... a beautifully-threaded story of Yong’an’s titular beasts through the eyes of a zoologist-turned-novelist with a penchant for booze and impulsive decisions ... Yan Ge’s prose shines as she layers a well-crafted meta-narrative about otherness—beastliness—over the small, short lives of human Yong’an society ... Yan Ge walks a masterful balance between economy and emotion—each sentence is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more, nothing less. It makes for a magnetic reading experience, especially coupled with the short anthropological coda of each chapter that ties in with the protagonist’s formal training in zoology ... the novel reveals its heart as a peculiar but moving love story ... It’s a story that stays with you long after you finish turning its pages, especially its evocative descriptions of its beastly inhabitants and the protagonist’s semi-cryptic inner monologues that illustrate the beauty of sometimes not knowing—or choosing not to know.

The narrator, a cryptozoologist, author and newspaper columnist with a fondness for cigarettes, booze and high jinks, is the book’s strength. Her wry, melancholy voice and bottomless curiosity imbue it with wonder and rumination ... The atmosphere of Strange Beasts of China is delightful. Through the narrator’s futile quest to catalog beasts, Yan captures the fluidness of city life, the way urban space defies definition even for people hellbent on making sense of it. There’s no bedrock to Yong’an’s riddles, so the narrator is constantly revising her understanding of the beasts and herself. Human and beast exist in constant flux, clashing, merging and splintering with tectonic regularity ... Regrettably, the book does not build on that friction. By hewing so closely to the taxonomic framework of the bestiary and treating each chapter as a distinct case study, Yan introduces repetitive narrative beats, such as the narrator going to her favorite bar to chase leads or calling her former zoology professor for advice. These repetitions probably wouldn’t stand out in a story collection, but in a novel they are redundant; the narrator seems to reset every chapter. The book’s symmetrical structure also highlights the lack of interactions among the different beast communities, which are hermetically sealed off from one another despite frequent mentions of their ubiquity. Yan invokes the creatures’ strangeness without probing their existence; we are rarely privy to beasts’ perspectives on themselves, their fellow beasts or humanity. Although Yong’an brims with mood and mystique, it lacks culture.

You’ll have a decision to make when you start reading Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China. Will you willpower yourself to one story a night and savor each paragraph, immersing deeply in an alternate world? Or will you forego sleep and race through, riding the momentum of breathtaking inventions and repetitions that strike deeply into the core of what it is to be human? ... The multiple temporalities of the different species offer a heady reading experience, which is anchored by the details Yan Ge metes out, another sign of her assured storytelling ... readers are immediately engaged on a personal level, regardless of whether or not they like or fear or hate the same things ... Even as our protagonist is tumbled about like a new leaf in a sudden squall, the real storyteller, Yan Ge, is in precise control of the narrative, especially necessary if we are to reside and believe in this world. In her delicate and powerful hands, readers will not want to leave ... One could term these stories Scheherazadean, but that doesn’t do them nor their author, justice. Yan Ge—who writes in Sichuanese, Mandarin and English—and her talented translator Jeremy Tiang have created a mesmerizing experience that speaks to both our wonder at 'once upon a times' as well as our deepest examinations of what is beastly and humane in our world and ourselves ... With Yan Ge’s poetic prose and limitless imagination, this would have been a satisfying novel even if it were solely a series of exquisite tales and allegories, but her scope and talent arrow far beyond such boundaries ... It’s a more beautiful world because of these remarkable, unforgettable stories. That I’m sure of. That I know.

Over the course of nine chapters, Yan Ge depicts humanity at its most beastly, whether it’s the Government deciding to wipe out all the sacrificial beasts to stop teenagers from mimicking their suicidal tendencies, or merchants fashioning the sought-after flesh of flourishing beasts into grossly expensive furniture, or the manufacture of a whole new species of beasts to educate children only to destroy the creature once it no longer serves a purpose. It’s a biting, savage portrayal of exploitation and discrimination that feels all too timely. The novel’s environmental ethos is also very much of the now, with numerous, vivid descriptions of urban decay competing with the natural world ... it does have a couple of quirks ... For one, there’s a phenomenal amount of vomiting. This isn’t entirely surprising given how much our protagonist drinks, but she loses her lunch so often that it does, at least for me, undermine some of the more dramatic set-pieces ... The plot also grows increasingly convoluted as the narrator digs deeper into her own identity with a succession of reveals in the final chapters that felt rushed and left me a little confused ... These minor issues aside, Strange Beasts of China is a wildly imaginative and socially conscious novel that’s well worth your time.

The book maintains a lighthearted tone that, accompanied by the sometimes bizarre behavior of the characters, gives the tales a whimsical feel but never dulls the impact of the dangers the writer faces while navigating her world. Indeed, it often contributes to a sense of tragedy, which pervades the narrative as a whole ... The construction of a text with such a mixed tone, which never becomes jarring, is one of the highest achievements of Yan Ge’s book and that of her translator, Jeremy Tiang ... The sometimes-complicated twists of the narrative mean that it benefits from a rereading. The threads leading to the revelations at the end become clearer, and an understanding of the narrator develops. A rereading does not dampen its disquieting and mixed tone, however, nor does it reduce the impact of the psychologically threatening situations that the narrator faces. The book is unsettling and remains so. Prospective readers should expect to be presented with a narrative world in which answers are actively hidden from the narrator while pushing for explanations leads to cruel rebukes. This does not mean that there is no room for a cautious optimism within the narrative, though, and this optimism is provided by writing.

... if Yan’s book was simply a selection of surreal vignettes centered around the beasts, a la Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino, it would likely be compelling enough ... That isn’t the case here, though. The sorrowful beasts tend to have a few other abilities that take the narrative in unexpected (and body horror-esque) directions, and they’re far from the most uncanny creatures readers will encounter here. And as the narrator ventures deeper into the city’s subcultures, she discovers uncomfortable truths about her mentor and her own past. The novel as a whole abounds with moments where vivid imagery coincides with an ever-present sense of danger.

As she excavates the dark, often tragic histories of these beasts, a profound ecological parable begins to emerge from the bones and jagged skin of these creatures, albeit one that offers no easy morals. What appears to be a postmodern series of fantastic fables morphs into something more unexpected, expertly crafted by Yan Ge: an obscure mediation on the wildness of everyday existence, an evocative, bizarre consideration of the fragile boundaries between the self and the world beyond.

Henrik’s narration, which stretches over more than a decade, is portioned into halting episodes about friends and lovers whose role in his life tend to be spectral and short-lived ... a sensitive, vague and often maddeningly insubstantial novel. Its frustrations are illustrative of a crisis in the subject and form of a literature that takes trauma to be the defining quality of personhood. However ugly or disillusioning it may be, Mavis Gallant’s deromanticized Paris is tactile and interesting, teeming with personalities. But because Mr. Kim’s is characterized by an inviolable sense of detachment, it is doomed to remain unrealized, a shadowy backdrop for his sad hero’s tail-swallowing cycle of fear and regret.

Ge’s style, as translated by Jeremy Tiang, feels very much like the verbiage and vivacious search for truth that Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett put to paper for their classic noirs. Our narrator is a plainspoken and honest voice that juxtaposes her subjects for maximum effect. The beasts are given multidimensional elements that engage the reader with both whimsy and high emotion in equal measure. Ge’s worldbuilding is sparse but effective, the language again giving us just enough information to form vivid pictures in our minds that we won’t soon forget ... a thoughtful and introspective look at the results of our earthly need to expand species and play God with all things living. As we look at the gigantic repercussions of climate change and the inventiveness of stem cell research and other such medical miracles, this is a book that reminds us that the most important part of our moving forward on this planet is love and tolerance, self-expression and caring. This engaging mystery masquerades as a sci-fi/thriller hybrid that is so much more.

Writing firmly within the fabulist tradition of writers like Italo Calvino, whose Cosmicomics is a clear precursor, Yan is clearly making it up as she goes along. This, however, seems to very much fit Yan’s fabulist project, as her reflections on the craft of writing woven throughout the novel make clear ... Despite some baffling inconsistencies littered throughout as a result of this haphazard practice of invention, it is mostly a joy to go along for the ride. Yan’s real achievement may be her depiction of a contemporary urban China that is clearly recognizable, and that exists side-by-side with a China of the imagination—a place where myth and reality can co-conspire and nurture one another.

With Strange Beasts of China now available more than a decade since the Chinese original was published, this sense of discovery, or rediscovery, persists in Tiang’s translation. Tiang’s use of short, simple sentences is a manoeuvre harder than it appears and does well to propel tension as the narrative moves toward its reveal. The rhythm of the prose and slight turns of phrase also capture the book’s humour and the bold abandon of young characters living in bustling Yong’an ... More than the beasts and their mysteries, Strange Beasts of China stretches out the tender links between parent and child, lovers and friends, who cannot always remain. It expresses the joys and sorrows of being by yourself in a maddening metropolis, and of feeling estranged yet connected to your origins in previously unthinkable ways. As the narrator concludes, stories are fleeting, and yet they are all we have. A plethora of tales, bringing individuals together with how strangely we are alive.

... luminous and beguiling ... The nine beasts are delightfully drawn ... melds the fable-like haze of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities with a heady drag of noir. The narrator, in her effort to humanize the beasts, turns their lives into romantic melodramas for her tales. Despite the restless shifts in tone, the style never feels disjointed, in large part due to Tiang’s tremendous, fine-drawn translation ... Yan is a deft and engaging storyteller, with a proclivity for dramatic revelations, often to a fault. Strange Beasts lacks the wit and control of her later writing. Yet, though each chapter follows a similar, repetitive structure — perhaps reflecting the book’s initial serialization —Yan’s rare versatility and inventiveness keeps the narrative continuously surprising ... At its best, Strange Beasts transfixes you like a vivid dream, offering glimpses of the waking world contorted into uncanny forms. Though it never becomes a neat allegory, beneath the fantastical elements is a blatant critique of anthropocentrism and state control, and a keen concern for the way power is wielded against the marginalized. The world of Strange Beasts is more familiar than it initially seems.

The novel mixes a sort of Borgesian bestiary of mysterious creatures with a deep sense of urban and social alienation to produce an enthralling and fascinating narrative. A breath of fresh air in the often hard-sf dominated field of recently translated Chinese science fiction, this novel is a must-read for fans of Vandermeer, Borges, or fantasy fiction that blurs the line between genre and literary fiction.

... a noirish, stylish bestiary ... The overall effect of Yan’s storytelling is dreamy and hypnotic, sometimes opaque but always captivating. These cryptic but well-told tales offer much to chew on.

... thoroughly engaging ... The beasts are memorably charismatic, and that is good, because they have to overcome decisions made by translator Jeremy Tiang that undercut the book’s appeal for English-speaking readers. Still, the volume’s spirited imagination is strong enough to compensate for flaws in its translation ... The author takes marvelous advantage of the originality of her conception: each beast is given distinctive characteristics, a mix of modern circumstances, the otherworldly, and the bizarre ... Unfortunately, English-speaking readers’ appreciation of Yan’s beasts is undercut by decisions made by the publisher and translator. No footnotes are provided to explain crucial Chinese cultural references ... In addition, Tiang has smoothed out the challenging patches in the author’s prose style ... a frustrating work in English. The fantasy is well worth reading, even given the translation’s shortcomings, but the version reminds me of a Chinese phrase, 隔靴抓痒, which means 'to scratch an itch through your boot,' that is, to feel something faintly and being only partly satisfied. Melville House should be applauded for its decision to bring such a wonderful achievement in mainland fiction to the English-speaking market, but it would have been even better to have been given a more comprehensive inspection of the beasts on display.