Book Review of Lori M. Lee’s Pahua and the Soul Stealers

 Book Review of Lori M. Lee’s Pahua and the Soul Stealers 

Many of you have probably heard of Rick Riordan, the author of the amazing Percy Jackson series and a library of other great books. Recently—and by recently, I mean a couple of months ago—I learned that Rick Riordan and his editor, Stephanie Lurie, publish adventurous, middle grade level mythology/folklore related books written by other talented authors, who as Riordan states, “are actually from those cultures [they write about] and know the mythologies better than I do.” Thus, when I was looking through my bookshelf of unread books for Free Reading Day, Pahua and the Soul Stealers by Lori M. Lee—one of the many novels that Riordan helped publish—caught my eye.

This novel is written from the point of view of Pahua Moua, a unusual eleven-year-old Hmong girl with the unique ability to see spirits. Pressured by some of her peers, Pahua goes to the old, haunted bridge in her neighborhood where she accidentally releases a super powerful and bad bridge spirit. The bridge spirit takes the soul of Pahua’s little brother, Matt. OH NO! And so, Pahua with the help of Miv, her cat spirit friend, and Zhong, a shaman apprentice in training with some attitude problems, decide to go and seek advice from the wise Shao, a shaman who—for successfully reaching the Sky Kingdom or the home of the gods without warning—was blessed with immortality and the ability to “cosmos-google” the future, but was also cursed to help all the travelers who sought for his advice. From Shao, Pahua learns that she is the reincarceration of Shee Yee, the first and most powerful shaman warrior. Shao also warns Pahua to be aware of some mysterious dangers lurking ahead before he falls asleep. Pahua soon learns that in order to defeat the powerful bridge spirit to free Matt’s soul, she must acquire Shee Yee’s lightning ax. On top of that, trio must work fast because if they cannot free Matt's soul within three days, Matt would be gone forever.

Just like Rick Riordan’s books, Pahua and the Soul Stealers is packed with humor. I found myself laughing at some of the jokes as I read. Plus, Lee does a great job conveying the complexities of friendship between the characters. In addition, the plot twists were most clever and unexpected, which I loved. Personally, I think that it is interesting how Pahua tries to avoid fighting when facing other monsters that she encounters. Since I had never knew anything about Hmong culture before reading this book, I am glad that Lee provided a glossary regarding all the Hmong vocabulary she uses because without them, I would have been lost. Overall, my rating for this book would be 4.5/5.

-Kaylee Z