Exiled and on the run, Li Jun heads east to retrieve the Scroll of Heaven and reunite with his brother and mother. Much like the West, there is division in the East about whether the lands and scrolls should be united, but
General Cobu and the Council in the East are ready and willing to start another war. It’s up to Li Jun, the remaining members of the Silent Flute Society, and—hopefully—Jun’s brother to prevent war and bring the land together again.
Hm, I have to say I’m a little let down by this sequel. I read the first book—Breath of the Dragon—as an ARC too, and I’m not exactly sure why since I don’t love action-heavy fantasy, but I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It has so many of those great classic fantasy elements like the underdog protagonist and the fighting competition, plus it mixed in elements of classic martial arts movies like the “training montage” which makes sense since this series is really an homage to Bruce Lee’s legacy. I reread that first book before reading the sequel and Mark of the Warrior just doesn’t measure up. I still think the characters in this were solid and there were elements of what I enjoyed in the first book like the five levels in the final battle, but it really struggled in other areas.
Pacing is probably the biggest issue in my opinion. There’s really great flow and structure to the first book with the inciting incidents, training, and then the rounds of the competition itself. The sequel didn’t have that same structure and I think that hurt it a lot. There’s a lot of traveling from place to place but then also a lot of time jumps, so you kind of lose your grip on how much time is passing. Characters separate for kind of odd stretches of time and come back together, so you lose characters threads because protagonists are just not on page for like 5-10 chapters at a time. The reveal of how Jun and Sai are connected (I’m being purposefully vague about it) is interesting but it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s the kind of thing that seems like it would become crucial at some point and then it doesn’t. There are also some MAJOR character deaths that just were not given enough time and attention. Characters who are central to the plot just dying over the course of a couple sentences without the emotional or narrative consequences that you’d expect. I can imagine someone having a long day and kind of skimming a few lines entirely missing one of these deaths because they’re given so little weight. It feels so different from the first book, where even one-off characters died in the competition and we both saw their death in detail and saw the emotional ripples it caused.
It wasn’t boring and everything made sense. The ending was perfectly fine and as I mentioned earlier I did like that final fight scene, but this was just lacking in the structure and impact that made the first book so satisfying.
Thank you to Shannon Lee, Fonda Lee, and Wednesday Books for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
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