Thirteen Orphans by Jane Lindskold

Date Published: 2008, Tor Fantasy.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-5621-5
# of Pages: 500

It had been a while since I really involved myself in a silly fantasy novel, and I had seen this book on the shelves of a few bookstores and had been attracted to the cover. When I was at a small local bookstore not too long ago I saw it again and just had to finally buy it. I'm really glad I did, because it was an altogether enjoyable reading experience.

The story mainly follows Brenda, a young adult who learns that her father is a member of the "thirteen orphans", a group of people exiled from a mystical land that is semi-analogous to the China in our world. Each of the thirteen orphans represents one of the Chinese zodiac signs -- plus a thirteenth, the cat. The cat is the descendent of an old emperor that was exiled with the thirteen orphans. Since then, the zodiac heritage and the magical powers that go along with each have been passed down to one person from each subsequent generation. Brenda's father is the Rat.

Quickly, Brenda, her father and the Tiger, an older woman who was once a child actor, realize that someone from this mystical land has come to try to steal the memories connected with each orphan and go on a complicated journey to try to retrieve the memories that have already been stolen and prevent any more from being taken, including their own.

There was a lot of exposition in this novel that I felt could have been done away with, as much of it centered on knowledge of mah jong that was not really necessary to the plot and was actually very difficult to trudge through if you had no experience with mah jong. The magic would have worked out well enough logically without explaining what each set of tiles does, etc. Regardless, using the mah jong as magic was a really original and interesting decision.

I enjoyed reading about how each character fulfilled certain aspects of their zodiac animal and it was fun to see Brenda progress and grow comfortable in her role as the heir of the Rat. The ending was actually a bit abrupt, and I was surprised at how few pages it took to resolve some very major, key plot points, but there is a second (and I believe third?) book thus far in the series and I am eager to get my hands on them. Some issues may have been resolved a bit quicker and more easily than I would have suspected, but some more complicated issues arise towards the end of the novel that make closing the back cover a bit agonizing.

The writing is so-so, I've never read anything by Lindskold before and it seems to be pretty standard mid-quality fantasy. I already mentioned the issues with exposition, but some of the sentences are choppy and I found the perspective switching in third person a bit awkward and occasionally found myself unsure about whose thoughts were being portrayed, especially when a change of setting or time was not clear.

In short, I would recommend this book to someone who already likes fantasy and is willing to put up with a bit of unnecessary description in order to get to some fun and original ideas and adventure.