Too confusing for me ( )

Listening to this book felt like listening to a series of inter-connected short stories, each focusing on a different type of strange beast in a fictional Chinese city. The unnamed narrator researches and writes about each type of beast. Threaded throughout each story is her relationship with her professor, family, and friends - both current and memories. She's also a successful novelist who spends a lot of time at the local bar.

Lots of good questions are raised in this sci-fi noir-like novel. Who is the "beast" and who is the human? What is identity? Who do you trust and why? What is love? I have a feeling I would have picked up on a lot more had I been reading instead of listening while driving around, but I enjoyed the story and the performance.

Thanks to Libro.fm for the ARC. ( )

In one Chinese city, a young woman who is an amateur cryptozoologist, is asked by a former professor if she would document and uncover the stories of the cities famed 'beasts" who have lived among humans. The beasts are very human-like (although they have green skin); female beasts can breed with human males, but male beasts cannot breed with any but their own kind. Our documenter, who describes each kind of beast in detail, begins with the "Sorrowful" beasts. Others are "Joyous". "Sacrificial", "Impasse" and "Thousand League" and so on.

[Strange Beasts of China] is a wonderful, intriguing and clever combination of fantasy and mystery. Like our intrepid amateur, we the readers are drawn deeper into the story and the mystery of these beasts. Are they some vestige from a human past? A mutation? Are we really one kind? There is something being suggested here and it made the story irresistible.

I thought the story muddied a bit near the end but it doesn’t take much away from the enjoyment of this fresh imaginative novel. ( )

Magical fiction about humans and beasts co-existing in a possible China. Or are all the human bears and the beasts human? ( )

audio fiction - woman magizoologist relates connected short stories about various human-like creatures in her fictional Chinese city--some of them are more dangerous than others, but they all have secrets. ( )