Lai's world-building and her deployment of magic realism are for the most part effective and engaging; we are left to puzzle out how the future world works, exercising our imaginations in the way that the best SF demands of us. The ways in which the overlords of the future have built out a gamified reality to exploit people was a particularly effective, and disturbing, touch (Elon Musk and Peter Thiel should not read this book in case it gives them ideas they don't already have). Myths of past and present collide in intriguing ways. However, on the narrative level this piece doesn't hang together and in fact is constantly frustrating. I am definitely not someone that has the juvenile expectation that I should like characters in a book. That rarely makes for truth-telling fiction. What I did find frustrating however was watching most of the characters, but particularly the protagonist, making stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision. . .for no apparent reason, and in ways that were often at odds with the nature of the character that Lai painstakingly developed. The ending was annoyingly predictable, although I hoped until the last minute that it wasn't where the novel was heading. It is the kind of ending where an author has boxed her characters into a corner, can't figure out how to get them out, so throws in a quasi-mystical conclusion. The only way I was able to rescue a sense of getting something out of the book was to conclude that it is in fact a parable about human stupidity. That in fact we aren't meant to care about anyone here or what they do. Instead, what Lai seems to be doing is writing a novel where the central character is genetics, the power of evolution, and the stubborness of life. People are tangential to life's persistence and its inbuilt need to change and adapt. Seen in that light, Lai's point is depressing, but probably accurate. ( )

not even gods are what they used to be - and yet... - in this novel that straddles sf and fantasy. it's a pretty chaotic fairy tale variant (off Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid), that begins its story in 19th century China but is mostly set in a dystopian near future characterized by extreme inequality and rapacious corporations in a world that's mostly fallen apart. along the way, there are a lot of colliding folklore motifs, including fertility trees, fishy tall tales, and red shoes. it's an original mix, not least because there are no heroes. ( )

When Fox was a Thousand was a special book present from a friend, and I think I remember liking it. I was excited to land a used copy of this one and plan to give it to that friend (after reading it myself!) Sadly, I'm not sure if I liked it that much. It started with a strange mermaid-like goddess who inserts herself into two stories of a Chinese girl in the early 1900s (with anachronisms) and a Chinese-Canadian girl in a distopian future. There are lots of strange smells, the same love interest and fairy-tale imagery (mostly the Little Mermaid) It was a strange swirling morass and on the depressing side. ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of a changing woman (but not in the Mayan sense). It was sometimes hard to keep up with the timeline switches, but in the end they did fit together quite nicely, and brought the story to a satisfying end. The world-building in the futuristic timeline could have used a bit more world-building, as there were few clues to how and when all this came to be, but the novel's focus is on the personal interactions of the characters, so that was not a huge concern. I was intrigued by the various iterations of the main character, who was by turns human, fish and snakish, and finished (or started) by being a deity. Highly imaginative. ( )

This book was deeply weird, and it took me a lot longer to read than most books.

Part fairy tale, part dystopian future (but the quietly desperate kind, not the flash-bang exciting kind), Salt Fish Girl centers around two stories, Nu-Wa, in 19th century China, and Miranda in British Columbia in 2044. The stories weave in and out of each other, but never in a totally satisfying way. Expect more questions than answers at the end. But somehow, I'm still glad I read it? Unsettling for sure, but very thought-provoking and strangely, weirdly beautiful. ( )