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Title:The Ghost Bride
Author: Yangsze Choo
Genre: Historical fantasy (19th C Malaya)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: To escape being married to a dead man, a living young Chinese girl flees to the underworld.
Thoughts: Western fantasy rarely mines Chinese folklore successfully. Here, a Malaysian author with a globe-trotting career melds Chinese archetypes to create an enchanting and inventive world to play in. Spirits, ghosts and dragons walk the streets unseen, darting back and forth between this plane and the afterlife, all watched over by a complex and possibly corrupt bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, the protagonist is not only a bit of an idiot, but constantly chastised by a love interest for being an idiot. While she does do some remarkably clever and brave things, she never really gets credit for those. Worse, the corruption case that first pulls her into this mess gets mostly resolved by a guy offpage, while she fusses with the significantly less interesting earthly mystery. Which also mostly gets resolved by a different guy, offpage. People fall in love with her for no apparent reason, and she spends the last chapter dithering over a love triangle that was never particularly well developed.
So we have an engrossing setting and a fantastic hook, and we're stuck with the Chinese version of Bella.
Author: Yangsze Choo
Genre: Historical fantasy (19th C Malaya)
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: To escape being married to a dead man, a living young Chinese girl flees to the underworld.
Thoughts: Western fantasy rarely mines Chinese folklore successfully. Here, a Malaysian author with a globe-trotting career melds Chinese archetypes to create an enchanting and inventive world to play in. Spirits, ghosts and dragons walk the streets unseen, darting back and forth between this plane and the afterlife, all watched over by a complex and possibly corrupt bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, the protagonist is not only a bit of an idiot, but constantly chastised by a love interest for being an idiot. While she does do some remarkably clever and brave things, she never really gets credit for those. Worse, the corruption case that first pulls her into this mess gets mostly resolved by a guy offpage, while she fusses with the significantly less interesting earthly mystery. Which also mostly gets resolved by a different guy, offpage. People fall in love with her for no apparent reason, and she spends the last chapter dithering over a love triangle that was never particularly well developed.
So we have an engrossing setting and a fantastic hook, and we're stuck with the Chinese version of Bella.
