of Rivers, and Àn’yīng’s father had returned home from the war between the realms n the face of defeat to shore up the defences of his village with his magical wards. Not strong enough to protect against this particular mó, however, who consumed most of Àn’yīng’s mother’s soul before then killing her father and escaping.

Àn’yīng has done the best she can to keep her mother and sister alive, but with the medicine for her mother fast running out, Àn’yīng turns her attention to a mysterious note left to her by her father – to keep out the Temple of the Dawn in the Kingdom of Heaven, complete in the Immortality Trials, and so win a pill of immortality. The only means left to save her mother.

And so begins Amélie Wen Zhao’s latest Xianxia romance The Scorpion and the Night Blossom – we meet Àn’yīng as she fights against a mó, Zhao not messing around as she immediately establishes the tone as what’s to be a high action and rather darker than expected story. 

It’s this action and exciting plot that pulled me in to the story and won me over as, I have to confess, I struggled at first to settle into the narrative voice. First person is my favourite narrative style, but I found the tone highly emotional and quite repetitive; Àn’yīng’s concerns for her family are, understandably, never far from her mind. However, as I said, the story did win me over despite this, to the point I couldn’t put the book down – I wrote this review in bullet points to fill later because I had to move on to the second book immediately.

So what was it about the story that had me so hooked? Three things; the lusciously described setting, the excitement of the trials, and the high-drama romance.

Firstly then, Zhao dedicated her first thanks in her acknowledgments to ‘the rich trove of Chinese stories and legends [she] grew up with‘, and includes some of the specific stories her family read to her from which she drew inspiration. And it is resoundingly clear that The Scorpion and the Night Blossom is the product of someone not just inspired by a particular mythology, but rather intimately and personally familiar with it. There is a joy and love that shines through Zhao’s depictions of her realms and the magical beings and creatures that inhabit them. This is not an author regurgitating something for the sake of authenticity for her story; it is an author celebrating stories she loves and desiring to share them with others. For a reader so unfamiliar with this mythology and culture, Zhao brings her world to vivid vibrant life that’s easy to visualise, with descriptions of flowers and nature being a particularly important theme through the duology as a whole.

The core driving element of the plot for this book are the Immortality Trials that Àn’yīng must compete in and survive, and I have to confess, I do love a story with any kind of trials or contest. There is an added element of mystery to the usual jeopardy; these trials are dark enough as it, as in order to progress you must survive the trials and your fellow competitors – but outside of the trials, competitors are being murdered.

I have heard conversations that this book is a YA, and it has left me somewhat confused; I haven’t seen any official categorisation of it as such, but I think because our protagonist is nineteen, and because trials are quite a strong trope n YA novels, people have perhaps then made that assumption. The book opens with a demon cradling the corpse of a young woman and feasting on her. Zhao doesn’t shy away from violence, and there is some spice to the romance. Àn’yīng can perhaps be described as displaying the highly strung emotions of a typical YA heroine, or this could be attributed to the book’s dedication: ‘This one’s for the C-drama girlies’. Drama is most certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting in this book but I think it’s unfair to say only YA heroines are allowed to be dramatic.

“Do you fear me?” he murmurs.

“No,” I lie. “I hate you.”

“Good,” he says, and then he lowers his lips to mine.

Let’s briefly turn our attention to the cause of that drama.

Yù’chén.

He is utterly glorious and, quite frankly, I’m sorry Zhao but Àn’yīng does not deserve him. Actually, I take that back. 

I’m not sorry.

Anyway suffice to say the third element that kept me burning through these pages was the romance. It just felt so doomed from the very start; one of those romances you know is such a bad idea but its inexorable. There’s a kind of rivals to lovers to enemies thing that happens as our two highly-strung dramatic bags of hormones seem fated to draw together – despite any distractions provided by particularly handsome and stoic captains of guards. Poor Hào’yáng… there may some teasing here for a possible future love triangle in book two? If you like your romances to have that all-or-nothing doomed love quality, then you will be floored by this one.

Knowing that this was the first book in a duology, Zhao still manages to end it in a wonderfully satisfying full-circle moment following plenty of mystery and twists that I did not see coming, and still managing to leave plenty open to tempt us into the next book. The Scorpion and the Night Blossom is an addictively rich read, one to gorge your senses upon. I can’t wait t discover what Zhao has in store for us with book two!

The Scorpion and the Night Blossom is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org