Spirits Abroad, by Zen Cho

I love Zen Cho's writing so very much. I've been following her stories online for over two years and was delighted to hear that she had a book of short stories being published! I went and preordered immediately. And IT DOES NOT DISAPPOINT. A number of the stories are ones I'd already read online, but a number of them were also new to me. So in some ways it's hard to review this book as a discrete object because it's this mishmash of new to me and old beloveds - it doesn't feel like one book to me as a result. Oh well, that's not a problem, I'll just have to reread it enough that the new-to-me stories become familiar as well.

AT ANY RATE. Zen Cho is Malaysian and she writes sff that is very consciously Malaysian and I love that about it. No generic fantasyland for her - it's all deeply rooted in specifics and feels very real as a result. But also her stories are deeply rooted in character and she is so great at creating characters and relationships between characters that feel true.

And also just - she's a very good writer! Idek what else to say about this collection except RECOMMENDED.

If you want to give Zen Cho a try before committing to an entire book, you can check out her website where she has a number of her stories posted for free. I particularly recommend "The House of Aunts" but all of them are worth reading.