Dianne's Reviews > The Ghost Bride

Interesting and imaginative fantasy about Li Lan, a 17-year-old girl living in Malaya (Malaysia) in 1893. Her mother has died and she lives with her opium-addicted father, her nursemaid Amah and several servants. Her father is deep in debt and proposes offering Li Lan to the wealthy Lim family as a "ghost bride" to their recently deceased only son, Lim Tian Ching. Li Lan is horrified at the idea of being a bride to a dead groom and refuses. The next day, an invitation comes from the Lim family, requesting Li Lan’s presence at a mahjong party. Such an honor cannot be refused, so Li Lan attends. While wandering around the Lim family’s mansion, she meets handsome Tian Bai, Lim Tian Ching’s cousin and heir to the Lim fortune, and falls in love with him. That night her dreams begin – dreams in which a vain and pompous Lim Tian Ching begins to court her in the surreal world of the dead. The disturbing dreams persist and Amah takes Li Lan to a medium, who offers her a strange mixture of powders to mix in water and drink before sleeping. The powders offer temporary relief from the dreams, but one night Li Lan dreams again that Lim Tian Ching comes to her. This time he tells Li Lan that Tian Bai is his murderer. Li Lan awakens to further bad news – Tian Bai is to be married. Distraught, Li Lan takes a generous amount of the mysterious powders to help her sleep – and slips into a coma and the afterworld.

The afterworld is where the majority of the story takes place – and this is where this book shines. The Chinese notions of the afterlife are woven with the author’s own supernatural inventions. There are hungry ghosts, dragons, demons, spirits and also quite a bureaucracy in the afterlife. The atmosphere created by the author is the real star here. I thought it was fascinating.

Recommend if you like historical fiction mixed with fantasy.