Daughter of Xanadu

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Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club com, October 4, 2011 (view all comments by Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club com)
Emmajin chafes at the restrictions that would keep her from joining the army. Her grandfather is the Great Khan Khubilai, and she would like nothing more than to please him with her skills at archery. Instead of spending time with her mother and sister, Emmajin practices with her cousin Surin, the oldest male grandchild of the Great Khan and his expected successor one day.

Emmajin’s normal way of life changes, but not in ways she expects. First, she meets a foreigner who brings gifts to her grandfather from a land far away. His name is Marco Polo, a merchant accompanying his father and uncle from Venice. The Great Khan wants her to spend time with him and gain his confidence, so she can learn more about the place he is from and how the Mongols may conquer it. Then Emmajin is accepted into the army and sent on a campaign to the far reaches of the empire. Suddenly Emmajin questions everything she believes she knows about herself and her people, as she finds herself becoming more and more interested in the round-eyed foreigner.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang is a sweeping tale of adventure and romance that fascinates with its descriptions of life in the Mongol court of the Great Khan. Emmajin is a brave character who is not afraid to go after what she wants or change her mind once she sees her dream is not what she thought it was. Through her eyes we see the magnificence of the Khan’s empire, and we also see a hunger to know more about the lands beyond it. She knows her interest in Marco Polo is forbidden; yet she is determined to find a way for the two of them to be together. While Emmajin herself is a fictional character, many of the people and events around her are not, and the events make for great historical reading.

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Tom Carter, March 1, 2011 (view all comments by Tom Carter)
“Can you imagine, a mere girl fighting on the battlefield?”

The role of females in combat is a debate as timeless as war itself, and one that remains divisive and unresolved to this century. While present-day arguments for and against allowing women in the military revolve around psychological and biological issues, back in olden times, one needed only cite “tradition” and “familial roles” to silence the detractors.

The teenaged heroine of Dori Jones Yang’s new 13th-century historical fiction novel, Daughter of Xanadu, is one such detractor, albeit immutable. Often imagining herself on the battlefield, “the son my father never had,” Emmajin Beki, the granddaughter of Mongolian king Khubilai Khan, learned to ride a horse before she could walk and can outshoot all her cousins in archery. She confidently and outspokenly aspires to emulate her female ancestors who assisted Chinggis Khan in conquering Asia (“the blood of all these earlier strong women flowed in my veins”).

Unfortunately for this princess, “the days of strong women had ended once luxurious court life had begun.” The Mongols, fattened, lazy and resting on their laurels, now prefer to tell stories of battles-past over lavish “orgies of excess” rather than engage in new wars, much to Emmajin’s restless discontent. When she makes known her desire to “become a legend” like real-life women warriors Aiyurug Khutulun and Hua Mulan of China, the great Khan placates her by sending her on a secret mission to spy on a family of foreign merchants currently visiting the Mongol court.

The merchants’ young son turns out to be one Marco Polo, the now-legendary Venetian journeyer credited for introducing Asian culture to the west. To Emmajin, however, he is just another “colored-eye man,” a court curiosity from Christendom whose gallantry and romantic gestures are as ridiculous to the manly Mongolians as his facial hair (“his beard was so thick I could imagine food sticking in it”).

Try as she might, however, Emmajin, caught in the peak of puberty, is unable to resist Marco’s western charm, and quickly finds herself enamored by his worldly vision (“I had learned to see the world through Marco’s eyes”) as well as his pelt. “What would the hair on his arm feel like?” she often fantasized about at night. But she was a Mongolian first, and reluctantly sacrifices her blossoming relationship with the foreigner to complete her spy mission (“He was not a friend but a source of information.”).

Authoress Dori Jones Yang is a Caucasian American, yet she is no stranger to writing from the perspective of conflicted adolescent Chinese girls, as evinced in her previous, award-winning novel, The Secret Voice of Gina Zhang. In Daughter of Xanadu, she hones in even deeper into the physiological confusion and emotional conflictions that make youth such a joy, turning Emmajin into such a hormonal wreck that this male reviewer often found himself gritting his teeth in frustration at such contradictive revelations as, “if he had pursued me, I would have rebuffed him. By holding himself aloof, he challenged me to win back his esteem.”

Daughter of Xanadu is not all teenage angst. As our protagonist matures, so does the content of the story. Emmajin eventually persuades Khubilai Khan to allow her to train for war against the Burmese at the Battle of Vochan (present-day Yunnan province), where the embarrassment of getting her period in front of the all-male troops is a bloody omen for what’s to come. Upon seeing her cousin slain, innocent Emmajin is transformed into a “mindless killer.” Bloodlust unleashed, the young princess swings her sword indiscriminately (“the hatred pounded in my ears…killing him felt good”), resulting in hundreds of men dead by her hand alone. One can only imagine all the Mulan vs. Emmajin fanfiction that this novel will inspire!

By story’s conclusion, Messer Polo, who witnessed and wrote about the Mongols’ real-life battle against the Burmese in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, has elevated “Emmajin the Brave” into the living legend she wanted to be, though she now regrets it. “These men needed a hero, but I no longer needed to be one.” She resigns her sword and rank, and departs with Polo back to Europe as the Khan’s emissary of peace, leaving the literary door wide open for a sequel.

Dori Jones Yang, who also penned the best-selling Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, is a skilled historian. In researching Daughter of Xanadu, Yang, fluent in Putonghua, traveled all the way to the ruins of Xanadu in remote Inner Mongolia, which this itinerant backpacker can personally attest is no easy journey. The short chapters and brief sentences, edited with razor precision for a younger audience, along with a helpful glossary for ESL students, make reading Daughter of Xanadu a breeze, though adults will admittedly want to beg this book back afterwards from their tweens.

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Tom Carter is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People

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Teri Crosby, January 3, 2011 (view all comments by Teri Crosby)
Do you remember Mulan? Well here is someone with a new twist, it is Emmajin the granddaughter of Khubilai Khan.
Yeah.
We open up to beautifully written story that transfers you to the vast empire of Khubilai Khan. War is always happening, but it is a more peaceful time, a changing time. The vast conquests are still expanding, but so is the idea of bettering the people.
Emmajin is a strong, athletic warrior of a girl who does not want the court life, but longs to be a soldier in the Khan's army. She practices with her prince half brothers and gains the attention of the Khan with her efforts.
Now Emmajin is on a secret and special mission that will take her to dragons and to war. What comes after is where the pivotal part of the tale hits.
The writing in this novel was so artistically done. I felt as if I could touch the grass in the vast open plains. See the marble palace, and fall in the heat of battle. There was not too much detail to as take away from the characters, but more than enough to becomes transfixed into this era of history. I loved the historical clarity and the references in time. I loved the mild romance and the thoughts the characters unveiled to us. Each section of the book held great depth and I was very pleased with this read. I recommend it whole heartedly to others and say to them: grab a cup of something warm, a chair and a blanket because you will not want to leave this one. It is a total finish with love, for me especially.
Also on a note, the cover was beautiful.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780385739238

Publisher:

Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers

Subject:

Historical - Ancient Civilizations

Author:

Jones Yang, Dori

Author:

Yang, Dori Jones

Subject:

People & Places - Asia

Subject:

Love & Romance

Subject:

Sex role

Subject:

Love

Subject:

Children s-Historical Fiction-Ancient Civilizations

Publication Date:

20110131

Binding:

HARDCOVER

Grade Level:

Young adult

Language:

English

Pages:

352

Dimensions:

8.5 x 5.94 x 1.2 in 1.015 lb