Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor

This is the book that I needed when I was younger.

Zachary Ying hasn't really learned about the stories related to his Chinese heritage. He's busy trying to survive middle school, somewhere he already feels out of place as one of the few Asian Americans there, and playing Mythrealm, a game on his AR headset. However, when the First Emperor of China possesses his AR headset and Zack's mom's soul gets taken by demons, Zack has to journey across China to save his mom and prevent all the spirits from the underworld from flooding the mortal realm.

I loved that Zachary is Hui Chinese (a minority ethnic group) and Muslim. I absolutely loved the relationship between Zack, Melissa, and Simon. The way that the Qin Shihuang, Wu Zetian, and Tang Taizong's characters interacted with each other and with the children was also hilarious.

The way that Chinese historical events and Chinese mythology blended together with the sci-fi aspect of AR technology was really well done. I enjoyed reading about references to stories and other small pieces of Chinese culture that I grew up with - Sun Wukong, Nezha, the poems of Li Bai, the dragon boat festival - on and on, this book made me smile at all the pieces of familiarity brought to life in a new adventure.

Since the basis of this story includes a few famous emperors throughout Chinese history (as revived by legends of their lives), there's a lot of great commentary on what it means to be good versus bad, especially as a leader. All of these leaders did terrible and great things, all in different ways, and I'm glad that there was plenty of exploration on that front.

And the cliffhanger! I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

A thank you to Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, Margaret K. McElderry Books, and NetGalley for the ARC.