For fans of historical fantasy, you have to add Daughter of Calamity to your TBR. This lush, immersive, and hazy fantasy has deadly deals and power plays. It’s a story which will have you dancing the night away into dangerous arms. Keep reading this book review of Daughter of Calamity for my full thoughts.
Summary
Jingwen spends her nights as a showgirl at the Paramount, one of the most lavish clubs in Shanghai, competing ruthlessly to charm wealthy patrons. To cap off her shifts, she runs money for her grandmother, the exclusive surgeon to the most powerful gang in the city. A position her grandmother is pressuring her to inherit…
When a series of cabaret dancers are targeted―the attacker stealing their faces―Jingwen fears she could be next. And as the faces of the dancers start appearing on wealthy foreign socialites, she realizes Shanghai’s glittering mirage of carefree luxury comes at a terrible price.
Fighting not just for her own safety but that of the other dancers―women who have simultaneously been her bitterest rivals and only friends―Jingwen has no choice but to delve into the city’s underworld. In this treacherous realm of tangled alliances and ancient grudges, silver-armed gangsters haunt every alley, foreign playboys broker deals in exclusive back rooms, and the power of gods is wielded and traded like yuan. Jingwen will have to become something far stranger and more dangerous than her grandmother ever imagined if she hopes to survive the forces waiting to sell Shanghai’s bones.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
In Daughter of Calamity it’s like the city has a spirit of its own. There’s this juxtaposition between the glittering decadence of the dance hall and what lies outside. For Jingwen, her world is one of difficult compromises. Raised by her grandmother, she desperately doesn’t want to follow in her footsteps. She doesn’t want to be beholden to the gangs, their speed dial doctor, but Jingwen is going to learn that she doesn’t know yet what she’d do to survive. Immediately, one of the elements I loved was the setting. In Shanghai, we can instantly see the different identities and faces they wear.
All of it specifically has to do with the foreign influences. The pandering, the changing of names, the learning of languages. Throughout Daughter of Calamity Jingwen has to turn over what it means to call Shanghai home. What powers deserve to be there and which shouldn’t be allowed to encroach. There’s a mix of the glittery, the sacrifice of exploitation and evolution. Additionally, I loved the theme of sacrifice.
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For Jingwen to survive the monsters, will she have to become one? What could saving herself and the ones she love cost her? The people of Shanghai are turning over the ideas of what progress will cost them. Whether it means they have to give up their ways of life, their traditions, their loved ones. But for Jingwen, she explores loyalty through fear or love. She explores what real power is and whether she has the stomach to become the puppet master. Do we end up becoming the person we never thought we would be?
Daughter of Calamity is also a story about family. The inter-generational family of mothers, daughters, and grandmothers who are all grappling with what it takes to survive. Find Daughter of Calamity on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.