I'm not sure I like Luli Wei, but I'm 100% sure that I love her.
The minute Luli steps into a theater for the first time as a child she knows that what she sees on that screen is what she wants out of life, that the magic in front of her is beautiful and she wants to be able to make it her own. And after a chance encounter on a movie set, she sees her pathway to stardom. But, she sees the other young girls around her who started out with the same stars in their eyes and are now used up, husks of who they were. Luli vows not to become one of them, she'll make her own path and if she has to become a monster to do so she will.
I started reading this about a week ago now and at first, I really couldn't get into it. I'm not really into movies and I'm even less into books about movies so it was hard for me to understand Luli's desperate need to become a movie star. However, I've never read one of Vo's books and I've wanted to so I was determined to "get through it". I'm so glad I made that decision. Luli is such an interesting character, reckless but in a way that is absolutely inspiring. The kind of recklessness that people say that you are either brave or really stupid and Luli was not stupid, at all. What I thoroughly enjoyed about her though is I'm really not sure if liked her; admired her absolutely. Inspired by her most definitely, Loved her in a way that I wanted to hug her and tell her everything was okay. But liked her? I'm just not sure.
In terms of the progression of the book at first, I thought it was moving a tad bit too slow but as I read farther into it I realized the pace was necessary. There are a lot of issues that arise that Luli has to confront and you need time to process what's going on. Any faster pace and I think a lot of important points the author was trying to convey would get lost. I also found that Luli's character development was spot on to the story progression as well. I find that with stand-alone books you sometimes will have a character progressing faster than the book is going or vice versa. One minute you've got a reckless and ambitious character the next minute they are a little tamer and you have absolutely no idea how it happened. There was none of that here.
As I said this is my first time reading a book by Vo and I have to say that her writing is magical. There is no other way to put it. Magical in a way where you find yourself so lost in the spell that she's weaved that when you finally look up you are momentarily surprised that you aren't in some backlot of a film studio watching the organized chaos that is the business of making films because you were absolutely sure that was where you had just been. Vo is a storyteller, through and through which is a truly rare and wonderful gift.
Overall, I don't have one complaint about the Siren Queen, it was spellbinding and hauntingly beautiful and I pre-ordered my physical copy as soon as I was done reading it.
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