The Bodhisattva

One of the really surprisingly delightful reads that I was bribed to praise last year was Paul Park’s A Princess of Roumania. It’s always a joy to read a book like this as at the time I had never read any of Park’s prior work and it gave me an opportunity to explore yet another author’s volume of work. While Miranda Popescu’s (the main protagonist) scenes seemed at times a bit uncertain, the other prominent point of view of Nicola Ceausescu I felt stabilized the book, and although it may be somewhat over-probing in finding an excuse of the former’s inadequacies, it at times really enhanced the atmosphere of an uncertain child’s explorations of her own world and the one she already resided in.\par
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It has becoming increasingly difficult to find planned multiple-book sequences worth keeping up with, and even with that stigma attached to it (as the first book in such a series), I felt this was one of the best books I read last year, and I’m glad to be reminded (and want to remind others) the second book, The Tourmaline comes out in the second week of July.\par
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You can read my review of A Princess of Roumania from last year, as well as an interview I conducted with Park where he talks about the sequence and how it represents a vastly different approach for him as a writer.\par
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It just seems like one of those reads that although it eventually garnered praise from a lot of generally reputable sources and was a a product of a major publisher it was a still bit under the radar. The covers may throw some people off (and apparently The Tourmaline has one of those SciFi.com tags on it) but it’s really one of those instances that they seem really apt after you read them, and not in terms of confirming early suspicions (regarding the first book).\par
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Looks to be at least the beginnings of a nice little series.\par
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Tags: books\par