1 out of 4 stars
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The Dancing Spirit is the debut novel of Chaute Akira. It tells the story of Steve, a down on his luck alcoholic, and his attempts to fix his life. After choosing to study philosophy instead of pre-law, he is financially cut off by his step-father. His life starts to quickly deteriorate after that. When we first meet him, Steve is about to be kicked out of his apartment in the middle of winter. His step-father still won’t help him and his mother never had the courage to step up for her son. Matthew is a novice pastor who is just beginning his ministry. He’s young, inexperienced and full of doubt about how to do his job. Despite that, he is the one that is sent Steve’s way to help him in his troubled times.
However, that is only half of the story of The Dancing Spirit. The other half takes place in the spirit world where angels and demons fight battles for the souls of mortals. Steve’s alcoholism is caused by Kachina, the dancing spirit, who beguiles him into drinking. Everything in the book’s world from nightmares to bouts of anxiety is directly caused by demons, and only angels can fight them.
The book has some heavy Christian themes. It’s definitely not for the non-religious. At times it felt inspiring, but that’s about all the good that I can say about it. The Dancing Spirit’s biggest weakness came from its many angels and demons that overtook the story after the second half of the book. There are more spirits than humans in the book, but few stuck in my memory. Kachina is the most vivid because she actually has a character. Her feelings and personality flaws are described, so she was easy to remember. The rest, unfortunately, are just names on the page with nothing unique about them.
Also, the author’s obsession with ritual really weighed the book down. The ceremonies and actions of the spirits are described in great detail, which made it feel more like a manual than a fictional story. There’s more devotion to the story’s mythology than to character building. There are numerous fight scenes between the spirits, but they quickly became boring because I felt no connection to them. The book has a complex world, but it’s all told, not shown.
While the human characters are at least more memorable, they hardly have more depth. The story takes place in a really short amount of time, so we barely get to know them. The fact that their decisions are influenced by external entities meant that it was hard to empathize with them. Do they really have a will of their own? Are their decisions really their own?
However, what really made reading The Dancing Spirit a chore were the many very obvious grammar errors. Incorrect spelling, incorrect words, incorrect capitalization, and so on. The mistakes were so numerous that I eventually stopped keeping track of them. They made the book seem very unprofessional.
Due to all those reasons, I can’t in good heart recommend The Dancing Spirit to anyone. I give the book 1 out of 4 stars.
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The Dancing Spirit
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