Book Review: ‘Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor’ is a Tsunami of Fun
Xiran Jay Zhao’s YA novel Iron Widow rocked my world, so it makes sense that their middle-grade novel Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor would too. The story follows Chinese American twelve-year old boy Zachary Ying as his ancestor Emperor Qin Shi Huang leads him across China on a quest to save the world from evil spirits escaping from the underworld. Since Qin Shi Huang can’t take over Zachary’s body directly, he speaks to Zachary through an AR gaming headset. Zachary is joined by two other twelve-year-olds, Simon and Melissa, also hosting ancient Chinese Emperors, Tang Taizong and Wu Zetian respectively, as they battle monsters and immortal spirits using special powers (Zachary can control water, while Simon and Melissa’s powers mostly revolve around weapons).
It isn’t necessary to know anything about Chinese history before reading this, which I’m thankful for since my American education was mostly like: China had a bunch of emperors who were feudal and stuff but now they have a president even though it’s not really a democracy, that’s all you need to know. Even though Zachary is Chinese, he was raised in the US without being taught Mandarin or any Chinese myths or stories, so the reader gets to learn some of those Chinese stories along with him. What I particularly loved was Zachary’s character being Muslim, as I’ve never read anything beyond a few news articles about Chinese Muslims, so this is the first “first-hand” account I’ve ever encountered. Even though this character is fictional, the fact that his father was murdered by the government for speaking out on behalf of Chinese Muslims brings a truthful resonance to the story in a way we don’t often see in fiction. It’s so important to bring minority voices to the forefront, which Zachary does doubly so by being Muslim and queer, since both of those identities are typically shunned by the Chinese government.
Despite being twelve, Zachary shows a lot of maturity as he tries to wrestle with the morality of his actions on his quest, though his young age does show in his reluctance to stand his ground at first. Most middle-grade novels paint the heroes as all good and the villains as all bad, but this story more honestly shows both sides as rather gray. The heroes do morally dubious things to get the job done and the villains aren’t necessarily murderous lunatics. There are lessons to be learned about how the truth can mean different things to different people and how complicated decision-making can be in reality. With this complexity, this middle-grade story can appeal to people of all ages; I would recommend it to anyone interested in a fun adventure with some basic Chinese history.
Zachary YIng and the Dragon Emperor is out May 10, 2022
