Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor
Written by Xiran Jay Zhao
Narrated by Eric Yang
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Zachary Ying never had many opportunities to learn about his Chinese heritage. His single mom was busy enough making sure they got by, and his schools never taught anything except Western history and myths. So Zack is woefully unprepared when he discovers he was born to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China for a vital mission: sealing the leaking portal to the Chinese underworld before the upcoming Ghost Month blows it wide open.
The mission takes an immediate wrong turn when the First Emperor botches his attempt to possess Zack’s body and binds to Zack’s AR gaming headset instead, leading to a battle where Zack’s mom’s soul gets taken by demons. Now, with one of history’s most infamous tyrants yapping in his headset, Zack must journey across China to heist magical artifacts and defeat figures from history and myth, all while learning to wield the emperor’s incredible water dragon powers.
And if Zack can’t finish the mission in time, the spirits of the underworld will flood into the mortal realm, and he could lose his mom forever.
Xiran Jay Zhao
Xiran Jay Zhao is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Widow series. A first-gen Hui Chinese immigrant from small-town China to Vancouver, Canada, they were raised by the internet and made the inexplicable decision to leave their biochem degree in the dust to write books and make educational content instead. You can find them @XiranJayZhao on Twitter for memes, Instagram for cosplays and fancy outfits, TikTok for fun short videos, and YouTube for long videos about Chinese history and culture. Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor is their first middle grade novel.
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Reviews for Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor
17 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not the most original idea - the influence of both Percy Jackson and Yu-Gi-Oh! is all to obvious. This isn’t something the author has kept secret (hell, I found about this book thanks to that), but it does kill the enjoyment of the first half of the book a bit given that you can already guess, more or less, the thing that is going to happen next. Once the characters establish themselves in China story gets much better and more interesting, and there is couple of twists and nuances to the characters’ original design that will keep you on your toes. It’s also refreshing that everything is kept in a gray area or morality which helps the reader get invested more.
By no means was this book meant for my age group, but as someone who used to work a lot with both children and in children’s bookstores, I wholeheartedly recommend you get this for your kids. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Percy Jackson but with better prose. This book stuns me with how good it is. The characters react intelligently, the twist feels real and the response to it feels just as appropriate. YA may not be this authors first love but they do an amazing job with it.