Kathryn Tanquary has created a beautiful story of magic, spirits, family, and growing up. It takes place in rural Japan, and each character is more bizarre and whimsical than the last.
While the plot is often simplistic and random, younger readers might enjoy the adventure. I kept hoping for some kind of logic to Saki’s journey to find the Midnight Prince, but in the end everything happened because that’s what was supposed to happen, and the main character succeeds because she’s the main character.
Which, if you think about it, is the way a lot of myths and fairy tails turn out, so maybe that’s all the logic you need.
Saki and her family are spending their vacation helping her newly widowed grandmother, who lives out in the middle of nowhere (as Saki petulantly describes to the reader.) It’s the Festival of Obon, which means three days of celebrations to the ancestors: three days of ceremonial dancing, grave-cleaning, and storeroom organizing (that last one is just for Saki’s grandmother, who has a lifetime of odds and ends her late husband left behind that needs sorting through.)
Saki is a typical teenager: glued to her phone, blind to anything except her own “problems” and apt to dislocate something with all the eye-rolling and sighs she does any time her family asks her to do something. She is definitely one of the least-likeable main characters I’ve met in a while, but that’s refreshing in its way: the author never forces us to like her. We find things about her to admire as the story goes on.
She meets up with some of the local kids, and tries to fit in and prove herself far superior to them at the same time. As you’d guess, she ends up looking pretty ridiculous. They convince her to play a “game” at the local graveyard using the Japanese precursor to a Ouiji board. While the local kids run off to avoid trouble, Saki ends up accidentally summoning a vengeful spirit that puts a death curse on her.
If that sounds like it escalated quickly, you’re right.
For the rest of her stay she’s pulled every night into the spirit world in an attempt to break the curse, traveling with one of several guides past the Night Parade, trying to find the Midnight Prince so he can break her curse.
The story jumps very randomly from one group of strange spirits to another. I kept wishing we had a little more explanation for the places she went and the things she sees. But we go from foxes to bird spirits, to frog husbands and Filth Lickers (no really) to a strange all-powerful spirit who has her best interest at heart, to the second-in-command who dragged her into the mess in the first place, with very little reason behind each step.
The trick to writing a good magical story is this: you have to have an internal logic. If the only reason why things happen is “because it’s magic” the reader will quickly lose interest. Take the magic marbles Saki steals from the witch in the woods: any time she needs them, she can pull one out and it does whatever she needs to save her. She’s not supposed to use them too much, but we’re never told why. I could guess that she wouldn’t want them to run out, but that never seemed to be a problem.
(On a side note, I was glad the author described them as “flat” marbles. After a little googling I found they’re called Ohajiki, and they’re used in a game that’s similar to European marbles, but they’re squashed instead of round. For some reason I got a kick out of that tidbit.)
Characters come and go fairly frequently, and sometimes I didn’t miss them, but I wish we’d seen more of her fox guide. Out of all the characters, I thought she was the most interesting and well-developed, and made the most sense (she wasn’t a very “nice” person, but she’s a fox-spirit. Everyone knows they’re out for themselves.)
Sometimes the story became a message for younger readers. It was about living in the real world, loving your family, paying attention to history, keeping your “true” friends and rejecting the fake ones we all seem to collect. While I appreciate the message, most of the younger readers I know would find the tone a little condescending. (Especially since the hints about using your smartphone too much weren’t very subtle.)
What made up for all of that was the beautiful descriptions. The intricate, gorgeous scenery Tanquary describes, the funny interactions, and the beautiful creatures, all lead me to believe she had an animation in mind when she wrote it. You can easily picture the entire book as a Miyazaki film, especially the part where she meets the tree spirits: their quiet nature, their strange and beautiful appearance, and their glee when she accepts the flower for her hair, all made up my favorite part of the whole book.
I think in the end the book is best for young readers (though I’ve met some sophisticated young readers who might point out the same faults in the story that I did.) It’s a little unsatisfying, plot-wise, but it’s certainly lovely in its imagery.
And if she writes another book, I’d love to see more of the fox.