Fourth Sister

By M.L. Farb

Genre: YA Fiction/Fairytales & Folklore

Indie Author, 2021

Pages: 252 + Food for Thought, Explanations and Research

Via: Author Request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Basics

The fourth of seven daughters, Shisei is an outcast. Is she truly “sacred poetry,” a “bridge between the seen and unseen” as her late mother said? Or is Shisei something else?

Meanwhile, Shisei has this major guilt trip thing going on. She’s like a guilt magnet. She blames herself for pretty every tragic event that ever happened to her fam, including the death of two brothers and her nephew.

Shadowed by a kitsune – a trickster fox thingy – Shisei is convinced she “bears a curse against infant sons.”  Exiled from her family, she wanders into an unknown village disguised as a boy, Sheng. She becomes apprenticed to Takumi the mask maker. (Scene stealer: Okami, Takumi’s wolf-dog. Just sayin’.)

Shisei blames the kitsune, a four-tailed white fox, as the reason for her curse, her broken dreams, torn family, and her exile from those she loves. Shisei vows to fight the curse and break it so death will follow her no more. But when her youngest sister is accused of murder, Shisei must lead her sisters in a deception that will either save the youngest or condemn them all.

Complex

Fourth Sister reminded us of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Only set in “Nihon” (Japan). While the latter explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, the former focuses on the complex relationships between seven sisters. That’s a lot of complex. It just tuckered us out after a while. Also, the lines between reality and myth or fantasy related to the kitsune fox thing, etc. are often blurred, leaving readers confused or guessing.

We kinda hate that.

Fourth Sister features lyrical prose and vibrant descriptions of Japanese settings, history, and culture. It’s rich historical fiction. Each chapter opens with a beautiful, evocative haiku. We just found the plot hard to follow.  Trying to follow Shisei/Sheng’s bunny trails in and out of reality and myth started to feel like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree. Then there’s trying to keep seven sisters sorted. We got lost in the Jell-o, soon followed by, Don’t care. Also, spending pages on every minute detail related to Japanese mask-making? Zzzzzzzz.

Additionally, the narrative assumes readers show up with a working familiarity of Japanese culture, customs, folklore, myth and legend. If you do, you’re good to go. If not, you may get lost. Fast. So you might want to leave a trail of bread crumbs. Or rice.

Readers who enjoyed The Joy Luck Club, Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, or James Clavell’s Asian Saga series (Hai, Anjin-san!) will probably like Fourth Sister. The prose is beautiful and crisp. It just wasn’t our cuppa.

Fourth Sister is the second book in the Hearth and Bard Tales series. In our opinion, it’s the weakest. But you may enjoy it. So give it a chance. (For a much stronger novel, see Farb’s Vasilisa. Read our review here.)

Our Rating: 3.5