Rating: 4 Stars ★★★★☆
On the afternoon of my seventeenth birthday, I came down the mountain to visit a dying man.
Plot
Sora’s life was full of magic–until she discovered it was all a lie.
Heir to Mt. Fuji’s spirit kingdom, Sora yearns to finally take on the sacred kami duties. But just as she confronts her parents to make a plea, a ghostly army invades the mountain. Barely escaping with her life, Sora follows her mother’s last instructions to a heart-wrenching discovery: she is a human changeling, raised as a decoy while her parents’ true daughter remained safe but unaware in modern-day Tokyo. Her powers were only borrowed, never her own. Now, with the world’s natural cycles falling into chaos and the ghosts plotting an even more deadly assault, it falls on her to train the unprepared kami princess.
As Sora struggles with her emerging human weaknesses and the draw of an unanticipated ally with secrets of his own, she vows to keep fighting for her loved ones and the world they once protected. But for one mortal girl to make a difference in this desperate war between the spirits, she may have to give up the only home she’s ever known.
Review
A Mortal Song is a fantasy story that doesn’t take place in a European or American setting. Which was really, really great.
I also loved how we get different monsters and fantastical creatures than the standard vampires-and-werewolves-fare (which I also really like, but you know, variation is nice).
And, on top of all that we get the story of a girl who starts out in the classical: heroine-who-was-promised way and then it turns out, she’s not the heroine at all. She’s the standin who was exchanged for the actual prophesied child. Everything she thought she knew about her life is a lie.
“She is the daughter of Their Highnesses Kasumi and Hotaka,” Takeo said. “I can attest to that. I’ve known her since she was a child.”
“Yes,” Rin said. Her smirk returned. “You’ve known this girl. But this girl is not a child of Mt. Fuji. She is not even kami.”
It was a great idea and it worked really well. Sora’s conflicted. On the one hand, she’s angry that she’s been lied to, she’s sad and she’s lost. She’s not who she thought she was but she doesn’t know who she is – or wants to be.
I wanted, I realized as the ache inside me deepened, to truly make Mother and Father proud. For them to smile at me because of me and not who I stood in place of. Whatever their true feelings were, I’d loved them.
And yet, despite all that, she doesn’t give up. She doesn’t have any powers, she’s just an ordinary girl who grew up in extraordinary circumstances. But she’s determined to do everything she can to save those she cares about.
Conclusion
A great Fantasy story with interesting characters and a fascinating setting.
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