TL;DR the book is good. Minor spoilers ahead.
I found The Beast Player at the library for one reason, and that reasons name is Caitlin Kelly, the excellent narrator of The Beast Player’s audiobook. I had previously listened to Bookish and the Beast1 by Ashley Poston which is also narrated by Caitlin Kelly and decided that she was good enough narrator to merit a search at the public library2, hence how I found The Beast Player3. The search paid off.
The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi follows Elin4 in a bildungsroman exploration of loss, discovery, and learning. As a young girl, Elin loves to watch and learn from her mother, Sohyon, as she cares for the Toda, the war beasts of the Aluhan5. The beasts are powerful and effective mounts, and the safety of the nation is dependent on their wellbeing, so when the beasts under Sohyon’s care die, she is put under immense scrutiny by the village’s citizens. Further exacerbating the suspicion is the fact that Sohyon is part Ahlyo a distrusted and secretive ethnic group suspected of wielding magical powers. After a sham investigation, Sohyon is blamed for the deaths of the Toda and sentenced to death. Elin, fearful for her mother chases her and attempts to rescue her mother, failing to save her and being taken far from home as a result.
Washing up on the shores of a distant swamp she is taken in by a friendly teacher turned beekeeper6 who adopts her and educates her in a wide variety of subjects including animal care. While under his tutelage she sees a Royal Beast, a species of giant bird that symbolizes the power of the Yojeh, the land’s ruler. Fascinated, she observes them yearly and eventually seeks out a sanctuary for the care of the Royal Beasts where she learns to care for them and discovers secrets that will change the face of the kingdom forever. (I’ve done my best to avoid major spoilers, and the last third or so of the book has been cut to keep the story interesting.)
Along with the Elin’s bildungsroman elements, the story also features the POV7 of Ialu, a guard to the empress. The secondary POV emerges slowly but provides important context to the actions and story beats that Elin faces until the two stories inevitably collide towards the end of the book.
The kingdom the book is set in is complex in its political machinations and a fascinating concept that it is interesting to learn about and to see the world wrought by the author. The general worldbuilding is also fascinating, especially the mechanics involved with the Royal Beasts and Toda. However, I found the story is far more entertaining when instead of rationally assessing of visual descriptions of the beasts, I envisioned giant ducks like one above as Royal Beasts and large alligators like the one below as the Toda. While perhaps inaccurate to the story (strangely enough alligators don’t have horns, Toda do8) the joy I take in imagining giant ducks overrides my instinct for story accuracy.
Would I recommend The Beast Player? Yes.
The story isn’t action packed, but it’s a heartwarming tale and an excellent entry in the bildungsroman genre. By the end of it, you really get to know Elin and that knowledge provides the climax with solid emotional weight. The audiobook is also very well performed and is absolutely worth a listen.
I found this book at my local library, but you can also find it on Amazon and probably other places where books are sold. Also, it was apparently an anime, I have no idea if it was a good anime, but I appreciate that it had a wikipedia page for name spellings. Expect a review of the sequel at some point, depending on how reading I feel in the next 2 months.
This will probably get a review later, but the long story short is that if you have terrible takes on Star Wars you’ll probably enjoy the book.
In many ways because I felt the Bookish and the Beast was unworthy of her talent
I began this trend of searching up audiobook narrators with Emily Woo Zeller after she read I did NOT give that SPIDER superhuman intelligence and was rewarded with Loveboat, Taipei whose sequel will also be getting a review shortly.
I have used the spellings of names that I found on the wikipedia page for the Japanese version of
The Grand Duke rules his kingdom and protects the Yojeh from invaders.
This book taught me nearly everything I know about beekeeping, so I hope the information is accurate.
and before you people who have read the book say it, yes, I know the Aluhan’s sons also get POV chapters, I’m just not counting them because
I don’t want to look up their names
they really aren’t that significant to the content of this review
Toda should probably not actually be capitalized