For May, my online book group read Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon, a fantastical story about regrets and choices and love and family that weaves across worlds and time. From the second I read the cover I had a feeling I would like it, but I didn’t realize how much until I was already invested in the story. I will say this is one of those books that I’m struggling to respond to, it just feels bigger than it is, so forgive me for the most random of responses.
My husband has recently become obsessed with isekai manga/anime. It is a subgenre of anime where a protagonist is taken from their world and dropped into another (most often fantasy) world and they have to survive and more often than not help the world to survive. He’s convinced me to watch a few—ABSOLUTELY adored “The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter” and “Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill” on Crunchy Roll—so when this one straight up said it was an isekai, I knew I was going to love it even more than at first glance.
I’m not even going to talk about the plot, it’s pretty convoluted and you can read about that elsewhere. What I want to talk about are the moments in the story that stood out for me:
- the traveling between locations: there were so many fascinating ways that Kei and Hana travelled in the other world. From jumping in puddles to traveling on rumors or origami cranes, the modes of travel were so fantastical and yet somehow realistically believable that they feel just out of reach in our world.
- the choices collected and made: the entire novel leads up to a single choice that I felt was driven by nature vs nurture (looking back). This is incredibly reductive, but once you finish the novel and know all the ins and outs you’ll see what I mean: was it the nature of the “real world” or the nurture (or not) of the fantastical world!?
- the intricate ties between the characters: during our discussion someone said Geoff explain who was who and I did and it was wild trying to remember. All I could think of were the beautiful and intricate Japanese knots and that really is what I think their relationships were to each other.
The other thing I found interesting during our conversation was that quite a few people were like “nope” as soon as it turned romantic. And that is 100% fair—that’s what’s great about a discussion is not everyone needs to agree!—but for me the romance aspect was vital to the story. The will they won’t they fall in love, betray/abandon each other, survive together, drove so many choices and breath holding moments. Without it I feel like most of those would’ve fallen flat. Someone floated the idea they could’ve been siblings and I do think that could’ve worked but some big changes would’ve been required. I think the romance added the extra intricacies when you take into account Hana, Kei and Haruto’s origins and how each of those origins drove the story forward (even if we didn’t know it at the time) and intimately tied their fates/destinies together.
When I read the final few pages and closed the book my brain didn’t shut off. I had so many questions and thoughts and immediately began seeing the futures of the characters and of the two worlds. In a lot of cases this would make me think a sequel is imminent, but the story wrapped up and Soto Yambao just left all of their future up to your imagination with a few hints in those last few pages. And this to me was perfection. If a book leaves you wanting more, but not in a resolution way then it’s a good book to me. It reminded me of how Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Murakami’s 1Q84 all stayed with me for years (sometimes decades, looking at you Atwood) after finishing them. They’ll pop into my head at the most random moment and I’ll spend a few hours thinking about where the characters might be or what their worlds might look like now.
I’m going to stop here. I could go down so many more rabbit holes, but I feel like I’m losing the plot.
Recommendation: This was a fantastic novel. Do I think it was perfect? No. Did it engage me and I want to read it as fast as possible and as soon as I finished think about picking it up again to re-read it immediately to see all the details I missed and relive the story again? ABSOLUTELY YES. I enjoyed the characters, the stories, the parallel worlds, the drama, the romance. This book just captured my imagination and held it hostage and I’m sure it will come back to me randomly over the next few months and years.
Opening Line: “Time has no borders except those people make.”
Closing Line: “That we belong together.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)
Additional Quotes from Water Moon
“Because if we don’t hit walls, we can’t break through them. Eery significant scientific discovery ever made was because someone hit a blank wall and decided to push further.” (100)
“‘What’s wrong with failing?’ Keishin tilted his head. ‘Or wanting to make things better? Just because things have been done a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how they should always be. And if I fail, so what? That just means I’m eliminating a wrong turn and getting closer to the right one. Science was built on the shoulders of great people—as much on their mistakes as on their accomplishments. The whole point of everything I do is to explore all that was, is, and—'” (134)
“College. Marriage. Kids. These were the big decisions that people believed mattered. They were wrong, of course. In reality, it was the choices that people didn’t even realize they were making that set the course of their lives. The shifts were small, even minute, but, by the tiniest of angles, they pointed on ein the direction of what was going to happen next.” (367)
