I kept feeling as though I’m a spectator watching a stage play or a film, never feeling like I can actually immerse myself in the story. This is the premise I definitely can get behind, and yes, it’s quite readable, but in the end the lightness of the story execution became a barrier that prevented me from appreciating it and connecting with it enough.

Friendships and quiet romance follow, and we learn that nothing is as it seems, and far from being a damsel in distress our heroine Guet Imm has skills and depths that take her initially reluctant companions by surprise. They are in a war-torn country, now in the grip of conflicts between the Protectorate and the reformers who become “bandits” as they oppose those in power. Because as is, I got only very vague idea of the place, and little but vague idea of the characters - but snappy banter overload.Īs the blurb promises, the story starts with a bandit in a Malaysian coffeehouse and quickly becomes the story of a young nun Guet Imm from the destroyed tokong of the titular Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water joining despite their protestations a ragtag gang of sorta-bandits on a quest to deliver some secret goods - joined by the story of the gang secon-in-command Tet Sang. There was something almost fanfic about it - a feeling that we are visiting the world with which I’m expected to be familiar through, perhaps, an earlier story, the world that therefore needed little but basic sketching out. In the end, it really seemed like a lengthy set up for a larger story, an extended prologue, an overlong first chapter. Light on the plot, the characters development and worldbuilding - but with enough snappy banter (almost romcom style, really) to last me for at least a month. Because this light and airy novella flowed well, but left me unimpressed and unsatisfied in the end precisely because of how light it was. It needed to be a full fantasy novel but ended up confined in a light novella which did not do it justice. This is a story brimming with so much potential, but in the end it felt not quite realized.

The order of the pure moon