Book review-Ink by Amanda Sun

Title: Ink

 Author:  Amanda Sun

Series:  The Paper Gods #1

Published:  21 June 2013 by Mira

Length: 356 pages

Warnings: one scene which could be read as attempted rape

Source: ARC from publisher

Other info: There is an ebook novella prequel, called Shadow. Rain is the sequel coming in June.

Summary : Ink is in their blood. On the heels of a family tragedy, Katie Greene must move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn't know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks and she can't seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building. When Katie meets aloof but gorgeous Tomohiro, the star of the school's kendo team, she is intrigued by him…and a little scared. His tough attitude seems meant to keep her at a distance, and when they're near each other, strange things happen. Pens explode. Ink drips from nowhere. And unless Katie is seeing things, drawings come to life.
Somehow Tomo is connected to the kami, powerful ancient beings who once ruled Japan—and as feelings develop between Katie and Tomo, things begin to spiral out of control. The wrong people are starting to ask questions, and if they discover the truth, no one will be safe.

Review:  Katie Greene is forced to move to Japan to live with her aunt. There, she meets Tomohiro, a boy whose drawings come to life. with runins with the Yazuka and working around attraction to Tomohiro, Katie learns about his connections to the Kami, Japanese gods of old.

I had a period of really really loving Japan. I’m not totally obsessed any more, but I still like it. When I heard about this series, I was just “aww hell yes. Must read. Excited.”

Katie is still finding her feet in Japan. You get bits of Japanese and snippets of random culture, some of which I recognise from things written by Japanese people, so I’m assuming that the other things were all correct to. It was certainly fully built and different to the Western school settings.

The random Japanese phrases are nice to start with, but they get annoying quickly, because even though it comes with Katie’s translations (mainly), they interrupt the flow with their frequency and make you feel like you need to have a working knowledge of Japanese to understand this book in the way it flows. Oh, and the constant “ne”s got on my nerves. Because they indicate a question. And then are followed by a question mark. And at one point there was an explanation of this when you could infer what they meant. Unnecessary in written stories.

Characters, I liked Katie to start with because I relate to her difficulty at fitting in. However, once we met her and she got a few friends, she got a a bit boring and didn’t move on. Tomohiro, I didn’t care for at all. He moodswings a lot and is mysterious in a boring way. And then he’s really really creepy.   There’s a sweet guy whose name I forgot. I liked him. Minor characters were mainly forgotten when Tomohiro shows up.

 I loved the inclusion of the Kami, using mythology other than Classical Greek/Roman. Don’t get me wrong, I love Classical Greek and Roman, but it’s used so much, and the use of Japanese mythology was wonderful. The originalness and the description of the creatures added awesomeness to the book.

It’s very stereotypical YA paranormal romance, if you ignore the fact that it’s set in Japan and has Japanese gods. Badboy who wants you to stay away? Check. Instalove? Check. See him once, can’t get him out of your head? Check. I could go on, but I won’t.

Unrelated to the writing, the illustrations are gorgeous. 

  Overall:  Strength 2 tea to a book with a wonderful different mythology, but lots of drawbacks.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website |

Blog Tour Post- Japanese Mythology in Ink by Amanda Sun

Hi guys. So I read Ink a few days ago and quite enjoyed it. The best thing was the inclusion of Japanese mythology (I love all forms, epecially the ones you don't see too much of). And then I got this post and...yeah!  Excellent post from Amanda. Enjoy.

When I was little, my mother bought me a wonderful book filled with myths. These weren’t just the rich Greek and Roman myths you might grow up with, but the pages were filled with mythologies I’d never heard of before. Mesopotamian, Inuit, Australian Aboriginee…and Japanese. This was where I first encountered the myth of Izanami and Izanagi, and their child Amaterasu, who became the goddess to which all Japanese emperors would claim lineage.

As I grew older, I spent a lot of time watching animes, reading manga, and gaming. A lot of the Asian myths reappeared in these formats, sometimes quite directly and other times as subtle inspiration. At the same time, my love of mythologies was growing. I spent most of my time reading MG and YA Fantasy books, delving deeper into traditional western mythologies and starting to write Fantasy novels of my own.

In university, I majored in Classical Archaeology. Finally I was able to pursue my love of myths on another level. I soaked up everything I could find. At the same time, I took courses in Asian History and Japanese, still fascinated by the culture I’d learned about as an exchange student in Osaka.

A strange thing happened, then. My interest in Egyptian history and beliefs combined with Japanese beliefs and mythology. The Egyptian hieroglyphs I was learning contained a lot of snake symbols, but in most cases on tomb walls, the snakes had been chiselled through the middle breaking them in two. Why? Because the scribes were concerned the hieroglyphs would come alive in the After Life and bite the Pharaoh entombed.

Drawings coming to life in dangerous ways.

At the same time, Japanese kanji came from Chinese characters, originally used for talking to the spirit world. I loved the idea of these drawings coming to life and connecting with Japanese mythology, but I was still writing YA Fantasy—the traditional kind—and hadn’t really made the connection yet.

Did I mention I also took Art History in university? (Yeah…I kind of took everything. Also Linguistics and English Lit.) I loved learning about Japanese calligraphy and the ink and wash paintings that looked as if they could come alive.

Then I started reading YA influenced by Asian history and mythology, like Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon and Half World by Hiromi Goto. Like lots of other readers, I loved my share of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and other paranormal YA, but I was excited about these brand new origins of myths or creatures.

It all made sense, how I could combine my love of YA and Japanese mythology and art. I started researching the myths more closely, and at the same time looking at how Japanese history developed. I looked for key historical figures, and any strange rumours surrounding them. I decided to link the two together, hoping you couldn’t find where I stitched up the seams.

One thing I really love about Japanese mythology is that, like many older stories in the world, the morality or the flow of the story often doesn’t make sense to modern readers. Try it with any ancient myth—you won’t always follow how they made those judgement calls, or why they said or did what they did. I liked how unpredictable the stories were, how dangerous and untamed they often felt. And I wanted to make Japanese culture accessible to an outside audience the way they’d been made accessible to me in other YA titles.

A lot of the mythology in INK is based on those original stories I read in the myth encyclopedia my mother gave me as a child. I hope that you’ll come to enjoy the unfamiliar tone of the myths that inspired INK, and that the same feeling of an unpredictable outcome. That’s the thing about Japanese myths—they aren’t safe, just like the ink.

Beautiful post from Amanda! Ink can be found on Goodreads and Amazon, and Amanda can be found here.

Waiting on Wednesday - Ink and Carnegie!

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where we show off books that we want to read but have not been published yet. 

Title:  Ink
Author: Amanda Sun
Release Date: 25 June 2013 by Mira
Link to / Summary from Goodreads: On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.
Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.
Why I want it:  Japanese mythology is awesome. This looks really cool. It has a gorgeous cover that fits perfectly with the title.

We have a winner for the Witchlove giveaway! It was Fiery Na! I've emailed Emma, and she should get back to you. Thanks for entering.

We still have two big giveaways running! The international one and the UK one.

Also... The shortlist for Carnegie! 

THE WEIGHT OF WATER by SARAH CROSSAN
A GREYHOUND OF A GIRL by RODDY DOYLE
MAGGOT MOON by SALLY GARDNER
IN DARKNESS by NICK LAKE
WONDER by R.J. PALACIO
MIDWINTERBLOOD by MARCUS SEDGEWICK
A BOY AND A BEAR IN A BOAT by DAVE SHELTON
CODE NAME VERITY by ELIZABETH WEIN

Three out of eight! These all look really good. I've had Code Name Verity and Wonder on my TBR for ages, but I'm looking forwards to reading all of these!