Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
(Bantam, 2025)
Reviewed by Phoebe Haywood
The title of Water Moon comes from the Japanese saying ‘Kyoka Suigetsu’ (‘Mirror Flower, Water Moon’), referring to something both beautiful and unattainable; much like how the moon’s reflection in water will dissolve into ripples if touched. Samantha Sotto Yambao says that to read her latest book—and UK debut—is “to dive into the water and touch the moon”. I have to agree; this ethereal novel is mesmerising.
It opens in a pawnshop in the backstreets of Tokyo that is discoverable only to those who have made choices they deeply regret. Here, such customers can pawn those choices and receive a new peace of mind in letting them go. But on Hana’s first day as the pawnshop’s new owner, she finds the shop ransacked, a precious choice stolen and her father missing. Then the mysterious Kei walks in and offers to help.
What ensues is a whirlwind quest into ‘Isekai’ (‘other world’), the realm of this odd pawnshop and the moon beneath the water’s surface. On their journey to find Hana’s missing father, she and Kei jump through rain puddles, sail within a song, and become drawings in a story—to name but a few of their adventures.
The sheer imaginative power of Sotto Yambao’s world-building is humbling; Water Moon is pure fantasy, with a fable-like ability to fold the familiar into new shapes like origami. I loved “the Midnight Bridge” that “connects night and morning”, where “people cross over it in their dreams”—because the hours between dusk and dawn do seem to pass in a blink through sleep and here is a magical explanation as to why. Well-known, mundane experiences (like sleep) have depth in ‘Isekai’, where they manifest as features of the world that the protagonists must face, navigate, and overcome. Water Moon gives our world an uncanny and dreamlike underbelly, the creativity of which is an absolute joy to read.
A.Y. Chao, author of Shanghai Immortal, called Water Moon “a magical Ghibli-esque world”. ‘Ghibli-esque’ is a perfect description, partly because of the clear influences from Japanese culture, religion, and folklore, but also because ‘Isekai’ has a more sinister side that resembles the darker fantasy realms of Studio Ghibli. Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs in Spirited Away, for example, while Sophie is cursed straight off the bat in Howl’s Moving Castle. Likewise, Hana and Kei are pursued in Water Moon by the overwhelmingly creepy Shiikuin: faceless authority figures wearing Noh masks who collect the choices sold to the pawnshop. They are not happy that a choice has gone missing…nor that Hana has started to deviate from her fated path.
The freedom to make one’s own choices is a central theme of the book. The people of ‘Isekai’, including Hana, are tattooed with their individual destinies; failure to adhere to them is mortally punished by the Shiikuin. As Hana’s father says, “the only choice [they] are allowed to make in this world is between death or fate”. The customers of the pawnshop may regret their past choices, but at least they could make them in the first place—and Water Moon emphasises the value of such freedom by exploring what it actually means for those customers to pawn away those choices.
Water Moon is a wonderful read, with gorgeous prose and a pace that snaps around hairpin twists as the protagonists unravel the mystery behind Hana’s missing father. But the plot—and theme—are eclipsed by the overpoweringly dazzling fantasy of its setting, which evoked more wonder in me than any book has achieved for a long time.
Review from BSFA Review 25 - Download your copy here.