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. 

Hope Mirrlees - Lud-in-the-Mist

Publisher: Collins
Author: Hope Mirrlees
Title: Lud in the Mist

It is curious how some books stay in your minds despite being largely forgotten.  All you remember is how impressed you were by the book, some details lingering, teasing you. I have often tracked down half forgotten books, aided by a few keywords. In case of this book, I remembered it was about straight laced folks in a town beset by fairy influence.  One by one, its citizens fall prey to the lure of fairies. Along with these plot lines I remembered a phrase 'blackish canary' used in the book.

After several failed attempts to locate the book based on plot, I typed the words 'blackish canary' in inverted commas in google and wrote 'book containing phrase'.  My search landed squarely on the amazon page of Lud in the Mist  almost as if the book wanted to find me too. A quick read of the plot of the book made me go 'Yes Yes Yes'.

I was surprised to find that the book was published first in 1926, not so surprised to find that it is a classic in the fantasy genre. More about the book after a quick plot outline.

Lud is a prosperous merchant town located between the rivers Dapple and Dawl in the state of Dorimare. The elite of Dorimare are a small group of merchants. They are conventional people, creatures of habit. The Mayor of Lud is Nathaniel Chanticleer, a man addicted to habit who loathes adventure. His familiar and humdrum life is disturbed by strange happenings. First his son admits to having eaten fairy fruit. He tries to control the situation with the help of the doctor, Endymion Leer. But things get out of hand when the students of Primrose Crabapple's finishing school run away to fairyland after consuming fairy fruit. Nathaniel Chanticleer is forced to forgo his staid ways and think out of the box to get the youngsters back.

The best description of the book I found was in this quotation ascribed to David Lanford and Mike Ashley,  "a moving book, shifting unpredictably from drollery to menace to a high poignancy that sticks in the mind".

Like all great fantasy novels, this is also an allegory perhaps, referring to the necessity of being receptive to new ideas and art. Nathaniel Chanticleer is opposed to change and like most of his upper class, fears any disturbance in his way of life. Fairy fruit that addles the mind and makes people dance is not even mentioned by them.

I found it to be a delightful mix of the droll and fantasy, almost like it was a mix of The Well at the World's End and Pickwick Papers. To get to the bottom of the fairy influence, Chanticleer has to exhume a murder case that is decades old. Which makes it a mystery also.  This mixes in well with the comic and fantasy elements of the book. The fictional world that Mirlees recreates is no less delightful than Narnia or the Middle World.  Do take a moment to consider that Lud in the Mist preceeds both, Narnia Chronicles and Lord of the Rings.

It is a magnificent book which must be on the list of all fantasy fiction readers.