Deadly Flowers: A Book Review

 

        

         Deadly Flowers is a middle-grade novel that follows Kata, a stellar student at ninja academy for girls. Kata has the honor of being assigned her first solo mission, an assassination. However, upon realizing that her target is a little boy, Kata has second thoughts about her mission and has to make a difficult choice.   I have very mixed feelings about this book, but I still prefer to start with what I liked first.

         The author certainly did her research when writing about the ninja. As a self-identified ninja enthusiast, I enjoyed it. I feel she could have gone a little further with the factual information about the ninja and the like, but I do know that the average reader may not appreciate this the same way I would and it’s a story not an encyclopedia.

         The beginning set at school and were my favorite parts. I liked how the girls, who are mostly orphans, looked out for each other in their own ways and the nicknames they gave to their instructors behind their backs. It all made the school feel more like a real place.

What didn’t work for me:

           Kata’s arrogance blew my mind. She’s a fifteen-year-old ninja who has been training her entire life. I think she should be allowed to have some confidence, but to a point. She constantly thinks about how she is so much better than her two companions, and mentions how it has been years since she has been punished at school for failing even the most difficult of an exercise because she is just that amazing. Speaking of her two companions, Kata has a strong disdain towards Saiko. Kata reminds the reader of this dislike every other page. In my opinion, I see it as believable that someone like Kata may not click with someone like Saiko immediately. However, we do not need the narrator to more or less say “I don’t like this person” nearly every time the character breathes. (That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it did happen enough to grow tiresome).

Towards the end of the book, the characters seem to only take action because the plot needs to keep moving so people need to do things. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will leave it at that.

         My final gripe is the way the book handles foreshadowing. During the story, things happen that may make a critical reader raise an eyebrow. That is okay. What is not okay to me is that when this comes to fruition, the narration reminds us of every single moment that led up to this. Stuff the reader is already aware of. This bothered me because it came across more like the writing saying, “You are too simple to remember what happened so I am going to remind you.”

         Deadly Flowers is okay. I feel it actually could have used more information on the Ninja, but I know I am just an enthusiast so this might not be the opinion of the average reader. The action scenes (mostly blow-by-blow descriptions) could also use some work, but it is not the main focus of the book.

I will admit that a lot of my issues with this book are personal pet peeves of mine, foreshadowing, the main character’s personality, etc so I would say if you read this and think what bothered me would probably bother you as well, then this book might not be for you. However, if my concerns don’t seem like that big of a deal then I think it would not hurt at all to give it a try.