Wednesday, October 27, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Anthology Review: Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

 




Spirits Abroad is an anthology of short fiction from Malaysian SF/F author Zen Cho, most well known for her Sorcerer to the Crown duology and this past year's Black Water Sister.  This anthology was originally published in 2014 with 10 stories from Cho, but is now being rereleased in an expanded addition with 9 additional stories by Small Beer Press (one of my favorite small presses for releasing things like this and other more obscure but very good works). 

I haven't always loved Cho's longer fiction as much as others, but the short fiction I have read has always been very good and fascinating to me, so I was excited to reserve this collection - a collection filled with unapologetically Malaysian fantasy (and science fiction), which is WELL worth your time.  When I read anthologies, what I'm generally looking for are a few real clear tremendous stories that standout, and Spirits Abroad definitely delivers on this one.  
With an anthology as big as this one, I'm not going to provide a plot summary of each story included like I do with shorter anthologies or novels, but instead will discuss the highlights and general contents of this collection.  And there are a bunch of highlights.  

The collection is split into three sections, labeled "Here" (for stories taking place within Malaysia), "There" (stories taking place abroad, most often in England), and "Elsewhere" (for stories taking place in fictional worlds).  The stories are a mix of serious ones, bittersweet ones, and occasionally just fun ones, with queer relationships being common aspects of a bunch of stories.  The stories also deal very much with the concept of family relations and both their good and bad aspects, such as how they can be abused, and in some cases how they can be important - even when those families aren't blood families - in keeping peoples lives upright.  

Only one story is science fiction (the very last story - "The Four Generations of Chang E") while the rest are clear fantasy, generally based upon Malaysian creatures, myths, its afterlife, and its ideas.  The stories don't try to explain those Malaysian aspects to readers, so Western readers such as myself may not be familiar with them, but that unfamiliarity is the reader's problem, not the stories, which are often really really good.  Readers may also be helped by the fact that in two cases, there are back to back stories which take place in the same world, as if sequels to the prior story in the collection.   

Okay enough about the collection in general, let me get to the clear highlights - note, one highlight I will not be talking about is the Hugo winning "If at First You Don't Succeed, Try Try Again", because it's great and you should know that already from when it won the Hugo two years ago:

Odette:  I'm really upset I missed this story when it came out in 2020 (the newest in the collection), as this is a stunner - the story of a woman who has spent most of her life, despite her college education, living with an emotionally abusive and bossy uncle who everyone else loves in a Malaysian house, who prevents her from doing anything with her life....who nevertheless falls in love with her Uncle's house and is desperate to have it for her own.  It's a story of emotional abuse and love, and it ends on a dark twist that just hits really hard, you will feel for Odette hard by the time this one is over.  

The House of Aunts:  The longest story in the collection, a story about a teenage girl who is actually dead, a pontianak (A Vampire-like Malaysian Ghost) who lives with her many aunts (also pontianaks), and finds herself liking a fellow teenage boy from school but having trouble with both confessing to him and with his own reactions to her state of being....and her aunts' beliefs that he will be an issue to her safety.  Really strong story that turns things on its head in the final few pages, and becomes a story about not just young love, but about the importance and value of caring family, even if it's not the closest blood family.  

Prudence and the Dragon:  In a story that sort of takes place in a "Sorcerer to the Crown" type England, a Malaysian girl Prudence who doesn't really pay attention to the world finds herself being essentially stalked and chased after by a dragon as she tries to just be in university, but unlike everyone else, she doesn't care about that....what she does care about her childhood friendship with her friend Angela.  Really really fun story that ends on a nice note.  This one also has a sequel, The Perseverance of Angela's Past Life, which is a really strong follow up with a girl in denial of her own feelings towards liking other girls and her own childhood self, who has to literally reconcile her childhood self with the person she's tried to become.  

The Terra-Cotta Bride:  A story featuring a young woman who finds herself in hell and then sold by her dead uncle to be the second wife of a rich man bribing his way through the nicest circle of Hell and living in misery....until things begin to change when the man buys a Terra-Cotta girl (like terra-cotta soldiers) who she begins to care for....with things going not nearly as you'd expect, especially when the rich man's intelligent well off wife (from his living days) comes into play.  

There are a whole bunch of other stories too that are well worth your time, even if not every one will hit with every reader, and I suspect some of the other pretty good stories will be favorites of other readers.  But overall between the highlight stories and a bunch of others, Spirits Abroad is pretty much what I hope for an anthology - a range of stories highlighting the author's craft, skill, and perspective, with no stinkers and a few clear award worthy highlights, which make it a joy to dive in to the anthology one story at a time over a week.  Recommended.


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