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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
The story details the journey Chinese Malaysian girl as she journeys through the Ten Courts of Hell in order to escape becoming the ghost bride to the deceased soon of a local influential family.
Spooky, very well written, the author's prose is beautiful in parts. She invokes beautiful imagery showcases a deep knowledge of the diverse history of Chinese Malaysians. The story itself was very slow moving and I found some of the sub plots (her mother and the characters in the Plains of the Dead Lim House) to be confusing, but I was invested in the love story and was satisfied with the ending.
Spooky, very well written, the author's prose is beautiful in parts. She invokes beautiful imagery showcases a deep knowledge of the diverse history of Chinese Malaysians. The story itself was very slow moving and I found some of the sub plots (her mother and the characters in the Plains of the Dead Lim House) to be confusing, but I was invested in the love story and was satisfied with the ending.
3.5 stars, actually.
This is a detail and language history-rich setting of Malacca (Malay) with insight into Peranankan Chinese (Straits chinese) culture, expecially customs dealing with death. However, for me, it spent way too much time on to-ing and fro-ing and not enough time with the main character after she grows up or her relationship with the most intriguing of the male characters.
Li Lan lost her mother at a young age, and her scholarly father is lost in an opium haze. She has only her caring Amah for support. When she starts dreaming of the recently dead heir to a prominent merchant Chinese family in her city, and gets word of a prior engagement, Li Lan will have to venture into the complicated and bureaucratically corrupt world of the dead in order to save herself.
Li Lan's exploration of the world of the dead as a half-ghost is really interesting in a social anthropology kind of way....but she's quite young, naive, and a bit dense, a bit like the burnt-paper servants that appear as puppet servants in the afterlife in this book. So I didn't really start liking her character until she showed more character-- about 2/3's of the way through the book. She has the opportunity to really test what kind of person she is, as well as come to a realization about some nefarious doings in her and the rich merchant's family.
Also at the end, she loses her star-eyed naivety in terms of the romance and sets her sights on the mysterious, bamboo-hatted magical dude who keeps helping her out of tight spots. Then, at the end, when she's interesting and her relationship with the mysterious dude is about to get interesting...it ends. And I'm not a fan at all of the way it ends. This ending (abrupt because it summarizes instead of shows, and not fulfilling the promise of her emotional/character development) pretty much made me want to throw the book across the room. So much promise! So little reward for me, especially since I'm a romance-lover.
So cool historical/cultural details, a bit of a plot too concerned with moving around in the world of the dead instead of emotional development, and a frustrating ending for me.
This is a detail and language history-rich setting of Malacca (Malay) with insight into Peranankan Chinese (Straits chinese) culture, expecially customs dealing with death. However, for me, it spent way too much time on to-ing and fro-ing and not enough time with the main character after she grows up or her relationship with the most intriguing of the male characters.
Li Lan lost her mother at a young age, and her scholarly father is lost in an opium haze. She has only her caring Amah for support. When she starts dreaming of the recently dead heir to a prominent merchant Chinese family in her city, and gets word of a prior engagement, Li Lan will have to venture into the complicated and bureaucratically corrupt world of the dead in order to save herself.
Li Lan's exploration of the world of the dead as a half-ghost is really interesting in a social anthropology kind of way....but she's quite young, naive, and a bit dense, a bit like the burnt-paper servants that appear as puppet servants in the afterlife in this book. So I didn't really start liking her character until she showed more character-- about 2/3's of the way through the book. She has the opportunity to really test what kind of person she is, as well as come to a realization about some nefarious doings in her and the rich merchant's family.
Also at the end, she loses her star-eyed naivety in terms of the romance and sets her sights on the mysterious, bamboo-hatted magical dude who keeps helping her out of tight spots. Then, at the end, when she's interesting and her relationship with the mysterious dude is about to get interesting...it ends. And I'm not a fan at all of the way it ends. This ending (abrupt because it summarizes instead of shows, and not fulfilling the promise of her emotional/character development) pretty much made me want to throw the book across the room. So much promise! So little reward for me, especially since I'm a romance-lover.
So cool historical/cultural details, a bit of a plot too concerned with moving around in the world of the dead instead of emotional development, and a frustrating ending for me.
Yangsze Choo has done something really special with this book. She's managed to blend mystery and romance with Malaysian and Chinese traditional storytelling, and she's done it very well. As someone who isn't terribly familiar with any Asian traditions or culture outside of a very cursory study of theater and performance in China and Japan (and a horrible experience with the book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan), I never felt left in the dark or confused by the legends and the culture presented in the novel. However Choo has the entire novel very firmly rooted in late 1800s Malaya, and her meticulous research shows. There is an authenticity to the way she speaks about the historical setting that made my historian's heart very happy.
On a literary level, this book was a really interesting blend of a lot of different genres. On a surface-level, it's a four-way romance, with the heroine pulled between someone dangerous, someone safe, and someone mysterious. The book also stays true to this three-way pull on the heroine, despite the other territory it delves into. Li Lan's actions always circle around one of these three men and their expectations for her. Where Choo succeeds when other novels of this sort fail, is that she gives Li Lan a sense of her own helplessness and lack of autonomy. Li Lan knows she's a pawn in these games she doesn't understand, and mostly she just wants to be able to make a safe, happy life for herself.
That's where the other genres start to come in. The fantasy elements weave in seamlessly as Li Lan begins having vivid dreams about Lim Tian Ching, a dead man whose family has asked Li Lan to be his ghost bride. The more Li Lan learns about the Lim family and about Lim Tian Ching's life and death, the more she realizes that things aren't as they seem with Lim Tian Ching's death, and she's the only one who knows and is willing to do anything to help. The horror element was the most surprising to me, because while a good deal of the book takes place in the afterlife, I hadn't expected the grotesque elements to actually be there. This is, after all, a romance novel.
Another thing to note is the unresolved ending. By the end of the book, Li Lan has chosen between her three suitors (veterans of the romance genre will be unsurprised by her choice, but then again, I'd have chosen the same) but she hasn't yet acted on her choice. She (and the reader) are left waiting for her chosen to come to her, which was an interesting note to end the novel on.
I think, however, that despite the cacophony of genres, the traditional romance novel aspects, and the unresolved ending, this novel pulls itself together and works. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though at times I found myself growling in frustration at Li Lan (who seems to have varying degrees of Romance Heroine Brain throughout the novel, and spends a good deal of time pursuing a false lead because she ignores something important a possibly untrustworthy source told her). It's not a heavy read, definitely something more along the lines of a mid-winter vacation book than anything else, and I don't know that I'd recommend it to everyone, because there is quite a lot of talk about death and the manner in which various people died, and injuries that can happen to ghosts in the ghost world. But it was thoroughly enjoyable, and a nice palate cleanser after the travesty of Emerald Windows.
On a literary level, this book was a really interesting blend of a lot of different genres. On a surface-level, it's a four-way romance, with the heroine pulled between someone dangerous, someone safe, and someone mysterious. The book also stays true to this three-way pull on the heroine, despite the other territory it delves into. Li Lan's actions always circle around one of these three men and their expectations for her. Where Choo succeeds when other novels of this sort fail, is that she gives Li Lan a sense of her own helplessness and lack of autonomy. Li Lan knows she's a pawn in these games she doesn't understand, and mostly she just wants to be able to make a safe, happy life for herself.
That's where the other genres start to come in. The fantasy elements weave in seamlessly as Li Lan begins having vivid dreams about Lim Tian Ching, a dead man whose family has asked Li Lan to be his ghost bride. The more Li Lan learns about the Lim family and about Lim Tian Ching's life and death, the more she realizes that things aren't as they seem with Lim Tian Ching's death, and she's the only one who knows and is willing to do anything to help. The horror element was the most surprising to me, because while a good deal of the book takes place in the afterlife, I hadn't expected the grotesque elements to actually be there. This is, after all, a romance novel.
Another thing to note is the unresolved ending. By the end of the book, Li Lan has chosen between her three suitors (veterans of the romance genre will be unsurprised by her choice, but then again, I'd have chosen the same) but she hasn't yet acted on her choice. She (and the reader) are left waiting for her chosen to come to her, which was an interesting note to end the novel on.
I think, however, that despite the cacophony of genres, the traditional romance novel aspects, and the unresolved ending, this novel pulls itself together and works. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though at times I found myself growling in frustration at Li Lan (who seems to have varying degrees of Romance Heroine Brain throughout the novel, and spends a good deal of time pursuing a false lead because she ignores something important a possibly untrustworthy source told her). It's not a heavy read, definitely something more along the lines of a mid-winter vacation book than anything else, and I don't know that I'd recommend it to everyone, because there is quite a lot of talk about death and the manner in which various people died, and injuries that can happen to ghosts in the ghost world. But it was thoroughly enjoyable, and a nice palate cleanser after the travesty of Emerald Windows.
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very well written. This felt like no plot I'd ever encountered before. The setting was well imagined, making me feel like I was watching everything play out, and I loved how much historic Malaysia context was included.
Very unexpected
This book turned out to be quite different from what I expected it to be, in a good way. Li Lan, the protagonist, has quite an adventure through the underworld. The book has an incredibly slow beginning, and it took a long time for the action to begin (about 1/4 of the way through).
This book turned out to be quite different from what I expected it to be, in a good way. Li Lan, the protagonist, has quite an adventure through the underworld. The book has an incredibly slow beginning, and it took a long time for the action to begin (about 1/4 of the way through).
Skimmed after realizing so much of it was set in the supernatural realm-it was hard for me to keep reading once it became that way.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A love story and a murder mystery told from a ghostly realm. Revenge, betrayal, heart break and jealousy run amok here.
This historical perspective was also fascinating
This historical perspective was also fascinating