ORACLE BONE IS A CRACKERJACK READ, A SUSPENSEFUL QUEST NOVEL THAT FLIPS CONVENTION.

Heart Sutra, the key Buddhist text the older monk has brought from India – in much the same way, layering his concerns and questions to create a vivid portrait.

We are gifted, by novel’s conclusion, not only with a heroic narrative centred on two women, but a historical novel in which the course of nation, a culture, a religion and an entire world are shaped by two women and a gay monk. To Kwa’s considerable credit, readers are not alerted to the significance of this. Rather, the events of Oracle Bone unfold with the unspoken authority that this is how these events unfolded, and it would be ridiculous to question it with something so petty as gender concerns.

Despite its considerable strengths, however, the novel stumbles, somewhat, on a stylistic level. While there is much to be said for a lean narrative style, for allowing the reader to imagine rather than boring them with pages of description, and for allowing action and dialogue to lead – Kwa seems to have taken these approaches a bit too far.

The style of Oracle Bone is so tight that readers may find difficulty in orienting themselves within the text. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, which keeps the world of the novel at a remove. I’m not a fan of over-description, but when a story moves from a monastery to an imperial bedroom to a brothel, one wants to get a sense of each of these environments, and how they differ from one another. Especially in a historical novel moving in what will likely be, for many readers, a distant culture.

Similarly, the parsed quality of the sentences – while pushing the narrative forward with considerable efficiency – often leads Oracle Bone to read like a young adult novel. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it may not be what readers are expecting.

While these issues may leave readers wondering about the book that might have been, there is considerable pleasure to be found in the book we have. Oracle Bone is a crackerjack read, a suspense-filled quest novel that flips conventions on their head without seeming to notice or care, a richly imagined thriller that raises the sort of fundamental questions it could take a lifetime of study to answer.