Zen Cho - The Terracotta Bride

Publisher: Self (?)
Author: Zen Cho
Title: The Terracotta Bride

Sometimes a book recommendation can be very rewarding. This book was pushed into my recommended reading by Scribd and I am glad it did. It is a short book of merely 51 pages. A novella or a longish story.  Its breathtakingly gorgeous cover is what first attracted me to it. I am glad the 'inner beauty' of the book lives up to its cover.

Siew Tsin died at a young age, perhaps only 18. On reaching hell she was met by her great-uncle who promptly sold her to the richest man in hell, Junsheng. Good news is, all the paper money, paper servants, paper mansions, paper gramophones that the devoted relatives burn for their dead forbears does reach them. It can buy them a comfortable afterlife. Junsheng is reveling in the offerings of his successors.

Soon Siew Tsin finds out that hell has its own rules, corruption levels and ambitions. She is blind to everything around her, bent only upon keeping herself occupied. When her husband brings home a Terracotta bride, her perspective changes. She has to learn about things going on around her and fast, as she is in danger. Also she learns that one may have to go to hell and back to find true love.

The novel is a quick and a heady fix of fantasy. We are flung into an other-worldly atmosphere as soon as we open the book. The Chinese customs of dealing with the dead, tenets of Buddhism, reincarnation and even the Terracotta warriors are mashed together to create this tale. The writing is superb. The sentences are short and elegant. The irony of being alive in afterlife after death is brought out nicely from time to time.

She lived, dead, unnoticed by her husband, the household, and even by her own self. 

Until the terracotta bride came.

I was so impressed by Zen Cho, that I immediately read another book by her, another short novella. More about it later. This is surely an author to watch.