#black water sister

[smalltownfae]

#the goblin emperor #booklr #piranesi #black water sister #lonely castle in the mirror #sistersong #spinning silver #the seventh bride #the last unicorn #the house in the cerulean sea #the forgotten beasts of eld #it was hard to pick a mckillip and a kingfisher book #I decided on one book per author so... #my polls #best standalone fantasy #making this post I am now wondering if women are more likely to write fantasy standalones than men #either that or is just because I read more books by women in general #and yeah there is no neil gaiman book here oops #I haven't reread the ones I liked in a while so I am not sure if those would top my other 2 four stars in here

[derpcakes]

Funky Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy to Read this Pride Month

It goes without saying that one should read queer books all year, but Pride represents a perfect opportunity to wave the flag for fiction with LGBTQIA+ protagonists and themes. So, amidst the flurry of recommendation posts, I present my own pile: specifically of genre fiction!

From urban fantasies about lesbians dealing with vengeful gods to far-future solarpunk road trips starring non-binary monks and everything in between, here are some novels I hold as exemplary examples of imaginative, speculative queer storytelling from the past few years.

Keep reading...

#black water sister #this is how you lose the time war #the starless sea #monk and robot #one last stop #lakelore #spellhacker #light from uncommon stars #queer books

[queer-book-character-tournament]

#Wei Wuxian #Mo Dao Zu Shi #grand master of demonic cultivation #mdzs #mo xiang tong xiu #Aled Last #heart stopper #alice oseman #Jessamyn Teoh #Black Water Sister #zen cho #Tristan Caine #The Atlas Six #olivie blake #polls #lgbt books

[agardenandlibrary]

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

This is contemporary fiction, which is kind of weird for me. I’m so used to reading secondary world fiction that books using modern parlance throw me for a loop. This was just a problem because I’m not used to it! Which is a flaw of me the reader, not this book.

So much of this book is about the immigrant experience. Our main character Jess is caught between worlds. She sticks out wherever she goes, not quite Malaysian and not quite American. I really liked how she found connection with other immigrants in small moments of solidarity. 

Jess is struggling with the move from America back to Malaysia with her parents, hiding her personal life, being her mother’s emotional support – and then the ghost of Jess’s grandmother starts to haunt her, demanding that Jess help her save a temple from destruction. She begins to explore the spiritual culture of Malaysia, to visit temples and meet mediums: people who gods can speak through. And there are many gods, big and small, everywhere.

Even as she learns about the spirit world, Jess also learns about her own family history, things her mother never told her, secrets kept for decades. Jess finds herself in unexpected danger, not just from a world of shady gangs and business deals, but also from the spirit world, where her grandmother’s god, a vengeful spirit known as the Black Water Sister, tries to take over Jess’s body in order to enact her revenge on the world. 

I really enjoyed this book! It was dark but not constantly; there were moments I laughed out loud. It’s contemporary, which I’m not used to, but it fully committed to “spirits and gods are real and people communicate with them regularly” which I love to see. 

#cara reads black water sister #black water sister #zen cho #my book picture #my book review

[meikuree]

the lightness of a foreign sky by meikuree

Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/F, Gen Relationship: Jessamyn Teoh Min/Sharanya, Jessamyn Teoh Min & Her Parents Additional Tags: Post-Canon

Summary: After her business in Penang with the Black Water Sister was settled, Jess set off for the skyscrapers and new vistas of Singapore.

wrote this for bethefirst, a challenge to create the first fanwork for a fandom. this wound up as a chance to write some setting porn. thank you to @bothzangetsus and @pretty-rage-machine for the kind beta!

black water sister is, paraphrasing wikipedia, a diaspora fantasy novel about a malaysian chinese lesbian who gets tied up in supernatural hijinks involving her grandmother.

#title's an inversion of a line in the merlion by alfian sa'at #black water sister #zen cho #my fic #q

[evenaturtleduck]

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

#currently reading #black water sister #zen cho

[lairn]

Book 12/24: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Rating: 3.25/5

Jess, feeling out of place and completely lost, moves back to Malaysia with her parents. And then things get more complicated when her grandmother’s ghost begins to haunt her.

I don’t have a lot to say about this book. I liked it. I thought the characters were good and the setting was described well. The plot did not have me entirely swept away, but it was solid. Some parts were tense and exciting, some were tense and made me anxious. The feel-good ending legitimately made me feel good.

#black water sister #zen cho #reading challenge 2023 #i was a little puzzled about why characters who are fluent in hokkien and were speaking hokkien would still have the speech patterns they... #...used when speaking english #but cho is malaysian and i'll trust she knows what she's about

[the-final-sentence]

'I've got something to tell you.'

Zen Cho, from Black Water Sister

#Black Water Sister #Zen Cho

[qbdatabase]

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke and moving back to Malaysia, a country she left when she was a toddler. So when Jess starts hearing voices, she chalks it up to stress. But there’s only one voice in her head, and it claims to be the ghost of her estranged grandmother, Ah Ma. In life Ah Ma was a spirit medium, the avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a gang boss who has offended the god–and she’s decided Jess is going to help her do it.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny. If she fails, the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.

#adult books #fantasy #Chinese rep #Malaysian rep #Asian rep #lesbian #lesbian rep #closeted rep #setting: Malaysia #ghosts #daily book #fiction #lgbt fiction #lgbtqia #bookblr #Black Water Sister #Zen Cho

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

“If I can’t do anything else,” she said, “I can be a witness.”

#black water sister #zen cho #quotes

[smalltownfae]

#wlw books #fingersmith #this is how you lose the time war #the seven husbands of evelyn hugo #the unbroken #legends & lattes #the singing hills cycle #the secret lives of church ladies #the raven and the reindeer #kissing the witch #my polls #I need to read more wlw because I had to include some I didn't even cared for #it would be easier if it was just lesbian characters but the poll os about wlw as in couples or at least almost that #black water sister #some of these have couples that aren't the focus but that is the best I could do

[nerds-in-wonderland]

🏳️‍🌈📖Queer Books By Asian authors📖🏳️‍🌈

BLACK WATER SISTER

By: Zen Cho

"A reluctant medium discovers the ties that bind can unleash a dangerous power in this compelling Malaysian-set contemporary fantasy.

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke and moving back to Malaysia, a country she left when she was a toddler. So when Jess starts hearing voices, she chalks it up to stress. But there's only one voice in her head, and it claims to be the ghost of her estranged grandmother, Ah Ma. In life Ah Ma was a spirit medium, the avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she's determined to settle a score against a gang boss who has offended the god--and she's decided Jess is going to help her do it.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she'll also need to regain control of her body and destiny. If she fails, the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good."

`Alice 🌌

#book recommendations #nerd aesthetics #nerd aesthetic #dnd memes #dnd #classic art memes #nerd memes #nerdy moodboard #nerdy game #nerd #nerd humor #nerdy #nerdy memes #black water sister #asian authors #queer books

[ariadnaltos]

These days I'm reading two books: The Two Towers (LOTR) and Black Water Sister. (˵ •̀ ᴗ •́ ˵ ) ✧ I'm in the middle of Black Water Sister and I'm enjoying it. I thought that it would lean more into the comedy of the premise, but it's more of a paranormal thriller. I like reading about other cultures. Learning about Malaysia is exciting. I got my copy signed at Celsius 232. It was really interesting hearing Zen Cho talk about her books and how she uses her cultural heritage in her narratives.

#black water sister #zen cho #booklr #lgbt books #bookworm #they didn't translated the title into spanish which is weird #celsius 232 #celsius 2023

[agardenandlibrary]

[Jess] lowered her voice. “I tried to kill you.”

“I wanted to see you because you tried to kill me,” said Sherng. “It seemed out of character for you.”

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

#cara reads black water sister #black water sister #zen cho

[meikuree]

4, 10, 30, 37, and 45 for the writers' questions!

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

answered!

10. How do you decide what to write?

I used to reliably write one fic per month, and that was decided by whatever idea nugget had captivated my brain most recently.

ever since I’ve broken into the landscape of ao3 exchanges, it’s decided by recent exchanges I might’ve signed up for or exquisite requests that have caught my eye.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

glib answer: fluff is out of my comfort zone. anything calling for an unqualified uncomplicated happy ending… leads to me gnashing the end of an imaginary pencil going “but why is this so hard???” there’s no honour with fluff and no lessons learned, I just bounce at the earliest opportunity back to gestating dark wretched bonbons.

realistic answer: m/m. I used to have a disease called “I can only write fic from women or non-binary people or men of colour’s povs” (I don’t relate to people who think writing women is revulsively political because MEN who are the default in their societies fill that role for me instead and women are my comfort zone) and m/m was a huge leap… but it’ll get easier with practice, is what I tell myself! it has gotten easier.

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

I don’t think it’s underrated when you put the fandom into context, but I’m going to discuss the lightness of a foreign sky a second time [drumroll], specifically epigraphs/poetry, because I like the choice of poem I picked and more broadly the poet I looked up:

while looking for epigraphs/poems to crib titles from I rediscovered Alfian sa’at’s poetry. The Merlion, which the fic title is paraphrased from, is a nice wry ode to the diffusion of identity and rootlessness that doesn't side with the subject of that (privileged) rootlessness, exactly, but does do a nod to loss from the unsaid weathering of their sense of self. all of which I thought was somewhat fitting considering the OG book's subject matter, and so decided to put into conversation with it through my fic.

that aside, it's just a poem that manages to be irreverent and thoughtfully witty (the contemporary Chernobyl reference!) while staying lyrical:

"I wish it had paws," you said, "It's quite grotesque the way it is, you know, limbless; can you imagine it writhing in the water, like some post-Chernobyl nightmare? I mean, how does it move? Like a torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself against the currents, gnashing with frustration, its furious mane bleached the colour of a drowned sun? [...] What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx. What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed with self-knowledge and how its own jaws clamp open in self-doubt, still surprised after all these years."

the common online consensus among singaporeans (that I've observed, anyway) is that Crazy Rich Asians has gotten mixed receptions given its wild embellishments and setting inaccuracies (wrt the everyday lives of most of the singaporean populace, lol, not counting expat enclaves) -- and i think something like Alfian Sa'at's Void Deck is a great antidote to CRA's fictive luxury:

And old folks sit like sages To deploy chess pieces with ancient strategies. In a corner, a caged bird bursts With the song of its master's pride And wrinkled women breathe, through Tai-chi-tuned windpipes, the operatic melody of the air… All a wanton fantasy. Eyes reveal a meeting-point For loners and loiterers: A sense of things reduced- Conversations that trickle through Brief noddings at lift landings, Teenage rhetoric scrawled, in liquid paper, On the stone-table chessboard, (Where the king used to sit) The grandiose house-selling dreams of residents Compacted in anonymous letterboxes;

so: if I like something about this fic, I hope it's some sort of groundedness in... emotion, setting texture, and all that jazz.

45. What’s something you’ve improved on since you started writing fic?

answered—but I like to think (hope) that I’m better at writing lines that feel like an emotional gut punch or sharp insight, and including them in every other paragraph in fic so that the reader feels either like they’ve been walloped or sanctified (or left thinking "wtf? I'm never going to trust this person again") by the end.

(fic writer asks)

#thank you for the ask! <33 #meikuree answers #long post #black water sister #zen cho

[readingaway]

Danielle Babbles About Books - Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

What? I haven't reviewed this yet?

What made you want to read this book? - So we know that I love reading books that introduce me to different places and peoples than what I know in my day to day, so of course a novel about a Malaysian-American woman by a Malaysian-British woman that's set in Malaysia had an intial appeal, and then it's about ghosts (Malaysian) and revenge.

What aspects stuck with you the most? - The premise that my worldview (being in the american and culturally christian [read: down a rabbit hole of protestant-adjacent culture] demograhic) is severely limited and that includes ghost stories. I remember old posts that claimed that american views of death and ghosts are very much still influenced by the american civil war, and certainly the ghost stories and beliefs I'm familiar with don't appear in earlier literature that I'm familiar with. So the medium aspect was in and of itself intriguing. But the story was carried by the narrative voice and that I particularly enjoyed.

And before I forget to add it, there's also of course the part about navigating parent- adult child relationships (with added expectations of filialpiety) and coming out. Keeping huge parts of one's life/ identity is something I really connect with.

#black water sister #zen cho #book reviews #danielle babbles about books #my reviews