From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
This was an ebook that rubbed me the wrong way from the off. I had some real problems with it. The first chapter launches right into an action scene and cuts off at the end of the chapter with a sword swishing through the air, but we know that Moira, the middle sister of the three the story is purportedly about, is not - as a main character - going to be killed in the first chapter. So, for me: no cliffhanger really - certainly no dramatic tension. I don't like that in books, nor in movies, nor in TV shows. It's just annoying, if not infuriating.
That wasn't what bothered me though, nor was it the fact that this is yet another series launcher, meaning that this is really a prologue, nothing more. There was nothing on Net Galley, nor on the book cover to indicate this though. If there had been, there is a good liklihood that I would not have asked to review this. I know authors like to write them and publishers love to publish them because they can be cash cows, but that will never be my motivation, and even that aside, I'm not much of a fan of series. To me they're lazy and derivative, being essentially the same story told over and over with precious little added to try and leaven or freshen the volumes.
What bothered me to begin with is the fact that I detest flashbacks unless they're done well, and to me there's nothing worse than launching into a story and then slamming on the breaks and bringing it to a screeching halt, before grinding it into reverse and backtracking. I thought that maybe it was just the next chapter so I began skimming and I realized: no, it's the entire novel that's backstory! The action part doesn't start again until chapter 25 (out of a total of some 27 chapters!). The first part of that late chapter acknowledges how appallingly long it's been since then, by essentially repeating word-for-word the last few paragraphs of chapter one!
To me this is bad writing. It's a huge no, and it turned me right off reading any more of this novel. That's not the only problem (and I'm not even going to talk about the common misuse of apostrophes in the book description!). For me I thought the ninja portions of the story might have imparted some life-lessons for young children based on that lifestyle, but this didn't seem much to be the case.
Originally ninjas were nothing more than spies - the James Bonds of their era which was around the fifteenth century (with possible roots running earlier and influence later). They learned stealth techniques and covert behavior, but were considered dishonorable precisely because of all this sneaking around! From what I could see of this story (and here again, I did not read it all) it seemed that it was much more focused on the mystical - which was never a part of the 'ninja code'. They had no magical powers (no one does!) and did not shapeshift into animal forms. A much better parallel for the Ninja life would have been to have drawn one with the resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War Two.
But even there you would have issues because, being of medieval times, Ninjas had no firearms. They were all about swords, knives, and other inventive metal weapons such as shuriken which were employed. Note that shuriken referred not just to the 'star disks' that are so fondly used in movies featuring these characters, but also to a variety of small weapons known collectively as shuriken. The thing is, in modern times, ninjas would have to be exceedingly skilful otherwise they would simply end-up being shot to death, so to present these behaviors and try to update them makes little sense - unless of course you had planned on using their methods to teach life lessons which doesn't really seem to have been employed much here.
On top of this the sisters, other than, of course, the super-heroic Moira, are kidnapped and yet nowhere does there seem to be any real effort at a police investigation. They're bypassed in favor of ninjas! I get that this somehow has to happen if the planned story is to be told, but to remove it so far from reality with so little justification doesn't get it done for me.
While it's never a good idea to teach kids to go outside the law, for the sake of a good story you can get away with it if it's done well and you can also somehow justify it, but as far as I could tell, that doesn't even seem to have been attempted here. It's just, 'oh, the hell with the police, let's take the law into our own hands', and I've seen that cliché too many times tossed in like bacon sprinkles on a salad in the forlorn hope that it will somehow improve limp lettuce and soggy tomatoes, and it doesn't. When you add this to the overdone trope of the black sheep of the family, of the poor ability to recognize who's behind the evil, of the bypassing of the law, of the improbable heroic rescue, it's too much. You have to ask what's really new here and how have these behaviors been justified, and the answers seem to be: nothing much and not at all. For me that's a serious negative.
One final problem is that the story is presented as one about sisters ("sister power at its best"), which I was ready to enjoy, but the truth is it's really all Moira. The other two sisters combined garner for themselves nowhere near as many mentions as Moira does, and Moira did not strike me as a very appealing character, to be honest. In view of all of this, I can't commend this as a worthy read.
