Song of the Crimson Flower is a gorgeous Vietnamese fairy tale retelling-feeling book. I don't know enough about Vietnamese fairy tales to know if it's directly a fairy tale retelling, but it definitely has that *feel* that fairy tale retellings do. The language is so beautiful and compelling, I can't wait to read more. I really appreciate that Dao put a pronunciation guide for the character names in the front of the book, as the phonetics of Vietnamese names really don't read like English phonetics would make you think they do. A pronunciation guide is so helpful to let the reader try to "hear" what some names, which might be unfamiliar, should sound like.