The Ghost Bride
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is $1.99!This is a mixture of historical fiction, fantasy, and romance. The Ghost Bride. It’s also been made into a Netflix adaptation that I’m super curious about! Since this book is on sale and Choo’s sophomore novel was also reduced in price, does this mean there’s a new book coming out?!
‘One evening, my father asked me whether I would like to become a ghost bride…’
Though ruled by British overlords, the Chinese of colonial Malaya still cling to ancient customs. And in the sleepy port town of Malacca, ghosts and superstitions abound.
Li Lan, the daughter of a genteel but bankrupt family, has few prospects. But fate intervenes when she receives an unusual proposal from the wealthy and powerful Lim family. They want her to become a ghost bride for the family’s only son, who recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, traditional ghost marriages are used to placate restless spirits. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at a terrible price.
After an ominous visit to the opulent Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also by her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir, Tian Bai. Night after night, she is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, with its ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, vengeful spirits, and monstrous bureaucracy—including the mysterious Er Lang, a charming but unpredictable guardian spirit. Li Lan must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family—before she is trapped in this ghostly world forever.
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RECOMMENDED: Quackery by Lydia Kang and Nate Pederson is $1.99! Carrie wrote a Lightning Review for this one at the beginning of October:
I recommend this book to people who enjoy trivia, the stranger the better, in the areas of history, science vs. pseudoscience, and medicine.
What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth?
Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra.
Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.
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The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Steward is $2.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! This fantasy novel was mentioned on a previous Hide Your Wallet, though I’ve heard it can be a little bit of a dark read. I think both Elyse and Carrie read it and have shared mostly favorable thoughts.
In an empire controlled by bone shard magic, Lin, the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her magic and her place on the throne. The Bone Shard Daughter marks the debut of a major new voice in epic fantasy.
The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.
Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.
Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.
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RECOMMENDED: Sabriel by Garth Nix is $1.99! Many of you were talking about the continuation of this series in a previous Hide Your Wallet post. For those who want to jump on the awesome train or want to convince a friend/family to jump on with you, the first book in the Abhorsen series can be snagged for less than $2!
Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Abhorson, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life and comes face-to-face with her own hidden destiny…
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I just saw that Garth Nix has a prequel for Sabriel due out in November about Sabriel’s parents, Terciel & Elinor. The Abhorsen series is exciting and well written.
Ooh, I have The Ghost Bride as a possible selection for my Reading Glasses podcast challenge prompt “A book recommended by a librarian” so this is good timing.
John Eyre by Mimi Matthews, which I’ve had on my wishlist for a while, is $1.99. *click!*
@squee_me. Thanks for the heads up! This book is also on my wishlist.
Sabriel was a formative fantasy for me growing up. It builds a subtle system of magic, and features a heroine who mixes caution and interiority with her competence and strength. I recommend it highly, even if you’re not usually a YA reader.
@Hannah Bloom Seconded! The Abhorsen series remains one of my favorite fantasy series to this day. Even though it features young adult characters, and there is nothing inappropriate for a YA reader, it is definitely less fluffy(? not sure that’s quite the right word) than your typical YA fantasy read. As a teen, my mom saw that I loved the books and so got the audio CDs for a road trip, and enjoyed them as well.
Speaking of, if you are an audiobook fan, Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen are all performed by Tim Curry and they are FANTASTIC.
@Carrie G: Thanks for the heads up. I’ve only read/listened to the first three books, and the real magic for me was the narration by Tim Curry. Not sure if I have the heart to continue the series without him, but I may check this one out.
LOL. @Courtney M beat me to it (I’m a very slow phone typist), but that emphasizes how amazing Curry’s performances were. I’m often very critical of screen actors’s voice work, but he was a happy exception. Whether you’ve already read any of the books or not, he’s worth checking out.
@Susan, I will say, I’ve only listened to the Tim Curry audiobooks, but I’ve read the newer books (Clariel and Goldenhand) in print and I still “hear” Mogget in Tim Curry’s voice.
I went to Audible to hear a sample of Tim Curry narrating Sabriel, he is magnificent as always, but several reviews mentioned this is a “dark” fantasy.
Anyone know of any content warnings for stressed brains?
I got so pumped about the Dark Kingdom/Abhorsen books that I bought the 5-book box set. I read Sabriel when I was a teen and I loved it so much.
@Escapeologist – A lot of death, dying and the Dead (aka things brought back from the dead, some akin to zombies, some stronger). The main character, essentially, has the hereditary job of a necromancer whose job it is to kill the Dead. Here are the potential triggers I remember: gore (because the Dead are corpses); some violence, but not as much violence as you might expect as magic kills the Dead; implied terrible death of children (and others) off page; and SPOILERS (death of a parent).
“The Ghost Bride” is so interesting. Excellent supernatural story. And if you read a lot of American YA you might think you know how the romantic elements are going to go, but no, they take a course that makes sense from the perspective of the heroine’s Malaysian-Chinese culture. (I sure hope the Netflix adaptation didn’t change that.)
I love the Abhorsen series, but I didn’t really enjoy Sabriel that much – personally I felt like the series really took off with Lirael, which along with Abhorsen is my go-to “I didn’t download enough e-books for this flight so it’s time to reread something” book. To be honest, I didn’t like the latest two entries terribly much either – Garth Nix does magic, action, and angst really well and kinda falls flat everywhere else imo. It’s a fascinating world, though, so I still eagerly read everything set in it.
I liked the description of the Quackery book–though when my son had colic, morphine actually sounded pretty good (for all of us, though fortunately Karo syrup worked much better).
I love the Abhorsen series but agree with Diana that it’s uneven — to my mind, it peaked with Lirael, which is no. 2. Sabriel is the one that hooked me, but I’ve realized that Nix doesn’t do romance very well. It’s more about the adventure and personal journey. If anything, the love between Sabriel and her father is far more compelling and heart wrenching. Abhorsen (no.3) is pretty good, just kind of overwritten in parts… as I recall, it opens with a couple pages from the POV of a sentient fog!!
I’m not a YA reader, apart from occasional nostalgia reads, and whenever I try something YA, I’m reminded of why I don’t read it. The Abhorsen trilogy, which I read as an adult, is the only exception to date. Sabriel was my favourite.
Ghost Bride on Netflix is great! I enjoyed it immensely and it made me seek out the book!