The Girl with Ghost Eyes: The Daoshi Chronicles, Book One (2015 original; edició 2016)

I guess there's something wrong with me, because I didn't enjoy this book even though it is extremely popular and well-received. And where other people praised the author for the research they did in writing a book outside of their own culture, I found various things jarring.

The setting is cool and the premise appealed to me a lot, and I'm on a bingefest of Chinese ghost fiction at the moment, but despite a strong start, I nearly didn't finish.

A lot of subtle things bugged me about the interaction. For example, characters were constantly talking about face. I thought about why this bugged me, and talked to some other Asian friends about it, and here's the thing: I don't think I have EVER heard anyone mention 'face' directly in conversation. Yes it is an important concept in Chinese culture and other Asian cultures too, and can shape everything from day to day interactions to large political decisions (governments not wanting to lose face or look weak etc). But we don't tend to reference it directly.

The characters here are constantly talking about face, though, in a way I find really weird. Li Lin frequently remarks *in dialogue* on whether something will cause her to gain or lose face, to the person whom she's conversing with. This would be the English equivalent of me saying "Oh wow, you didn't find my joke funny. I will have lost social standing with you!"
Consider how odd this sounds in English, and likewise how odd it would sound for the Asian characters to constantly be remarking "You will gain much face for doing this to me!" (Nota bene: I probably woudlnt' have complained if the MC thought constantly about face in her own internal thoughts; very specifically, what makes me baulk is that it's frequently dropped into out-loud dialogue.)

The naming conventions were quite odd, and I won't say they didn't work so much as they maybe needed more explanation. Why is the gangster named Bok Choy? Someone hangs a lantern on it by saying it's unusual but I think it maybe needed a little more to it. Like Carrot in Terry Pratchett's novel; his name is a thing, a joke, and we get both an explanation for *why* it is his name along with why nobody ever makes fun of him for it.

Other name things: A surprising amount of Chinese characters have non Chinese names, with not much explanation offered. Li Lin supposedly doesn't have fluent English, but she calls Tom Wong "Tom" and I thought that unusual; I would expect her, in that time period and with her background, to use his Chinese name. Or to at least mention it, or maybe just to highlight the fact that Tom has deliberately chosen a Western name, or... something lol.

Li Lin's deceased husband is named Rocket, and I spent too long wondering whether that was English, or a Chinese name that for some reason was translated directly when other Chinese names weren't. (Frex, Gene Wolfe wrote a Roman setting where all the names were translated, including cities, so Athens became the City of Thought.) No one seems to find it unusual, either way.


But ultimately, while these things annoyed me, they're not the key reason for my poor review. As with all things, I'm a structure whore, and in the end it was the narrative structure itself that bothered me.

In short: Li Lin mostly fails. By which I mean, she does things and they don't work. She makes plans, and they crumble. She fights but usually loses. She tries to avert disaster and either escalates it, causes herself delays, or is wholly ineffectual and it happens regardless.

Characters shouldn't succeed all the time or they feel overpowered and dull, but the reverse is also true. When a character fails constantly and continuously at almost every hurdle, it starts to feel like they're just spinning their wheels while things happen around them. It got to the point where for every single conflict, I was just tiredly waiting for her to cock it up, which she inevitably seemed to, only to get bailed out in some fashion by the eyeball spirit (which WAS cool, I will grant) or her father, or some other character, or luck.

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Dean Koontz talks about the difference between delay and complication in narratives, and gives this example (I'm paraphrasing)). Say you're accused of murder, and only one person can clear your name. You go to her house, but she's not at home and has gone to the mall; so you go to the mall, but she's just left and you've missed her, and so on.

Say instead that you're accused of murder and only one person can clear your name. You go to her house... and find her dead. Now the police are on their way, you're accused of two murders, and NO one can clear your name.

The first example is DELAY: the solution is in sight, but artificially removed from the MC by the author dossing around. The second example is COMPLICATION: the problems are multiplying.

A lot of the narrative structure in GHOST EYES (this book) felt like delay. Instead of succeeding in her goals, and then inadvertently creating new problems, she failed in her goals. That failure rarely incurred new consequences for her and instead mostly functioned to move the goal posts further away. The solution to the plot problems are X: she didn't manage it. Now the solution is Y: she chases after that, doesn't manage it.

In the end, both her failures and successes felt anaemic and without stakes as a result.

I hope I don't sound like I'm beating a dead horse but I'm wanting to be clear on what is a very subtle structural issue that was bothering me in the book.

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I won't say that you shouldn't read this book. Lots of people clearly liked it so I'm probably off base. But it didn't work for me on lots of different levels. ( )

This reminded me of a grown up version of [b: The Night Parade|25821928|The Night Parade|Kathryn Tanquary|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435631879s/25821928.jpg|45679400], though obviously from a different cultural tradition. I loved the protagonist, the monsters she befriended, and the overall weirdness of the supernatural elements. It felt a little bit choppy at times, jumping from one monster to another, but the story never got boring. ( )

Fantastic. Original, well-written, believable characters. I know nothing about Chinatown in San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century, but it felt complete and compelling, and Li-Lin is a heroine for the ages. ( )

Li-lin is so kick-ass I hope this series goes on until she's an old granny. ( )

I think the world of The Girl with Ghost Eyes, nineteenth century China Town in San Francisco, was a fantastic choice for a fantasy novel. I found the relationship between the spirit world and the living world interesting, especially since it is based on Chinese beliefs from the time. I liked most of the characters in the book, especially the heroine. My only criticism was that I never got a good feel for the time period where the book was set. The setting of China Town came alive, but I had a hard time imagining it happening in the 19th century. That could be because of my own misunderstanding of what that time period was like, but it felt a little more modern despite the traditional Chinese culture that undervalued women in the book. The author did provide an author's note at the end of the book that was very helpful - you can tell he did his research. But every time I read the name of the character named Rocket it made me wonder if a Chinese man who did not speak English would be named Rocket (again, maybe it is my ignorance and that is not an uncommon name for the time/culture). ( )