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bonesetter's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
larkais's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
2.5
I wish the identity and story cohesion of these were better because the premise of hauntings was really neat. The author sure had a rough family life too, there were repetitive topics of abuse, incest, and family tensions throughout the anthology. I feel like the stories could have been more cathartic. The short stories usually end without resolving much tension.
My favourite story was the title one - Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality. I thought the limited scope to have a more aged and cynical storyteller was great. She treated the entire situation like one long punishment for not dying with her sisters. Yet, it seemed like her sisters were equally pleased that she lived long enough to take vengeance for them. The ending was a bit strange but I feel like it was trying to get the idea of how women need to be immortally beautiful and only remembered that way despite their wishes.She was literally falling apart and asking for death. It seemed like she finally got it in the end after 38 decades but then they take her head and refashion it with a body to be displayed in a museum. She cannot speak, but is still sentient as people photograph her.
I liked the themes in The Ugliest Girls who are sold into an emotion drainer for the rich to feast on their sadness. They think about lies and pleasant things about how worshiped they were instead of all their sad life experiences to trick the parasites from sucking them dry and find a different host.
I thought Sinking Houses was an interesting story on a meta level. It was about a woman who was contractually married and moves to the States to her new husband's house. Unfortunately the apocalypse starts and it's her survival on the line when a couple ends up taking her captive after she breaks into their house accidentally. The man ends up lusting after her since his marriage is failing. As for the meta level, the song that the main character ends up repeating is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaaLppoLN8&pp=ygUbemFpIG5hIHlhbyB5dWFuIGRlIGRpIGZhbmcg - 在那遥远的地方 with the first two lines being repeated: "Zai na yao yuan de di fang, you wei hau gu niang". This song was written after a man sees this lady herding sheep and fell in love with her beauty. The other lines in the song would be how he is willing to give everything up to raise sheep with her, or even just be a lamb that she leads. Two men clearly fell in love with the main character in a strange way, obsessive even with the latter one. Though, I feel like this song can also be about the mc's mother who is in a land far away. The mc would give anything up to be by her side again. They can be far away together.
And the bads: I didn't like some of the over the top, sometimes cartoonish descriptions of gore and casual writing style. The first story, Happy Birthday!, was pretty weird and unsatisfying in that way. Furniture made me think of the short film: The House, where the parents turn into furniture in one of the films.
The loosey goosey translations/romanization choices were weird to me. Red-tongued ghosts was probably the most egregious. There was "chuang" which just means bed or wooden bed in this case, but it was kept as just chuang. There was also an attempt at humour with the nicknames, "Zisha wenquan" which the author translated it to be "Very Hot Suicide Spring". "Suicide Hot Springs" is definitely more apt, "zisha" is literally suicide, "wenquan" is literally hotspring. There was also "diao si gui" which got translated into Red-tongued ghost, but it's literally "hung dead ghost". I fail to see where the red-tongue comes from??
My favourite story was the title one - Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality. I thought the limited scope to have a more aged and cynical storyteller was great. She treated the entire situation like one long punishment for not dying with her sisters. Yet, it seemed like her sisters were equally pleased that she lived long enough to take vengeance for them. The ending was a bit strange but I feel like it was trying to get the idea of how women need to be immortally beautiful and only remembered that way despite their wishes.
I liked the themes in The Ugliest Girls who are sold into an emotion drainer for the rich to feast on their sadness. They think about lies and pleasant things about how worshiped they were instead of all their sad life experiences to trick the parasites from sucking them dry and find a different host.
I thought Sinking Houses was an interesting story on a meta level. It was about a woman who was contractually married and moves to the States to her new husband's house. Unfortunately the apocalypse starts and it's her survival on the line when a couple ends up taking her captive after she breaks into their house accidentally. The man ends up lusting after her since his marriage is failing. As for the meta level, the song that the main character ends up repeating is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQaaLppoLN8&pp=ygUbemFpIG5hIHlhbyB5dWFuIGRlIGRpIGZhbmcg - 在那遥远的地方 with the first two lines being repeated: "Zai na yao yuan de di fang, you wei hau gu niang". This song was written after a man sees this lady herding sheep and fell in love with her beauty. The other lines in the song would be how he is willing to give everything up to raise sheep with her, or even just be a lamb that she leads. Two men clearly fell in love with the main character in a strange way, obsessive even with the latter one. Though, I feel like this song can also be about the mc's mother who is in a land far away. The mc would give anything up to be by her side again. They can be far away together.
And the bads: I didn't like some of the over the top, sometimes cartoonish descriptions of gore and casual writing style. The first story, Happy Birthday!, was pretty weird and unsatisfying in that way. Furniture made me think of the short film: The House, where the parents turn into furniture in one of the films.
The loosey goosey translations/romanization choices were weird to me. Red-tongued ghosts was probably the most egregious. There was "chuang" which just means bed or wooden bed in this case, but it was kept as just chuang. There was also an attempt at humour with the nicknames, "Zisha wenquan" which the author translated it to be "Very Hot Suicide Spring". "Suicide Hot Springs" is definitely more apt, "zisha" is literally suicide, "wenquan" is literally hotspring. There was also "diao si gui" which got translated into Red-tongued ghost, but it's literally "hung dead ghost". I fail to see where the red-tongue comes from??
soopushie's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
jeezjane's review
dark
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
this book was not for me. i found the stories gratuitously violent and/or gross, which is not bad per se, but they were also sloppily written and made me question how much effort the author put into this collection. i felt there was no point to any of the stories, and i don't mean a crux or climax, i mean like things happened (usually gross), people suffered, and that's it. no payoff, emotional or otherwise. it just presented vignettes of nasty situations, and i suppose the allure is that these nasty situations are described in a cavalier and almost flippant tone, to shock you into amusement AND also make it more palatable to read, but it just didn't work out for me. the flippancy to me read like lack of care, which also made me not care. i didn't like any of the characters, nor did i hate any of the characters in a fun way. i did not feel like i got a good portrayal of chinese culture in the stories that touched upon that subject - actually, due to the nonchalant tone of the writing and the grotesque, over the top scenarios, the cultural information presented made me feel like it was just a person picking a Something Cool About Chinese culture and then writing a whole pointless story based on a caricature of it. the worlds were not thought out or fleshed out, and also not "suspend your disbelief" in a fun way. it was just surreal and... hurts me to say this, but surreal and kinda stupid? also baffling was that sometimes she used diacritics and sometimes not. if there was a method to this (like maybe some terms are well known enough that they don't warrant them?) i did not understand it. i don't care either way but consistency would be nice.
short stories are really hard and i get that but these were really disappointing. some were a better read than others but none were really good reads.
killer title. i gave points for creativity and smtms a line or two would be well-written enough for me to appreciate it? idk
short stories are really hard and i get that but these were really disappointing. some were a better read than others but none were really good reads.
killer title. i gave points for creativity and smtms a line or two would be well-written enough for me to appreciate it? idk
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Rape, Physical abuse, Body horror, Torture, Body shaming, Blood, Gore, Death, Violence, Murder, and Cannibalism
some things are explicit but nothing is dwelled upon for long lengths of time.austenmostardently's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
vetchling's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia