Book review: Karma Of The Sun, a young adult fantasy set in the Himalayas, needs more spark
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Brandon Ying Kit Boey is the author of Karma Of The Sun, a young adult fantasy novel set in the Himalayas.
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF BRANDON YING KIT BOEY
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Karma Of The Sun
By Brandon Ying Kit Boey
Young Adult Fantasy/CamCat Books/Hardback/352 pages/$43.88/ Amazon
3 out of 5 stars
For lovers of post-apocalyptic young adult fantasy, Karma Of The Sun’s biggest selling point is that it takes the genre to a different place with its Himalayan setting and its mix of Buddhist philosophical and eschatological traditions.
It is not exactly language that flies off the page, but it is an otherwise interesting bildungsroman following a shunned Sherpa boy, the titular Karma, on his journey to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction.
Taking reference from a Buddhist prophecy in the Pali Canon that the end of the earth will be marked by the destruction of seven suns, Brandon Ying Kit Boey sets his novel in the ghastly aftermath of the sixth explosion.
His protagonist, Karma, lives in the shadow of his father’s betrayal of the village and subsequent disappearance.
When Karma fails to properly deliver a ritual offering of a living yak for the shaman, a mysterious message from the spirits pronounces that he will have to follow and find his father to prevent the end of the world.
An intriguing premise is given an all too cursory treatment in its first 50 or so pages, which sets out the plot but does not quite dive into the psychological turmoil of the end times or of the conflicted protagonist.
A conundrum on whether to undertake the same treacherous journey his father took, for example, goes from “I’ve said goodbye to a husband before. Must I do the same to a son?” to “You must finish what he started, Karma – as much as it breaks my heart” in all of two pages.
Karma is given more psychological depth and complexity once he enters the borderlands, where the young boy has to fend for himself and make difficult decisions about who to trust in his treacherous journey to find his father and seek the elusive Lama Child and the Seeing Stone.
He has vivid dreams of the four dignities – the phoenix, dragon, snow lion and tiger – motifs in Tibetan Buddhism symbolising the different aspects of enlightened being, which lend Karma a deeper interiority as he reckons with his magical gifts.
At other times, the prose is lacking in sensory qualities and displays a penchant for telling rather than showing.
It detracts from the plot, as in this paragraph: “Just down from the stables, a single animal is hitched to a tree. Its head perks up as it hears Karma’s approach. To Karma’s surprise he sees that it is the mule – the one Dorje gave him. Apparently, the rebels found it.”
Ultimately, Karma Of The Sun is an intriguing tale melded with Buddhist ideas that feels refreshing for a fantasy novel, although a greater magic with the language could have given the tale more spark.
If you like this, read: Vacant Steppes by Steven Sy (Balestier Press, 2021, $28.05, Amazon
