The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water

This is one of the rare books where I picked it up at the library, semi-randomly, read it, loved it, and shortly thereafter had to go out and buy my own copy of it to keep on my shelves.

It's a queer little wuxia tale of a sweaty group of found-family bandits, with Malay cultural influences and a lovely dry humor. I absolutely loved the world and Cho's writing style. I would love to read like five more of these.

It’s not easy being a waitress. Ofttimes you’re not appreciated for all the hard work. Make sure you get all the orders right, especially for your most finicky of customers, try to ignore the occasional ogling and pinching of your bottom when you walk away. It’s even more challenging when you’ve just started your job at a coffeehouse and the customer thinks you’re a witch.

Enter a kind-hearted bandit, lose your job, and where are you going to go? The small group of bandits of course. Just invite yourself along on their journey to deliver some items and you’ll figure out some way to help them. It’s definitely not your cooking skills, you’re not going to sleep with them unless they won’t mind you cleansing yourself in show more the blood of their castration to pay homage to your deity, but at least they smell a bit better after cleaning their clothes.

This Malaysian-infused tale, tranquil at times in its presentation, is filled with beauty, Queer characters, and light-hearted wit. There’s a silent war taking place in the background with unpredictable people, mistrust on all sides, and innocents caught in the middle. The Protectorate seeks to establish its hold over the country and the Reformist bandits are rather getting in the way. Caught up in the fray, the tokong (monastic temples) have been burned and sacked. The Protectorate believes they are aiding the bandits and the bandits think they are being sold out to the Protectorate.

Our stumbling bandits just want their pay to take care of their families and maybe have a little fun on the side. The bandits’ misadventures take them through leech-filled jungles to the home of a wealthy powerbroker to fulfill an honorable quest in an untrustworthy world. One of the bandits, Tet Sang, and the waitress, Guet Imm, are at the heart of this wuxia-inspired tale. As their carefully guarded secrets come to light, they are drawn together and set along a path neither could have imagined. show less

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho is a standalone novella set in an asian fantasy world with, I think, Malaysian and Chinese influences. It is a delight, like most of Zen Cho's work.

This story is about a disenfranchised nun joining a group of bandits on a smuggling job. Amusing hijinks ensue, as is to be expected from Zen Cho. I'm not sure I can say much more about the plot without spoilers, but it includes secrets, temples and a background war.

The characters are particularly excellent, with the nun forcing her way into the team of bandits and the bandits coming around to her presence in their own different ways. This is a novella that successfully has a detailed plot and strong characterisation.

I enjoyed it very show more much. I laughed and was delighted and it was exactly what I needed to lift my mood during pandemic lockdown times. I highly recommend it to all fantasy fans, especially readers who enjoy a bit of humour in their stories. Fans of Zen Cho should not hesitate to pick this one up and I hope it will make more readers into fans.

5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. show less

"A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there." A novella set in a fantasy version of Malaysia, with more emphasis on found-family tropes than on the action-adventure side of things. I liked the voice/characters here more than I did in other works of Zen Cho's that I've read, and the presence of queer/genderfluid characters. However, the book's brevity meant that the pacing was off and the characters didn't have time to fully develop; I didn't see/buy the romantic pairing introduced at the end.

Honestly really good - the only reason this isn't rated higher is because the novella doesn't really come around to a satisfying point. The writing is gorgeous, the unfolding of the plot is really well-done, and the characters are interesting and admirable... and then what? The novella feels like a chapter in a larger tale; a brief moment in a more complicated conflict, but then there's nothing more. We see the moment end, and a character has changed, but the full story doesn't really feel 'paid off'.

But it really feels sad to only give this three stars, because the story is really wonderfully presented. I think if she didn't have much else to say with these characters and tried to drag them out into a full length novel, that would have show more been worse. I really appreciated how this story asks the reader to challenge perception. show less

While I was certainly entertained by this novella, it starts out with such a bang, that the rest of this story, involving a nun and a gang of bandits, set against the background of imperial suppression, pales in comparison. Basically it's a portrait miniature of the nun (anchoress to be precise) and the main POV character. That there might be more stories forthcoming in this milieu is something I would look forward to.

A nun joins a group of "roving contractors" who are on their way to make a delivery while avoiding bandits and mata (some sort of paramilitary secret police?).

I enjoyed this stand alone novella, though it did feel more like an incident taken from a much longer work. If that longer work exists, I would definitely read it.