I would like to make a book club recommendation.

As a reader, my personal intention is to read or listen to “a good book.” As a book club attendee, through the synergy of hearing thoughtful, informed people share their experiences with the book, I hope to enrich my own experience of the book and, more generally, to enrich my creative, intellectual, and social lives.

Criteria for “a good book”

Although what constitutes “a good book” for me has changed since I was first allowed to choose my own books at the Scholastic Book Fairs at Margaret Beeks Elementary School, my current criteria for “a good book” include:

1. Compelling story that results in such a flow state of interest that I need to give little mental effort to following the plot.
2. Main character who either is, or becomes, psychologically-minded enough to see reality as it is – however fantastical – to become aware of traits, both strengths and weaknesses, that contribute to how they handle challenges, and to address all of these ingeniously and bravely.
3. Language beautiful enough to offer an aesthetic experience in itself and evocative enough for the reader to imagine experiencing what happens.
4. Nuances in thinking, expression, and/or conveyance of meaning that activate my own creativity.
5. Having experienced and learned of brutality due to my stage in life and my profession, limited brutality, preferably none.
6. Available in audiobook format.

Shanghai Immortal, by A. Y. Chao, published in the U.K by Hodderscape, 2023, meets my criteria for “a good book.” I have both Kindle and Audible versions. Reader Mei Mei Macleod is absolutely stellar. Shanghai Immortal tops my list of favorite fantasy novels.

Why do I hypothesize Shanghai Immortal might be, not just interesting, but fascinating to book club members?

Timeliness.

Released July, 2023, in electronic and audio versions.

Context.

1. A. Y. Chao joins a growing number of people with Chinese ancestry who identify as female or live as female, and are writing fantasy and science fiction novels. Please see Female authors emerge in Chinese sci-fi and fantasy (2022) and this essay by A. Y. Chao (2023).
2. According to multiple sources, including The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters, by Megan Walsh (2022), and Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern, by Jing Tsu (2022), China is experiencing a golden age in Chinese science fiction. Please see China’s science fiction enters ‘golden era’ (2022).

Language.

Point A.

From Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (Source):

“A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do.”

First sentences from Shanghai Immortal:

“The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. I lean against the door of a decrepit warehouse, gums aching, stomach grumbling, and wait on Big Wang’s secret delivery. Cicadas scream all around me. With a title like Lady Jing of Mount Kunlun and ancestry that includes the great goddess Queen Mother of the West, running errands at 3 a.m. in this rotted heat might be considered below my station.”

Point B.

Chao’s writing organically bridges English and Chinese language and culture. The human concepts are clear, regardless of language. I hypothesize that what we can do to know more about how to communicate in both languages may contribute to world peace.

Point C.

I am a volunteer with the Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley of Virginia. The beauty and power of A. Y. Chao’s sentences gave me the boldness to suggest a book club for speakers of Mandarin Chinese who wish to deepen their abilities to speak about ideas and life in English and Chinese.

Point D.

Excerpt from a review by A. R. James:

“From its sweat-dripping opening to its heartwarming conclusion, Shanghai Immortal is a sumptuous read. Tendrils of mythology weave together with modern characters whom you can’t help but love, and the result is a rich story of enigmatic deities, nether-realm heists and unexpected joy. It explores complex issues of heritage, identity, belonging, and intersectional feminism in a multicultural migrant context. It is a love letter to the author’s Chinese diaspora heritage with a twist of Canadian sensibilities… and – they’re not kidding – a huge amount of sass.”

Possible book club discussion questions:

1. What has draped heavy over your shoulders? Perhaps physically – like a steaming Shanghai night – or figuratively, like a burden of some kind?
2. About what have you ever counted “Yi. Er. San.”?
3. What in the novel delighted and surprised you?
4. What made you laugh?
5. What images and scenes do you still remember, long after finishing the passage? What about them spoke to you or called to you?
6. What made you uncomfortably aware of personally problematic ways you have of feeling, thinking, acting, interacting, or relating?
7. Of the relationships Lady Jing has with other beings, which reminded you most of a relationship you have in your life?
8. To what else in the story can you personally relate? Even though the story is about fictional, fantastical beings – except for a few humans – what in the characters’ experiences is personally engaging and/or meaningful to you?
9. What do you feel and think when you recognize elements of Chinese culture and language in the novel? For example, Da Wang? Lady Jing? Mount Kunlun?
10. If you had an opportunity to speak with author A. Y. Chao, what questions would you ask?
11. I posit that Chao’s writing organically bridges English and Chinese language and culture. Universal human concepts are clear, regardless of language. I hypothesize that reading and discussing Shanghai Immortal opens opportunities for native speakers of Chinese and English to begin to navigate language and cultural differences and to achieve greater mutual understanding. Further, I hypothesize that mutual language and culture learning may contribute directly to productive, global conversations about topics of global import. Lady Jing, ambassador of peace? What do you think?

知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負;不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆.
– 孫子兵法
Epigraph, Shanghai Immortal by A. Y. Chao

Update: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club, Blacksburg Branch, Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library, Virginia, has chosen Shanghai Immortal to read and discuss at 6:00 PM at its monthly meeting on May 28, 2024.

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Although I primarily read literary fiction, once the unimaginable lockdown began in 2020, I turned to creators of imaginary worlds for mentorship.

In my 40s, when I was in deep grief about the end of my first marriage, my sister said, “Anne, just read Harry Potter.” Twenty years later, in 2020, I returned to the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling. I have listened to the entire series read by Jim Dale multiple times. But I’m not a young boy. And Ron and Hermione were also in lockdown.

I sought fantasy novels with characters with whom I had enough in common to relate, and who modeled what I valued. I looked for characters who lived primarily as female, were psychologically-minded, acknowledged errors and learned from them, and, regardless of circumstance, or what had happened, or what was happening, displayed resilience and courage.

The novels below are listed in rank order based on my subjective view of the extent to which the main character meets these criteria, has or gains awareness, learns new skills, and survives and thrives.

In a class by itself

I believe Shanghai Immortal, by A. Y. Chao, is an important book, a work of literary art.

The link is to the stellar Audible recording by Mei Mei Macleod.

Here is an excerpt from a review by A. R. James:

“From its sweat-dripping opening to its heartwarming conclusion, Shanghai Immortal is a sumptuous read. Tendrils of mythology weave together with modern characters whom you can’t help but love, and the result is a rich story of enigmatic deities, nether-realm heists and unexpected joy. It explores complex issues of heritage, identity, belonging, and intersectional feminism in a multicultural migrant context. It is a love letter to the author’s Chinese diaspora heritage with a twist of Canadian sensibilities… and – they’re not kidding – a huge amount of sass.”

Solely to discuss this novel, I founded a book club.  Here is more about Shanghai Immortal. Shanghai Immortal was released in ebook and audio formats on June 1, 2023. It’s due out in hardback on October 31, 2023.

“I can’t afford to be powerless anymore.”
– Biddy, The Magician’s Daughter, H. G. Parry, 2023

The rest of the list

1. When Women Were Dragons, Kelly Barnhill. Before I read Shanghai Immortal, this was the first book I had broadly recommended since Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. (The Dutch House link is to the Audible version narrated by Tom Hanks.) Alex observes the miraculous and the monstrous in her small-town, 1950s life, handles such deep hurt with honesty and bravery, and evolves in her thinking  over time about people and why they do what they do.
2. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty. Amina is a ship’s captain and pirate, and infamous in the Indian Ocean. Too exotic? Amina has done some things. And she has a daughter, born of an intense affair with a complex being. The story is profoundly real although set in a world and time beyond standing in the checkout line at Kroger. Amazingly original and meaningful.
3. Burn for Me, Ilona Andrews, pseudonym for a wife-and-husband team. First in the stellar Hidden Legacy series with main characters who are aware of their feelings and thoughts, do cost-benefit analyses with rank ordering when faced with choices, devise strategies, engage in understandable self-blame when things don’t go well, then move ahead based on their values and priorities. First series I have listened to twice since Harry Potter.
4. The House Witch: A Humorous, Romantic Fantasy, Delemhach. A creative, kind treatise on carrying on after trauma. Subsequent books in the series are also excellent.
5. Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. Link is to The New York Times book review. Katsa lives her values in astronomically extreme circumstances.
6. A Magic Steeped in Poison, Judy I. Lin. Link is to the exquisitely read Audible version by Carolyn Kang. A gift to people who treasure finding meaning from the surprise of related things and times.
7. The Liar’s Crown, Abigail Owen. Her world is inexplicable to us, then to her, then she bravely sees reality as it is.
8. Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes, Travis Baldree. Link is to Audible version, delightfully read by the author. An odd title for a startlingly imaginative archetypal heroine’s journey story. (Bookshops & Bonedust, Book 2, released in 2023.)
9. The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune. The characters work hard to champion their own humanity against powerfully held beliefs about how people should be.
10. Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide (to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons), Quenby Olson. In quiet, subtle ways, not often noted or praised, Miss Percy bravely stands up to nothing less than belief-based hegemony in the context of an absolutely darling story.
11. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna. An extraordinary exploration of aloneness.

Noteworthy, in rank order

• The Wizard’s Butler, Nathan Lowell, 2021. The main character is male but, otherwise, met and surpassed all my criteria and helped me see ways to address hardship radically.
• The Undertaking of Heart and Mercy, Megan Bannen, 2022. Introspective characters discover painfully and insightfully the cruelty of stonewalling and the freedom and compassion available from speaking openly.
• Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse. Astonishingly powerful, on the edge of too graphic for me. Link is to Kirkus Reviews. Tried second book but a little too dark, at least for now.
• Joan Is Okay, Weike Wang. Although not a fantasy novel,  without support, with opposition, a main character with a  neuroatypical inner life movingly handles the beginning of the atypical, apocalyptic beginning of this pandemic.

List of additional recommendations

I’m interested primarily in books written during and after the pandemic and buy approximately 10 books for every one I end up listening to and completing. This list was begun 2/9/2024 without descriptions. Title are in order by author’s last name and link to the audiobook version.

• Half a Soul, Olivia Atwater, 2022
• The Midnight Library, Matt Haig, 2020 (Author of The Comfort Book, which Haig wrote during the pandemic to do just that – comfort himself.)
• Unraveller, Frances Hardinge, 2023
• The Magician’s Daughter, H. G. Parry, 2023
• Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw, 2017

The books on my list are selected in the context of my limited experience with fantasy which, however, is with the greats.

• In my childhood: Daybreak – 2250 A.D., Andre Norton
• In my late teens: The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel
• In my 30s: Dragonriders of Pern, a series by Anne McCaffrey, recommended by my cousin.
• In my 40s: Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, recommended by students.
• Also in my 40s, the incomparable Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, recommended by my sister.

I attend the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club at the Blacksburg Library, Blacksburg, Virginia.

I began this list here.

Other recommended books of other kinds are here.

All content on this page is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical, professional, educational, and/or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, professional, educational, and legal advice.