Book Review: The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
Centuries ago, the Oracle of the Tiandi prophesied that a Destined Hero would arise to unite the Five States and defeat the Immortal Khan of the Katuia people. This prophecy has shaped the Five States’ culture and politics ever since. Relatively recently, the Destined Hero, a boy named Jian, was born and the Five Dukes set up the former Imperial Palace as a place for him to be trained. But when the windwhisper master Taishi is sent to evalute his progress, she is not pleased.
Instead of a manly young warrior in training, Jian has become a spoiled brat who can show off many flashy moves but has not mastered even simple punching, and who has never been allowed to fail, and thus grow. He can’t even concentrate his jing! After Taishi is able to help a ragtag band of nobodies defeat Jian and his bodyguards simply by giving them advice, she fires all the boy’s current trainers and starts him on a humiliating boot camp experience designed to get him up to speed.
After only a few weeks of this, word comes that the Immortal Khan is dead, accidentally killed by a random border patrol, and without their great leader, the Katuia were easily conquered and forced into servitude. Gee, looks like the prophecy, and thus the Prophesied Hero, are no longer necessary. The Five Dukes meet and tell Taishi they’re sending Jian to a lovely farm out in the country where he can run and play all day.
Taishi’s suspicions are quickly confirmed by the one person who actually really liked Jian, and she has to rescue him from his own former bodyguards and trainers. This sadly does involve killing several of them and Jian is badly wounded in the process. Now master and student are on the run, wanted criminals. What went wrong with the prophecy?
This is the first in the “War Arts” series by Mr. Chu, who I’ve reviewed before with his The Deaths of Tao and The Rise of Io books. This fantasy series is inspired by the wuxia subgenre of movies, martial arts with a touch of superhuman abilities. The setting is not quite China, on a world with three moons, but the cultures are very reminiscent of various points in Chinese history.
All the bizarre powers one can learn by jing manipulation have their limitations. Master Taishi can manipulate winds, but she has an upper weight limit and only one arm, so isn’t invincible. The shadowkill assassins can move through darkness, but this takes a toll on their health. My personal favorite bit is that most people don’t really believe in death punches, since it’s basically impossible to properly practice them unless you’re the kind of person that gets killed yourself very quickly due to notoriety.
There’s four main viewpoint characters. Taishi is your classic crochety old master who had really intended to stay retired for her few remaining years, but forced herself to at least try to fix Jian, since he reminds her of her lost son in all the wrong ways. She has fought the Immortal Khan, thus only having one arm, and doesn’t buy how easily he was supposedly taken down. Plus the horrible treatment of the Katuia captives rankles her sensibilities. If only she could discover the truth behind the prophecy…
Jian is the cocky youngster who does have a strong potential, but has had it wasted by bad training and the wrong sort of coddling. He’s self-centered and spoiled at the beginning, and much of his part of the story is undergoing various indignities and humbling experiences. He’s…a little better at the end of the volume.
Sali, or Salminde if you’re being formal, is a viperstrike, an elite warrior of the Katuia people. She’s also part of a group known as The Will of the Khan. It turns out that it’s not that the Immortal Khan can’t die, so much as he won’t stay dead. At least if Salminde has anything to do with it. But she also has other priorities, such as finding her missing sister Mali, freeing her captive people, and oh yes, killing the Prophesied Hero now that she coincidentally found him.
Maza Qisami is a shadowkill assassin who enjoys the parts of her job that involve killing fun prey. Not so much the drudgery of everything else involved in running a cell of killers for hire. She too has a bit of a tragic backstory, but keeps putting off finally dealing with that issue. She needs money and fame, and killing the greatest war artist of a previous generation and the Prophesied Hero will give her that. She develops a certain interest in Sali that the viperstrike warrior doesn’t so far reciprocate.
This is the first volume in a series, so it spends a lot of time setting up various conflicts and subplots that won’t pay off until later. It does, however, give us some solid information on what’s gone wrong with the prophecy (though we as readers have more pieces of the puzzle than any of the individual characters) and climaxes with an exciting four-way battle.
While the book has a satisfying stopping point as the survivors of the battle disperse to recover, it’s very much just a stopping point and sets up many plot hooks for the next volume, thankfully already out.
The hardcover edition comes with an endpaper map of the area, though I didn’t always find it easy to use. (A mapmaker is one of the minor characters.) There is not a glossary, so the reader will have to struggle through some vocabulary by context, and some honor titles are done in English, but as awkwardly stuck together words like templeabbot.
Content note: Lots of lethal violence, including the death of children and animals. Body fluids. Ethnic prejudice. Slavery. Some of the characters have had extramarital sex. Older teens should be fine.
It’s a good first volume, and we’ll have to see if the rest of the series can stick the landing. Recommended to fantasy adventure and wuxia fans.
