I particularly love the romance between Xiang and Anh because of how delicately it is balanced with the rest of the novel. So that was a nice surprise considering my ongoing quest to find some that are good. I didn’t realize that this was going to have a central sapphic romance, even though in retrospect I probably should’ve considering that it’s by C.B. They are likable both as individuals and as a couple.Ī particularly exciting element of A Clash of Steel is the romance. They feel fully-realized and their development over the course of the story is natural and believable. The two main characters-plus the important secondary ones-are all very well drawn.

This is definitely an adventure book, with exciting high-seas dramatics and pirate battles, but it takes the appropriate time to craft an engrossing bildungsroman as well, and neither story is lost in the other. Everything feels appropriately high stakes but is never so frantic that you lose track of what is happening or have to sacrifice character or connection for adventure.

Happily, in the years that separate the two novels, the writing has gotten there. My reservations about Not Your Sidekick all came from the writing the story was strong and the characters likable, but the writing wasn’t quite there to support it. Xiang is heartbroken and embarrassed… until Anh returns with an unusual request: unbeknownst to Xiang, the stolen pedant held a part of a treasure map, and Anh needs Xiang’s help to make sense of it. Her mother has other ideas, but eventually brings Xiang to the city where Xiang meets Anh, a girl with whom she has an immediate connection, but who steals a precious family heirloom. More than anything else, she wants to impress her cold, distant mother and be brought with her to Canton to run the bustling tea house there. Xiang has lived a very sheltered life in a small village, stealing moments to read adventure stories and to watch the boats coming and going. But then I watched Our Flag Means Death and got incredibly obsessed with pirates when I went to the library and saw A Clash of Steel and its beautiful cover, I decided it would be a good time to give it a shot. It had never quite made it to the top of the list because I’d previously read Lee’s novel Not Your Sidekick, and while I liked it, I didn’t necessarily like it enough to actively seek out her other work.

A good cover will do that for you, and A Clash of Steel has a gorgeous one that is objectively attractive, specific to its book, and stands out even amongst the hundreds of others on the shelf. Lee has been tentatively on my TBR since its publication. A Clash of Steel A Treasure Island Remix by C.B.

A Clash of Steel by C.B. Lee