Review | US relations with Korean peninsula mirrored in story of ‘dragon queen’ empress
Plus, novelisation of Star Wars: The Last Jedi gives fans plenty to get excited about
by William Andrews
Lake Union
3.5/5 stars
William Andrews’ 2014 novel, Daughters of the Dragon, told the story of a Korean comfort woman, rewinding from the present day towards one of the darkest episodes of the second world war. That well-received book has now been succeeded by The Dragon Queen, which also excavates a little-known segment of Korean history.
We start in the present with a plane passenger arriving in Seoul. He is Nate, special assistant to the US secretary of state, and his mission is nothing less than to “help us prevent World War Three”. Fluent in Korean and married to a Korean woman, he is stumped by an antique comb with an ivory dragon inlaid that is sent to the president. The answer rests in the past, and the story of the Empress Myeongseong. Gone are the terse, choppy sentences of a desperate statesman. Instead, the author uses a richer, less strident voice for the young orphan Ja-young, who is first chosen and then groomed to be a dragon queen.
Andrews does a good job of marrying plot and history, even if the writing is more functional than glorious: “By the time I had settled into my role as Queen, Korea was undergoing great change” sounds oddly like a tourist guide. The question remains: “Did Min fail as a queen?” The answer is ambiguous, but Andrews at least succeeds.