This is a collection of contemporary stories, inspired by traditional Japanese ghost stories. In each story, someone who is dead (or someone connected to the dead) gets a new identity, or a new job, or a new chance to tell their favorite relative not to make the same mistakes they did while also criticizing their apartments.
Why haunt a well when you can be a small business owner? Why not report a fire if it will bring your true love out of the monastery… oh, wait, that one has consequences – don’t do that. Why not pretend to be a human wife, even though the expectations of human wives make absolutely no sense (in general, and also to you as a fox spirit)?
These are fun stories, and one of them (about a ghost helping out single moms) even got me all misty-eyed. The audiobook is well performed and enjoyable to listen to (forgive the annoying ghost aunt – not all ghosts complain as much as she does!), and notes at the end describe the traditional tales that inspired them.
I enjoyed these stories and the clever character-based connections between them, very much.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi audiobook published by Audible (8 hours, 2 minutes) and narrated by Will Wheaton (!) 2022
John Scalzi had fun writing this book (you can tell), and Will Wheaton may have had EVEN MORE FUN performing it!
Jamie is desperate as the COVID-19 pandemic strikes, after having been laid off by his annoying dude-bro boss at a food delivery startup. As he scrapes by delivering food with yet another corporate restructuring hanging over his head, an acquaintance offers him a lifeline: a job at an “animal rights organization.”
A job that pays very well.
That will take him off into “the field” for long periods of time.
One that will wire money back to his roommates. One that requires shots for conditions that might not even be real. Wait, what?
Jamie is reluctant to believe that “the field” is located on an alternate version of earth, in a universe where earth developed differently, and came to be dominated by highly radioactive kaiju. Who can come over to OUR earth when certain nuclear events occur, which led to real events that inspired our Godzilla films. And where Jamie can support an international team of scientists while they try not to be killed by the local flora and fauna.
Radiation! Kaiju battles! Airships! Kaiju babies! Communication outages! Monster-filled GOO!
I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t specify the arc of Jamie’s adventures, but it is a good time. There is something deeply satisfying about hearing Will Wheaton shout sarcastic dialog and joyous profanity. Scalzi includes many old geek references in this book, so many that I worried that I should stop saying that certain phrases would make good band names. (Editor’s note: The younger people I work with are unaware of this geek tradition, so I’ll keep doing it until they groan.)
This book is fun. Lighthearted, profanity-punctuated fun. I recommend it highly.
This horror story has become so harrowing that the publisher is releasing chapter 31 in multiple parts, each one slightly more intense than the last!
Covers of The Summer Hikaru Died Chapter 31.1, 31.2, and 31.3
The Summer Hikaru Died, Chapter 31 (so far) by Mokumokuren published by Yen Press 2024
I don’t know how many parts there will be to this chapter. Is releasing them in parts supposed to ease the shock?Do doctors not recommend that we read all three at once? I don’t know what to think…
But: yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes. The Houka Festival is creepy. The effigies are creepy.
The line, “So, what did they use before dolls?” is met with a creepy, too-long silence.
The idea that everyone traditionally knew there were holes in the fabric of reality and that it was up to children to go through to the other side to patch them is creeeeeeeeepyyyyyyy….
The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren published by Yen Press (ongoing, this is about Chapters 27 – 30) 2024 – present
My favorite horror series about body-part-collecting-beings from ‘the other side’ continues! The story is well-paced, and builds upon earlier revelations. As noted earlier, do not read these out of order! And don’t read further if you haven’t started the series.
Chapter 27: Yoshiki and new Hikaru hear a novel explanation of what’s happening in their town from the stranger in sunglasses, who asks new Hikaru to try to fix the rift between worlds. Yoshiki wrestles with his feelings for new Hikaru. The sky has weird lines in it. Also: there is a very attractive drawing of pancakes.
Chapter 28: Kurebayashi rejoins the boys. This chapter contains the creepiest social media post EVAH, posted by a kid who is OVER IT. (I respect his impatience with ghosts!)
Chapter 29: New Hikaru shows off some of his cleansing powers at a classmate’s house in Ashidori, a village where they may have something to fix. That classmate’s occult-obsessed brother recommends an upcoming festival.
Chapter 30: The Houku Festival is cheerful, aside from the creepy little dolls people make as an offering. Asako feels like she isn’t helping to protect the village, so she goes off on her own (!) to a forlorn, abandoned house (!!) that has sounds coming out of it (!!!). (GIRL – nooo!)
There is something that moves the story forward in every chapter – this tight pacing is fantastic. (You’ve read me complaining about the many manhwa stories that veer off onto tangents about agriculture… This has the most agricultural setting of any story I’ve read, yet Mokumokuren STAYS. ON. THEME.) The way Yoshiki wrestles with his attachment to new Hikaru feels authentic. The increasing creepiness and limited timeline for preventing something awful from happening build tension well. I continue to love this series!
This story is 92 chapters of revenge, self-denying-relationship-dynamics, and a fear that a loving couple has no future because of flaws within each of their characters.
I endorsed this comic at chapter 71, and I endorse it still. It is suspenseful all the way through!
Book (Manhwa): I Tamed My Ex-husband’s Mad Dog by CMJM, Jagae, Jkyum – Books and Coffee
I Tamed My Ex-husband’s Mad Dog by CMJM, Jagae, Jkyumpublished by Tappytoon (71 chapters, in season 3, ongoing)2022 (?) – present
I’ve already described it, but can add that devoting one’s second-chance at life solely to revenge is not sensible. Also, self-loathing about the decisions one makes to have revenge can sabotage a relationship even more than stealing and mutilating a body together does. (Does this sound like a lesson that applies to you? If so, let’s NOT hang out!)
Beyond avoiding self-loathing, the story suggests that honesty, open communication, avoiding saddling your love with army-borrowing-related-debt, and perhaps even admitting to bearing your loved one’s children rather than hiding in another territory could all improve your love life. This… feels like solid general relationship advice. Fringe, yet accurate. While this story is marked with the “romance” tag of Tappytoon, such stories are usually more upbeat and don’t involve as many years of not speaking to each other or even being in the same region as this story does. (There is some realism in this, however.)
It is suspenseful – a character coming close to using magic to erase their life, inconveniently located cliffs, inconveniently deadly monsters, attempted assassinations, children running away with armies, a man bullying a younger man who may seek to avenge himself later, and the very real risk of a murder breaking a fragile, restored trust continue through the penultimate chapter. (Penultimate: a good name for a fountain pen shop, especially if it is second-to-last on a block.)
I truly enjoyed this violent, suspenseful, revenge-centric fantasy. This is a riveting adventure story of good people doing gory / bad things and suffering for it for many years before admitting their faults and choosing love. I continue to recommend it.
I’m excited to read that Han Kang has won the Nobel for her writing! I’m so delighted that this talented writer has been recognized.
South Korean author Han Kang wins the 2024 Nobel prize in literature
Han, whose works include The Vegetarian, was praised for her ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life’
(The article above is one of the most thoughtful articles to come out about her work, how other writers feel about her books, and more.)
The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren published by Yen Press (ongoing, this is about Chapters 22-26) 2024 – present
I learned yesterday that the TSHD Volume 5tankōbon won’t come out until March 2025. But the chapters published in Japan and translated into English already go up to Chapter 30! I am not willing to wait, so I’m buying the available digital chapters individually (from the Apple Books app). I’ll reread the entire series once it is complete.
This horror series is one continuous story (NOT an episodic collection of standalone adventures!). You should start with Chapter 1. I highly recommend this series – it is an impressive, creepy, humid, summer night story of things that go bump in the forest above a cursed village with a debt to repay.
I’m trying not to post spoilers, but rather a map of the series, so I can find parts I want to emphasize to others when I talk them into reading this. :). But you should skip this review if you haven’t started reading.
Chapter 22 begins seconds after Chapter 21’s last slash. Yoshiki tries to save his dearest friend, and then… wakes in the hospital, with his worried mother telling him that the events at the house were all hushed up. Kurebayashi visits and assures Yoshiki of his friend’s… durability. The out of town ‘scholar’ (who resembles Hikaru) reveals to a local that his centuries-old employer has an interest in specific <beings> from the other side of the rift, but won’t disclose his personal agenda.
Chapter 23 continues in the hospital with an astute observation by concerned Kurebayashi. A classmate tells the boys local mines supplied abortifacients to get the village through times of scarcity, which led to the worship of the local mountain god, which also led a decrease in local epidemics?
There is a pencil sketch of Hikaru destabilizing in Chapter 23 that is SUPERB.
Chapter 24 continues that the destabilizing theme, and Yoshiki realizes that he isn’t purely human anymore… A visit to the Indou family shrine reveals what the village’s dire offerings to the mountain god were, and how they have been memorialized by Hikaru’s family. New Hikaru feels pangs of guilt about how original Hikaru’s friends miss him.
Chapter 25 introduces Yoshiki’s father, who was dear friends with Hikaru’s father. He tells Yoshiki exactly how the Indous brought calamity to their village and the curse upon themselves. New Hikaru goes to Kurebayashi while trying to figure out how to save his friend – from himself. And Yoshiki finds a sketch of the thing new Hikaru really is – from Europe in 1519. (Aren’t art books great?!)
Chapter 26 is summer vacation. No, really. The boys get to go to the beach! I love this cover – there is a nice panorama in the issue. It ends with a revelation or trick, it’s too early to say which.
A lovely, non-spooky cover!
I continue to love love love this series. So creepy. Action-packed, but with steady progress as the boys uncover so much dark local history. Their friendship and love for each other – indifferent to the fact that one of them isn’t human – is deep and sweet. The village landscapes, the details in the houses, the chirping of cicadas – it is all so atmospheric. This is a compelling, well executed story!
The Tyrant Wants to Be Good by Ramguel, KAKON published by Webtoon (80 chapters so far, ongoing) 2023 – present
Dorothea Millanaire had a rough life, but once she murdered her sweet-but-hapless brother to become the empress, she was certain things would go her way.
Consistent with the rest of her sad life to that point, however, things did not go her way at all. When her most loyal supporter offered to save her at her execution, she turned him down – she was too heartbroken to continue living.
Dorothea doesn’t take it well when she wakes up AS A BABY VERSION OF HERSELF. A pissed off, world-weary baby. Oh, the indignity of being snuggled by the toddler version of her doting older brother (whom she had murdered in adulthood in her prior life!)!!
Yes, this is yet another second chance novel, but the first one I’ve read in which the protagonist TRULY has to start life over – all the way over – IN INFANCY. With the full guilt of her misdeeds weighing upon her memory-filled mind, there is a poignant mix of humor (a frustrated toddler isn’t strong enough to kill people whom she believes deserve it), frustration (she is a neglected and unloved daughter again), frivolity (classic younger sister chafing at her clingy older brother feelings), and sadness (six-year-old Dorothea looking at the child-version of her past-life-dead-husband with such profound, age-inappropriate despair that he is haunted by it).
Unlike other second-chance stories, Dorothea isn’t especially determined to survive this life. She feels she must make amends, but expects no rewards, and still doesn’t feel she belongs. Her father still treats her with contempt, she is still mocked in society for not having <the superficial sign of power that her family uses to justify its authority>, and she chooses to hold her prior-life’s love at a mournful, adult-arm’s-length distance, even though this version of him appears sincerely fond of her. The same society that punished Empress Dorothea for trying to end dangerous child labor is going to punish this younger, non-empress version of her for the same efforts, proving it is hard to be good in a society that is so bad.
The difference in this go-round is that she has a handful of people who love her. Including one who loves her so much, he would support her in violently taking the throne AGAIN.
I started reading on a lark to see a vengeful baby with adult memories, but am now 80 chapters in, and the characters have aged into legal adults. This is another tale of a neglected child attempting to break a cycle of violence in a cruel, feudal world of extreme poverty and lavish palaces, in which the power of chosen-family love might not be enough to save anyone.
N.K. Jemison has a collection of short stories, and while many of them are from earlier in her career, they don’t feel like early, learning-the-craft stories – they are absolutely superb. The collection also opens with an essay about what it is like to write science fiction stories with people who are like us ethnically, and how great it feels to envision futures that include us!
I Tamed My Ex-Husband’s Mad Dog (graphical fiction) is in chapter 89, and either everyone is going to die, or the main characters will live happily together, or maybe they’ll be happy for a VERY BRIEF TIME before they all die? IT IS SO TENSE! I could barely make it through chapters 87-88, which involved a lot of blood – blood that had belonged to one of the main characters, so they couldn’t make the joke I like so much about it being someone else’s.
The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway (graphical fiction) is at chapter 82, and there is some tension building as the main characters are apart, as one of them figures out who the assassination target was during their vacation, and tries to get information on… something that they shouldn’t be able to remember.
Men of the Harem (graphical fiction) has resumed at full speed, and it isn’t completely clear that Empress Latil is the vampire lord that two of her most handsome fans hope she will be. It also isn’t clear why she can punch vampires and send them flying across a room. Also, magic tools allow some characters to wear the faces of other people, a complication I didn’t need!
The Remarried Empress (graphical fiction) has also come out of hiatus, and I’m still pleased by how much the art style tightened up over the course of its 187 chapters (so far). While the empress’ remarriage was supposed to be primarily political, her new spouse is so much more fun than her old one! And, because paternity testing science exists, there is a lot of drama in her former palace…
US Political and World News. There is SO MUCH OF IT right now. And it is a roller coaster.
Letters. Which my hands have hurt too much to respond to prettily. (I think I understand why there were so many searches combining COVID and arthritis….)
My Japanese lessons. Oh, the torment of half-remembering a language!
I hope your own reading provides you as much pleasure as mine gives me.
The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 4 (Japanese title: Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu) by Mokumokuren published by Yen Press 2024
The story of rural schoolboy Yoshiki and the eerie, replacement version of his dear friend, Hikaru, resumes with a sink full of bloody clothes, plus a newfound determination to figure out what Hikaru is.
The boys’ research uncovers darkness. A name written by original Hiraku triggers a rant from Hikaru’s unfocused grandfather about a man asking <a being> for something inappropriate in the distant past, which created the current misfortunes… Hikaru uncovers creepy place names of surrounding towns… A local back to bury her mother shares that her sister went up the mountain and never came back…
The only positive-seeming news is that Kurebayashi-san, the ordinary-looking lady whose dead husband’s unworkable-but-wanted return informs her views with deepempathy, intervenes when the boys are in danger. She has an ability to push <things> back to where they belong, and a theory about why there are so many <things> in the village now.
Her theory involves Hikaru.
This volume ends in violentsuspense at the end of chapter 21. (Chapter 29 will be released this week in digital format, so my impatience while awaiting the tankōbon to be printed is catching up with me!)
This is my first real horror manga, and it is SUPERB. I am eager for more.
