The Flowering doesn’t grant anyone the luxury of standing still—least of all James Mun. In Ann Yihyang Kim’s TREE OF EYES, second in the Eyes of Awakening series, the Korean-American engineering student-turned-reluctant fighter returns to a shifting dreamscape where mortal peril is as dependable as the sunrise. The story picks up right after the events of Eye in the Blue Box, dropping the crew into fresh trouble while the shadow of a past enemy begins to stretch over their nights.
Kim wastes no time throwing Crew Blue into new danger. E, their fearsome and unpredictable leader, turns her volatility on the blind Shaman Snow; Lux’s irrepressible cheer frays into frustration; Blood Crow’s alliance still bristles with ideological fault lines. Honey’s quiet support of James deepens, glimpsed in the moments when they wordlessly cover each other’s flanks. Here, interpersonal tension isn’t a pause between battles; it’s another front in the war.
James still splits his nights between waking life and the Flowering, but this time the dream side holds him longer. Trouble comes fast: an ugly brawl with the Third’s elite Bodyguards, a standoff with an ancient citizen who knows too much about E’s family, a blind run through shifting ground with only Snow’s sense of smell to guide them. Kim makes the terrain work as hard as the weapons. Before an ambush in a dangerously open field, E’s command cuts through the rising tension. “Keep. Your voices. Down,” she growls, the threat aimed at friend and foe alike.
Kim’s prose swings between dense sensory description and sharp, breathless lines—mirroring the jolt and lull of combat. She can linger on a setting to build a stark atmosphere, as when the crew first sees their sanctuary: “A low, red sun loomed just above the Calf’s black ring of emptiness. A silent city of gray high-rises stood far below within the center of the ring.” Then, during the final battle, the prose becomes a series of staccato shocks: “The Beast smiled. A black sphere swallowed it whole. E continued to fall, powerless to gravity.” This stylistic range makes the book’s relentless pace feel earned. While the expanded cast of Hunters and wolves can feel underdeveloped, the focus on the core crew keeps the emotional throughline sharp, grounded in authentic Korean-American details from their waking lives.
The novel’s second half shifts from tense buildup to full-scale payoff. Threads from Eye in the Blue Box—James’s link to Snow, the Red Calf’s menace, uneasy alliances—are pulled taut until they snap. Kim stages the resolution with sustained, exhausting intensity, then leaves space for the crew and the reader to feel the weight of what has been won. The main fight ends, but what it costs them doesn’t fade, ensuring that the next chapter of the Eyes of Awakening saga will have to contend with more than just the next enemy.
In TREE OF EYES, Ann Yihyang Kim thrusts James Mun and Crew Blue deeper into the perilous dream-realm of the Flowering. This leg of the Eyes of Awakening series delivers constant conflict, shifting loyalties, and moments that upend what the characters thought they knew.
~ Edward Sung for IndieReader