Book Review: A Thousand Steps Into Night

• Author: Traci Chee
• Date Read: 5/1/23
• Rating: ★★★☆☆

The Goodreads blurb for this book could not be any more enticing to someone like me. I’ve recently read a lot of fantasy stories that use different Asian countries as an inspiration for their worldbuilding, but I’ve never read one based on Japan if you can believe it. Then there was the added factor of demons, feral gods, quests, and curses. What more could I want? Well, this book did let me down in some areas, but thankfully not in those promised ones.

A Thousand Steps Into Night is about Miuko. She is a loud girl who lives with her father and runs their inn. One night while she is outside of the wards of their village, she is attacked and cursed by a female demon. She begins to turn into it, and when she is discovered, her father turns her away and says she’s not his daughter. She leaves the village to find a way to return herself to normal, encountering many obstacles, new friends, and enemies along the way.

A cute little premise, right? I could not wait to dive into this book and devour it in only a few hours. And devour I did, only to discover I didn't really like it as much as I hoped I would! But let's discuss the highlights of this book first.

I could be biased since I do enjoy Asian-inspired fantasy novels (And there are so many coming out now! How can I refuse?), but I do think that this is great in terms of worldbuilding. So many things were packed in that I found interesting. The folklore was so rich and enticing, and I found myself wanting to read more about the real Japanese versions it was based on. The little footnotes were a great addition to the book, and I enjoyed reading them to get a better understanding of some of the cultural aspects. I would say that at times they got to be a little overkill, but they are an appreciated part nonetheless.

The main characters were likable for the most part. Geiki’s little quips and comedy had me actually laughing and not just in my head going “Oh, that’s funny.” That reminds me, I should read more books with comedic characters. I like Miuko as a character. At first, I was worried she would be one of those “not-like-other-girls” protagonists because she’s set up to be different and strange. I think that plague of those kinds of characters are slowing cleansing themselves from novels and nature is healing. She felt relatable. Realistically relatable. When she was making stupid decisions I couldn’t boo her because if I were in a similar situation, I probably would’ve done the same. So many other characters were fascinating and had me reading faster just to know more about them. Sidrisine was enchanting and by far one of my favorites. The whole part about her card game was a nice little break from everything going on.

And with the good must come the bad. There was absolutely terrible handling of feminism and patriarchy. I have a bone to pick with how awfully it was written. The commentary popped up too many times just to give me nothing of substance on the matter. It never went farther than the surface level of “women can’t do anything around here because they’re weak and quiet.” That is true for this society, but I feel like Chee could’ve gone deeper into this idea. Instead, we are just told how the women are so oppressed and Miuko feels so free as a demon and not a woman in society.

This book had such odd pacing. The beginning was faster, with all of this crazy stuff happening, but then everything just started to get slow. I would be reading and thinking that the end would have to be within sight, only to discover that there was still a good portion of it left. It was also strange that the book felt like it was going so slow, but the actual events were going by so fast that I’m not sure I could honestly tell you every important plot point at the end. Characters would be introduced that really had no significance and would be gone in the blink of an eye.

I feel that there is some inconsistent characterization on Miuko’s part. The story begins by telling us how she is so incredibly loud. How important is this later? Well, it only seems to come up when it’s important to the story. There’s not really anything in the way she behaves on the regular that would make me read this without that beginning chapter and think that her being loud was a part of her character. Then there was the underutilization of characters. When we first got a look at the kyakyozuya he seemed like such an interesting character to me that I was excited to read more about him…but that did not happen. He was just there to do nothing much, apparently. He didn’t really seem that important to the story except for one specific part where he had to give Miuko some information. If he had been a throwaway character like so many others, I might’ve been able to forgive that, but he is so prevalent that whenever he shows up I kept thinking about what a waste he was.

A Thousand Steps Into Night was a nice little fantasy read but I felt that the negatives outweighed the positives. I think that if Chee just cleaned up a few things in her writing, then this had the potential of being a better story. I would still like to read any future novels by Chee, and I’m truly excited to see what she comes up with.