Review: No Place Like Home by Linh S. Nguyễn

~ Info ~

No Place Like Home by Linh S. Nguyễn

🖋 Author’s page
📚 Find the book here

~ Rating ~

⭐⭐⭐½

~ Review ~

No Place Like Home whisks a lonely immigrant teenager into the enchanted world of Silva, where she must undertake a dangerous magical quest and find her way “home.”

Lan is a homesick Vietnamese girl who has immigrated to Canada with her father. As she struggles to adjust to life in her new country, she finds a source of comfort in the fantasy books she borrows from the library . One day, as Lan turns the pages of a novel, a mysterious wind blows her right into the fantastic world she has been reading about – a world in which she has unexpected magical powers!

“Once upon a time in Silva, the land of lost and found, a powerful king named his price of admission… proof of heart, courage in good supply, a good story – and perhaps a witch.”
– No Place Like Home

I love the premise of No Place Like Home: a girl wanting to be part of a fantasy story suddenly finds herself drawn into one and discovers that she is a witch no less! It is surely many a fantasy-reader’s dream to be among their favourite fictional characters completing a fantastical quest, and it feels wonderful to experience this with Lan as she’s swept from her Toronto basement apartment to the magical world of Silva. It’s also fun to explore Silva with Lan and her new companions Annabelle and Marlow as they make their arduous trek to the capital to ask the King to reverse the magical spell ruining Annabelle’s homeland. The peculiar beings they meet along the way are especially intriguing. In fact, I would have liked to read more about the lives of the inhabitants of this alternate world!

No Place Like Home really shines when it’s describing the world of Silva and the unique magic that floats through the air there. Though the magic is generally invisible, witches can sense it and need only reach out their hands to feel it coursing through their fingers. It’s exciting to learn where this magic comes from, and read about Lan’s experiments with it as she develops her powers as a witch! I also enjoy how Vietnamese culture and language are brought into the book through Lan’s memories of home. This helps you to realize how hard it must be for Lan to face daily challenges as an immigrant in a new country and what a welcome escape Silva must be for her.

Aside from Lan, however, the book’s characters do not always seem convincing. Marlow in particular is rather flat, and he seems to exist mostly as Lan’s love interest. Although Annabelle on the whole seems more real, her tendency to continually break down in tears feels exaggerated, especially since Marlow, by contrast, is almost emotionless. The three characters make a questionable decision near the end of the book which is seen as “incredible” but which one cannot help but think could easily have resulted in disaster. The story wraps up quickly afterwards with a straightforward resolution. One thing that especially bothered me about the story was how the main characters keep hurting and killing Silva’s creatures and magical beings (such as tree guardians and magical crows) in order to pass without permission through their territories, among other things. This is sad and you can’t help thinking that Silva is being harmed as well as helped by these three adventurers. It would have been more fun if they had made more use of their wits and less use of their weapons.

No Place Like Home‘s story about a Vietnamese girl trying to make a place for herself in two new worlds – the everyday world of Canada and the magical world of Silva – has a lot of appeal, but flaws like occasionally flat characterization and a tendency to kill off magical beings when they stand in the main characters’ way detract from the reader’s enjoyment.