is an inventive, tragicomic novel about a fictional homegrown rock ‘n’ roll legend, Billy Ordain. Author G.S. Dickson uses a choric mode of narration, adding a speculative twist that broadens the focus of this suite of stories into industry-wide satire.
A humble miller, Peng Kai, saves Yen Se from despair, just as he rescued a young woman, Mishook, from death at the Khan’s hands. The lightning romance between Yen Se and Mishook is also disrupted by war, while Mishook is pregnant with their son. Yen Se does meet his child many moons later, when Peng Kai orchestrates a reunion.
He seeks a legend of the monster underworld, the witch Baba Jaga, and his motives might be as dangerous as they are mysterious. It’s slender dark fantasy with abbreviated world-building, but a fascinating premise.Fortune smiles upon intern Lily Chen, it seems, when the unpaid intern is swept up at the turn of the millennium by a whirlwind romance. Matthew is a financier whose family is heir to impossible wealth, and Lily’s life changes completely.
But she’s also someone who is not afraid to be themselves and who knows how to have serious fun, despite struggling for decades with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Above all, she emerges as a thoroughly decent human being whose company it is a pleasure to keep right to the final page.It might be packaged as a hard-boiled, gonzo tour through Japan’s underworld, but this intricate tale keeps unfolding in unexpected ways.