First impressions review: Mooncakes, by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker


        I was going through a really rough week when my Powell’s Books order containing this graphic novel arrived on my doorstep. This adorable tale of a witch and a werewolf who had been childhood friends reuniting, fighting a demon-summoning cult, and falling in love was exactly what I needed. It is a relatively simple story that doesn’t delve super deeply into the characters’ traumas like many adult graphic novels do, particularly those involving supernatural creatures…but that isn’t what it is meant to do. What it DOES do is create a whimsical, magical atmosphere and a family setting that feels welcoming and affirming to those of any age who might find themselves feeling a bit weird or different.

            Nova Huang is a young witch working in her grandmother’s secretly-magical bookshop. She hears a rumor from her friend Tatyana (Tat) that a white wolf (“Huge! Like Jon Snow’s”) has been seen in the local woods and goes to check it out. She finds her old friend Tam Lang fighting a demon-possessed horse, helps fend it off, and insists Tam come stay with her family, rather than sleeping in the woods as they’ve apparently been doing. Tam says that the demon was recently awoken and can supposedly be defeated with werewolf magic. The problem is that no-one, even the werewolves, actually knows how to channel the energy produced by the shape-shift to do something like that. Nova, her grandmas, and even scientist Tat (who is not comfortable with the physics-bending properties of magic) all jump in to help research the problem, and in the process Nova and Tam find their youthful crush on each other rekindling. However, there are some things Tam knows about this demon that they aren’t saying because the truth is too painful…and a further betrayal only makes that worse.

 

            OK, can we talk about the artwork? The colors are lovely - better than they probably look in these photos I had to take because my scanner couldn't capture the inner side of the page! -the characters’ faces are expressive, and their character designs are unique. Nova’s style is more ‘boho witchy’ rather than goth, and I love that Tam still has fangs and slightly pointy ears even in human form – so cute! Speaking of cute, the woodland spirits the grandmothers go to consult with are almost painfully adorable, resembling capybaras with branch antlers, sea-slugs sprouting mushrooms or crystals, colorful bird-butterfly hybrids, and so on. But don’t let that fluffy appearance fool you: they can be pretty useful in a fight!

 

            I watched a video essay recently where the creator – I forget who at the moment – said something like: “Don’t get me wrong: I love gay vampires. Give me all the gay vampires! But can we stop making vampirism a metaphor for gayness?” I tend to agree, and really appreciate stories like this that include both supernatural otherness and more realistic factors that might lead to someone being marginalized, or which present a challenge that not everyone is going to understand or be sympathetic with. When a story does that, it broadens the ways in which readers/watchers might find themselves relating to the challenges the characters face and avoids accidentally creating unfortunate implications – which is a risk when using metaphor only1 – in favor of illustrating both similarities and differences between various kinds of marginalization. For instance, Tam is both a werewolf and non-binary (thus exhibiting in-betweenness in more than one way), but the challenges those pose are not the same. One of the baddies2 actually leverages one to disguise what he wants with the other, though – counting on Tam’s mother believing the story that Tam was just a troubled kid who ran away. Nova is at least partially deaf, which plays into the story in several ways. For instance, she was encouraged to learn non-verbal magic at a very young age (which comes in handy) and there is a neat magical trick she’s able to pull that leverages her hearing aids3. But it also means she definitely wasn't going to be woken up by Tam sneaking off to unwisely try to handle things on their own!

 

1. For instance, no matter what JKR said later, neither gay people nor AIDS appear to exist in ‘Harry Potter’ world, but Remus Lupin being a werewolf is used in a way that parallels at least the latter*. That that would be OK - the story shows Lupin as a good person who doesn’t deserve to be continually fired from his jobs when his condition becomes known – except that other werewolves ARE depicted as being evil predators who infect people on purpose. Which…oof!

* Lupin/Sirius, AKA Wolfstar, is the only HP ship I’d care to defend; they clearly care about each other a lot, and the thought of them running around the woods in their canine forms together is frickin’ adorable. Although, considering both characters get killed off just to make Harry sad…yeah, probably better JKR didn’t go there!

2. Damn, do I kind of wish Tam had eaten him or Nova had turned him into a beetle - but they are the good guys, and that would get a little too dark for this book!

3. Which was probably inspired by ‘A Quiet Place’…but, whatever, it works here too.

 

Nova and Tam are Chinese-American - hence the name of the book - but the Mid-Autumn Festival4 Nova’s family throws is mixed with the Jewish harvest festival Sukkot  when the two happen to align, because that’s her other granny’s background. By the way, though I don’t think it’s ever said, the grannies are definitely a couple, not opposite-sides-of-the-family grandmas! It is lovely to see Tam get welcomed in by Nova’s magical family and even her non-magical friend5, because it is pretty clear that that hasn’t been their usual experience! We also get an interesting version of the orphan-protagonist: Nova’s parents are definitely dead, but they aren’t gone in the usual way, and that makes it both easier and harder for her to cope. 

 

4. The celebration is in large part about moon-watching, which is a cute touch for a story involving a werewolf! More on mooncakes and the festival here.

5. Tat’s pretty chill with it, apart from the initial shock:“There are werewolves too? Are you kidding me?” She eventually grumbles that they should just give her a list of all the magical creatures that are real – so she won’t be caught off-guard in the future.

 

Overall recommendation: A sweet story, and a fun, light, autumnal read. This would be a particularly good gift for any young person in your life who secretly wishes it could be Halloween all year.

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