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A review by jjkmanga
Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
5.0
RE-READ JULY 31:
I was lucky enough to get the audiobook for this, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller who, by the way, is absolutely insane. I swear they've got that woman on speed-dial when they want a good book narrated.
Anyway, I love this book. Seriously, genuinely love it. It's so damn simple in every way. I mean, it's literally a short story collection about beasts in a fictional Chinese city. But there's something so charming about it, and this re-read really proved it. My only problem with it is that the narrator never gives her name, so I am forever stuck referring to her as...her. I can excuse that, though, because Zhong Liang is the man of my dreams and everything right in this world.
ORIGINAL:
5 stars *may change
TWS: death, self-harm, drugs
I cannot for the life of me believe that I'm giving a perfect score to an under-200 page short story collection. Believe me when I say that this is completely random for me. I went into this thinking it would be a 3 star, like most books I read are, and here I am now.
I thought about it for a bit, and the best comparison I can come up with for this book is Devilman Crybaby. Yes, the 2019 Netflix anime that was completely insane. That being said, just like the anime, this book isn't for everyone. I mean, I don't even like short story collections. There was just something about this that drew me in. It's short (Although I swear some stories felt so long) and completely, unapologetically brutal. I genuinely couldn't believe that certain decisions were made.
This book actually made me *cry,* but I'm going to skip over that because it's embarrassing.
Each chapter centers around a specific beast that our unnamed protagonist encounters or writes about at the time. The stories are seemingly in chronological order as we follow a cast of recurring characters. Mostly. It's written in such a way that switches from the history of the creatures to a story and comes back with more history to tie it all together. It's full of all these philosophical ideas that I'm not nearly smart enough to consider and has some really fantastic thoughts I liked highlighting.
Characters...characters...Yeah. The narrator is so relatable in her completely depressive way. She's a bit cynical, but she has all the right to be. It brings some interesting choices in her storytelling. Zhong Liang was completely loveable from the start. His sidekick nature was cute and I always appreciated him showing up. The beasts that came and went every chapter vary from relevance and importance. Some of them I didn't care for much, and others I completely felt for. There are some narratives that stick with you, and they had them.
I think the only gripe I'd have with this book is that the dialogue often lacks tags for the speakers and is spaced out a bit odd? Like, There'll be text in one paragraph with quotation marks (Actually, they used ' instead of " but for the purposes of simplicity in writing this I'll go with the latter) at the beginning and end to signify stopping. Yet the next paragraph would be the same character speaking in the same breath and it would lack quotation marks at the beginning. To be fair, you can pretty much tell from context clues who's speaking most of the time, and it didn't take away from my overall experience.
Again, this just landed with me. I know it probably won't with most people considering the fact that it's a collection of stories instead of one. I don't really know how this happened. There was something about the overall vibe that just had me hook, line, and sinker. I really did love this.
Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy
I was lucky enough to get the audiobook for this, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller who, by the way, is absolutely insane. I swear they've got that woman on speed-dial when they want a good book narrated.
Anyway, I love this book. Seriously, genuinely love it. It's so damn simple in every way. I mean, it's literally a short story collection about beasts in a fictional Chinese city. But there's something so charming about it, and this re-read really proved it. My only problem with it is that the narrator never gives her name, so I am forever stuck referring to her as...her. I can excuse that, though, because Zhong Liang is the man of my dreams and everything right in this world.
ORIGINAL:
5 stars *may change
TWS: death, self-harm, drugs
I cannot for the life of me believe that I'm giving a perfect score to an under-200 page short story collection. Believe me when I say that this is completely random for me. I went into this thinking it would be a 3 star, like most books I read are, and here I am now.
I thought about it for a bit, and the best comparison I can come up with for this book is Devilman Crybaby. Yes, the 2019 Netflix anime that was completely insane. That being said, just like the anime, this book isn't for everyone. I mean, I don't even like short story collections. There was just something about this that drew me in. It's short (Although I swear some stories felt so long) and completely, unapologetically brutal. I genuinely couldn't believe that certain decisions were made.
This book actually made me *cry,* but I'm going to skip over that because it's embarrassing.
Each chapter centers around a specific beast that our unnamed protagonist encounters or writes about at the time. The stories are seemingly in chronological order as we follow a cast of recurring characters. Mostly. It's written in such a way that switches from the history of the creatures to a story and comes back with more history to tie it all together. It's full of all these philosophical ideas that I'm not nearly smart enough to consider and has some really fantastic thoughts I liked highlighting.
"Mutual destruction is the only way to survive. That's the circle of life. That's the truth."
Characters...characters...Yeah. The narrator is so relatable in her completely depressive way. She's a bit cynical, but she has all the right to be. It brings some interesting choices in her storytelling. Zhong Liang was completely loveable from the start. His sidekick nature was cute and I always appreciated him showing up. The beasts that came and went every chapter vary from relevance and importance. Some of them I didn't care for much, and others I completely felt for. There are some narratives that stick with you, and they had them.
I think the only gripe I'd have with this book is that the dialogue often lacks tags for the speakers and is spaced out a bit odd? Like, There'll be text in one paragraph with quotation marks (Actually, they used ' instead of " but for the purposes of simplicity in writing this I'll go with the latter) at the beginning and end to signify stopping. Yet the next paragraph would be the same character speaking in the same breath and it would lack quotation marks at the beginning. To be fair, you can pretty much tell from context clues who's speaking most of the time, and it didn't take away from my overall experience.
Again, this just landed with me. I know it probably won't with most people considering the fact that it's a collection of stories instead of one. I don't really know how this happened. There was something about the overall vibe that just had me hook, line, and sinker. I really did love this.
Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced reader's copy