Spin the Dawn Cosplay + Review
cries because you can’t see the freckles i painted on but THEY WERE THERE
Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim, out now from Knopf Books for Young Readers
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Personal Rating: would absolutely sign my soul away to visit this world
Reasons to Read: Magical writing, fantastical descriptions and imagery, breathtaking story, likable and refreshing protagonist
THIS BOOK!! This was my absolute favorite kind of fantasy, one where the world is built with such stunning detail and described with such lyrical, magical prose that you can’t help but fall in love from page 1. They say insta love in YA is unrealistic. THEY’RE CLEARLY NOT COUNTING ME AND SPIN THE DAWN.
It read like one long fairytale, and I could just SEE it in my head as a gorgeous Disney movie. Yet, the writing never boggled itself down. Every description is so tightly controlled to paint a picture in your head with minimum words. It’s always hard to describe non-Western fantasy worlds because you can’t rely on many of the existing visual cues, and I was impressed with the efficiency with which the Asian-inspired world was articulated here.
“Sendo used to tell me fairy tales. How he’d love mine if he were still alive: the tale of a girl who’d sewn the sun, the moon, and the stars into three dresses.”
“It was the tale of a boy, too. A boy who could fly but not swim. A boy with the powers of the gods but the shackles of a slave. A boy who loved me.”
The story is about Maia Tamarin, the only daughter of a master tailor who’s much more keen than her 3 brothers to follow in her father’s career. However, this is a world where women are not allowed to be professionals and can only hope to marry well, so she has feared all her life that her talent and passion will never be put to use. But everything changes when a five-year-long civil war kicks off in her country of A’landi. Two of her brothers die on the frontlines, and the third comes home with a disability, leaving their father so emotionally shattered (on top of their mother dying a few years ago) that he can no longer continue his work. When he is summoned by the Emperor to partake in a competition to become the Imperial Tailor–and there ain’t no competition like a competition by Emperor Khanujin because a competition by Emperor Khanujin is MANDATORY–Maia then disguises herself as her younger brother and goes to represent their family instead, Mulan-style.
Maia may be a mild-mannered, family-focused girl, but she always demands respect in a very graceful way. I was pleasantly surprised by how she never let herself be pushed around, without resorting to being cold or unpleasant. It’s a refreshing take on the whole “girl has to fight for a place among men in a fantasy world” trope–we don’t all have to be badass warriors!
“My heart was for becoming a tailor: I learned to thread needles before I could walk, to make a line of perfect stitches before I could talk. I loved my needlework and was happy learning Baba’s trade instead of going out with my brothers. Besides, when Finlei taught me to spar and shoot arrows, I always missed the target. Even though I soaked up Sendo’s fairy tales and ghost stories, I could never tell one of my own. And I always fell for Keton’s pranks, no matter how often my older brothers warned me of them.
Baba proudly told me I was born with a needle in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other. That if I hadn’t been born a girl, I might have become the greatest tailor in A’landi, sought after by merchants from one coast of the continent to the other.”
This book is pitched as Mulan meets Project Runway, but the competition aspect is actually only the first 1/3 of the story. The ensuing 2/3rds, when Maia has to journey across A’landi to sew three gowns using “the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars,” is when the magic of the book REALLY dials up. When I first read this in the summary, I was like “damn, how are you gonna represent those things??” I was not disappointed. Each manifestation of the sun, moon, and stars and the process of retrieving them was so perfect and mesmerizing. I won’t spoil how they were done, so you’re gonna have to read for yourself!
What I can tell you is that the story never fell in pacing, with tangible threats always chasing at Maia and her eventual travel companion. A certain twist near the end that has me going 👀👀👀 at the sequel, which will be coming out on July 7 of this year!