Asian Monsters (Fox Spirit Book of Monsters, #3) by Margrét Helgadóttir

Asian Monsters (Fox Spirit Book of Monsters, #3) Reviews

• 
  Shona Kinsella

  Beautifully presented and beautifully written. All of the stories share a certain ethereal quality with a theme of spirits and ghosts running through them.
  
  I particularly enjoyed the contributions from Aliette de Bodard and Isabel Yap but each story was worth reading. Lovely anthology, highly recommended.
• 
  James Everington

  Asian Monsters is the third anthology in the 'Monsters' series from Fox Spirit Press, following on from European Monsters and African Monsters. It's a beautifully designed book, with evokative, sepia-tinted cover art from Daniele Serra and interior art from a range of artists. Two of the stories are in the form of comic-strips too.
  
  The fourteen stories here (edited by Margret Helgadottir) take creatures from various strands of Asian folklore and give them new twists. If, like me, you're as boringly British as they come, you'll be sure to find beasts and creatures new to you in these pages. As such, it's an anthology that feels more original than many. I assume that most of these tales are based on old myths and folktales, but the the stories in Asian Monsters all feel like fresh retellings, the authors using their stories to investigate contemporary and human concerns.
  
  Every story here is worth reading; here are a few words on my personal favourites:
  
  'Good Hunting' by Ken Liu exemplifies the combination of the traditional and the modern I mentioned above; indeed it's about the journey from one to another. This story starts with a familiar setup–a demon-hunter seeking out his quarry–but ends up somewhere completely different, as the magic of spells and tradition is replaced by that of industry and modernity. It's a spectacularly well written story about how both the demon and the hunter adapt and thrive; in its scope its the equivalent of that jump-cut from 2001.
  
  One of the most disturbing monsters in the anthology is to be found in 'Datsue-Ba' by Eliza Chan. Here, the traditional and the modern appear to be in conflict. The central characters are as modern as they come: two unmarried lovers enjoying a break at a Tokyo onsen; but they are unaware of the spirit-like creature there with them, one who sits in judgement over their actions and characters. But while it is a story about judgement, it's unclear whether justice has been delivered, or whether just the stale diktats of dead tradition enacted.
  
  Aliette de Boddard's 'Golden Lillies' also sees the values of the traditional past being forced upon latter generations, although in this case the monster (a deceased ancestor) is actively sought out, by a young woman about to marry. The story is based around the horrific practice of foot-binding, and the reader might wonder if the 'help' the spirit offers is really aid at all, or merely pointless pain and torment.
  
  EeLeen Lee's 'Let Her In' tells of the relationship between mother and daughter, the latter returning from the dead after being forced into an absuive marriage. A wonderfully poignant piece about revenge, cross-generational relationships, loss and love.
  
  Perhaps the best story of all, and certainly the scariest, is 'Blood Women' by Usman T. Malik. Set in a contemporary Pakistan, young children already facing the horrors of bombs and drone-strikes realise that something even more monstrous is out there. It's a vividly conveyed setting, and it's testament to Malik's skills as a writer that the monstrous element still has the ability to shock and scare against this all too human backdrop.
  
  All in all, Asian Monsters is thoroughly recommended
• 
  Mieneke

  If myths and monster stories are universal and timeless, they are separated by place. Even if almost any civilisation has an overlap in the core nature of their monsters, each is rich in their variety often influenced by their environment. You can find dozens of iterations of vampiric entities and shape shifters, of the fey and the possessive. The one creature that appears across the globe in the same guise is the ghost. Be it a revenant, haunt, poltergeist or lingering spirit, be they malevolent or benign—ghosts are of all times and places. As such I found it striking that so many of the stories in Asian Monsters focused on these apparitions. If the monsters in
  African Monsters were largely bound by place, the monsters in this volume were bound by people.
  
  I wonder at this difference. Is it an inherent difference in storytelling tradition between these regions, is it an accident due to the selection of stories submitted to this volume, or was it editorial choices made? I thought that perhaps Asia’s widely prevalent practice of ancestor worship might be an influence here, but a quick online search proved that is an unlikely deciding factor between the two as ancestor worship is a religious tradition on the African continent too. In the (short) fiction I’ve read from other Asian and Asian-descended authors I’ve noticed that spirits often play a part, even if set in an SF setting. Then again this might also be due to a limited sample size or a preference of the authors I read.
  
  With the large number of ghost stories in this collection — some of them by some of my favourite authors too, such as Aliette de Bodard and Xia Jia — it is surprising that none of my four favourite stories from the book actually contain ghosts. Instead they feature more corporeal beings and ones that I hadn’t encountered before. The first, set on Java, was Eve Shi’s Blood Like Water. I loved this story and its small village setting. I loved the twist and the desperate love of Wiya’s parents. It also felt comfortable and familiar, perhaps due to the honourifics used and the food Shi described, which reminded me of my own grandmother, who was born on Java. There is also an element of judgement and justice to the story, that is also present in my second favourite, Eliza Chan’s Datsue-Ba. The monster in this story wasn’t so much a monster as a spirit of judgement. And I really enjoyed the way the plot unfolded between the protagonist, her partner and Datsue-Ba, how she appeared to both of them differently and the eventual decision she makes.
  
  The other two stories do not have the same elements of judgement, but are more to do with love— love of family, love of place, love of a person, friendship. Fran Terminiello’s Aswang featured the titular monster, but the monster was more a conduit for the story’s themes than its main focus. This story had so much interesting elements: how a chance encounter with a fellow ex-pat from home can alleviate and exacerbate homesickness at the same time, how torn you can feel between your current life and the need to be home, and the actually positive relationship between Baby and her employer. There was an understated humour to the dialogue between them that lightened the most tense moments of the story in such a way that it enhanced it rather than broke it. And finally, Yukimi Ozawa’s Kokuri’s Palace. This story is difficult to describe. It is completely creepy, but also rather hauntingly beautiful, in a way that is tough to explain. It is a strange sort of love story that captured my imagination and stayed with me a while.
  
  I really enjoyed this collection, not just for the stories, but also for the lovely art included in Asian Monsters. I love getting these glimpses of the myths and monsters of places other than Western Europe and I’m looking forward to travelling to a new location. There are at least four more entries in this series and so many more monsters to discover. I can’t wait!
  
  This anthology was provided for review by the
  author.
• 
  Jo Thomas

  A fantastic first step into Asian mythology and folklore (I say as someone with no clue about the stories of the various cultures under the "Asian" umbrella). All the stories have a certain surreal, dream-like quality in common and one or two require time to digest and absorb before moving on to the next one but I enjoyed every single one.
• 
  Joanne Hall

  Asian Monsters is the third volume in Fox Spirit’s ongoing series of illustrated coffee-table books exploring monster myths from all corners of the globe. This edition is ably edited by Margret Helgadottir, who is a very fine SF writer in her own right (I urge you to check out
  The Stars Seem so Far Away), and she’s done a great job of drawing together a diverse set of stories from across the continent, from Pakistan to the Philippines. (If I have one small complaint about the collection it’s that I would have liked to see a story or two from Eastern Russia, but I appreciate that anthology editors can only work with what they get sent.)
  
  Personal highlights of this collection (and there are many, there’s not really a duff story here – I wasn’t wildly taken with the graphic novel sections but that’s my own personal taste, you may enjoy them) include”Good Hunting” by Ken Liu, a story of a hulijing ( a nine tailed fox spirit) given a brassy steampunk sheen, “Kokuri’s Palace” by Yukimi Ogawa, in which a narrator haunted by the death of a loved one offers themself to a creature who wears the skin of the dead and lived in a temple woven from human hair, and “Golden Lilies” by Aliette de Bodard, about a possessive ancestor-spirit and a great-grandchild who asks a terrible favour.
  
  There are some promising up-and-coming authors here too, notably Fran Terminiello (“Aswang” – a vengeful spirit runs wild in a Hong Kong apartment block) and Isabel Yap with “Glass Cradle, Glass Lullaby”, a disturbing story about a tiyanak, a malevolent spirit that takes the form of a baby.
  
  One thing that struck me about this collection was the way that the spirits move through our modern world – most of the stories are set in contemporary times and concern modern subjects – from cupcake shops (“The Vetala’s Query” by Sunil Patel) to suicide bombers (the unsettling “Blood Women” by Usman T Malik). It’s a sharp reminder that even now, not far below the surface sheen of civilisation, monsters are lurking…
  
  You may also enjoy :
  
  
  African Monsters
  
  European Monsters
• 
  Sunil

  Margret Helgadóttir has assembled a monstrous menagerie for Asian Monsters, and I'm proud to be a part of it. I love the variety of monstrous creatures in the book, many with which I was unfamiliar, and the detailed settings ranging from Pakistan to the Philippines. The creepy black-and-white art adds to the horror, plus there are two comics! I'm interested in checking out
  African Monsters and
  European Monsters now as well to learn about how diverse the world of monsters truly is.
• 
  Amirah

  A collection of short stories edited by Margret Helgadottir, Asian Monsters finally gives monsters the diversity and representation they deserve. In a seemingly endless quest for more racial and cultural identities in literature, this collection gives us a hauntingly beautiful assortment of supernatural voices. As the final instalment of the monster collection published by Fox Spirit, preceded by European Monsters (2014) and African Monsters (2015), it similarly claims to give monsters a renaissance. It does this by portraying them outside the stereotypes of werewolves, vampires and the seemingly inherent longing for human interaction that dominates western media.
  Yap’s ‘Grass Cradle, Glass Lullaby’ quickly became a personal favourite. It depicts a vampiric monster based on the Filipino tiyanak. This expertly woven story conveys the loneliness of a mother without a child, and the horror and obsession it can breed. This narrative was rich in pathos, evoking a bitter understanding of the darkness of the protagonist.
  Terminiello’s ‘Aswang’ gives the monstrosity of the aswang a place in reality. It works through the day and hunts through the night. The aswang brings together the people it attacks, evoking poignant scenes between the titular characters. They overcome social decorum that divides the privileged and disadvantaged. Despite the tenderness this implies, the actual aswang elicits spine-chilling terror, leading you to rethink who you can really trust on public transport.
  Though these stories are primarily about monsters, they are also about love. Love is warped, twisted and crosses boundaries. An example is ‘Kokuri’s Palace’, where the protagonist helps the kokuri wearing his former lover’s skin to weave ornaments out of human hair. The stories are indeed chilling. Yet, each is unmistakably infused with themes of love, home and change. These themes intertwine, showing that monsters, much like humans seek belonging. Sometimes home isn’t a place or even a time, it’s the people around you. People intermingle with monsters, until they become interchangeable. The apparent similarities highlight important injustices not only of the fantastical and the supernatural, but also in our own realities. Asian Monsters reveals issues of patriarchy, colonialism, privilege and poverty prevalent in many societies and challenges us to fight them.
  I never thought I’d say, I’m glad that even monsters have their place in the world, but as I read the sentence back I am hit by its truth. The cultures represented in this book, Filipino, Japanese, Indian Hindu mythology, Vietnamese and many more, have long been silenced and erased in western literature. Their stories remain secluded, and we as readers who seek this representation are forced to dig through a plethora of western stereotypes and overdone white-monsters. Asian Monsters empower these cultures, giving them a diverse identity and voice in the supernatural literary sphere. Asian Monsters has united these masterfully composed stories giving these monsters a well-deserved place in the world, truly bringing them to life, even if some of them are undead.