Sinophagia was my introduction to Chinese horror. While I enjoyed the overall experience, this collection did leave me with some mixed feelings. 

There was a disconnect between my expectations and this book's approach to anthology. Sinophagia follows each story with a discussion of cultural and historical context. These breaks were often insightful and made the story even more interesting, but they also interrupted the pace for me. The ultimate effect was that this anthology felt less like entertainment and more like academic study. Again, this was not inherently good or bad, but it just wasn't what I was expecting.

I also noticed that everal stories seemed to overexplain the horror. I'm not sure if this was a stylistic choice, an artifact of language differences, or simple coincidence. 

While I struggled with some aspects of this book, I am very happy that it exists. These stories are creative, beautiful, and haunting. I hope to see more Chinese horror enter the international book community. 

I'm grateful for the opportunity to check this book out for free. I'm leaving this review of my own accord. 

Incredible range, so there's something for everyone (but some stories land more strongly than others). Psychological and mundane horrors, violent monster fighting, science fictional despair, traditional ghost stories, they're all here. A few pieces were over-reliant on twists that were broadcast pretty hard--the one with the weird Saw trap was really contrived--but most had more to say than just BOO. 

Thank you NetGalley and RBmedia for the ARC of this audiobook for my honest review

This was a really good collection, some of the stories I didn’t like but there were some in here that I think are the best I’ve ever read. I’m definitely buying the book just so I can read those ones again and share them with friends. I love that they’re translated works that I wouldn’t have been able to read without this collection and they were definitely great choices.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the ALC of this. 

I really loved all of the stories in this book. Some more than others. That last one really got to me. 

I loved the forward at the beginning explaining the horror genre in china and what the author was trying to do with putting this piece together. I also loved that she put a note after each story explaining it, the author of the story and why she included it. 

I will definitely be getting a physical copy of this as well as finding more stories by some of the authors that were included in this

good anthology! much enjoyed. glad to have the notes after too.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Solaris, and Tantor audio for the ARC. The narration by both Emily Woo Zeller and David Lee Huynh were great!

This is a celebration of all things Chinese horror, which is fantastic. As this is audio, and I was listening at work without accompanying text, it was hard to note any of the story titles themselves, as they were in Chinese! But there were a few that stood out to me. The editor does a great job of adding notes and translations, however how some of them would pop up as footnotes right in the audio did add a slight layer of confusion for me, as they would repeat the Chinese phrase multiple times before commenting on it. It’s both necessary to define the terms used, but also took me out of the stories a lot. 

One story that stood out was a mixture of ghost story, as well as a commentary on the pricing crisis on land that’s happening. An entire housing complex, which our main characters were not aware of when moving in, is mostly being used to house the ashes of the dead. While awake one night, a boyfriend finds a coin in the mouth of his girlfriend, a token used to help the dead. He freaks out and of course they desire to move. The twist that followed was not one I was expecting, and it was well done for something so short. The commentary on land, taking care of loved ones, and placing them to rest, reminded me of this year’s Korean film Exhuma. 

Another I particularly enjoyed found a man and woman waking up inside an apartment. With no way out, they are trapped, and as their kidnapper knocked them out, they don’t even know where. Through various phone calls, the person on the other line offers them ways out through various tasks or tricks. I listened to this story right after watching Saw II and the comparisons cannot be understated. While there are no contraptions, the life and death possibility of being trapped, as well as the choices to save each other, does have a kind of Jigsaw feel with the person on the other end of the line. It also feels very reminiscent of those earlier 2000s movies where all the trapped person has is a phone.  

Otherwise, with this being kind of mixed, as it includes short stories, novelettes, and novellas, I did struggle a bit with the different lengths, as sometimes I’d get used to a specific voice and then the story would promptly end. Then you’d start all over. I feel like collections of all shorts are a bit easier, but there were none that I disliked! As the editor notes several times throughout, some of these were what would be considered very Classical Chinese horror…which kind of felt like differing stories with the same ending of, “they were dead the whole time!” Not really displeasing, but I think it’s why I enjoyed the ones that differed the most. 

Oh boy.

So, as a known lover of both horror and Chinese literature, I was really excited for this collection. Unfortunately, it seems to be less a collection of Chinese horror in translation and more an attempt for the editor to position herself as the gatekeeper and lone voice fighting to bring it to an English-speaking audience.

My rating of 2 (revised down from 2.5 after several weeks of consideration) is only as high as it is because of the stories. Some I enjoyed more, some I enjoyed less, but I felt the breadth of the collection gave me a decent overview of the contemporary Chinese horror scene.

The editing and translation, however, is what lets this collection down to the extent that I feel truly awful for the writers, particularly as the editor repeatedly stressed how difficult she found persuading Chinese authors to trust her with their stories and how they would be presented to an outside audience. They were right to worry: the editing and translation were so inconsistent that it felt at points as if multiple translations from multiple translators—none of them with access to the same style guide—had been combined into a single final draft. The same Mandarin word would be in italics in one paragraph, then Roman, then italics again. Diacritics were used equally inconsistently. Some phrases would be translated in the text of the story, while other translations would be given as footnotes. The vast majority of untranslated Mandarin in the body of the stories was written in pinyin, with very few instances of the actual Chinese characters appearing instead. Again, why this choice was made in these few cases and not others is completely opaque to the reader.

What was translated also seemed to depend entirely on the unstated whim of the editor. "Da'ge" earnt itself two separate footnotes in two separate stories, while a theme that recurred in several—hukou (or huji), the Chinese system of household registration that has a huge impact on social mobility and internal migration—was never mentioned by name or explained at all, despite being referenced clearly by multiple authors. For a collection that specifically claims to want to examine the difference between urban and rural Chinese horror, this is a huge oversight and one that frankly makes me question the editor's capacity to present the topic in a meaningful way.

Lastly, every story was accompanied by an ending note that was ostensibly meant to be about the author and their background, as well as some more context for the story. However, the editor frequently used these to discuss herself and her own life, despite doing the same in the foreword already. I frankly don't pick up short story collections to learn about the person editing them, and it only added to the impression that this book is primarily about sharing the stories with a wider audience specifically so the editor will retroactively be positioned as a visionary pioneer should Chinese horror enjoy a boom in the west as Chinese sci-fi has.

Hugely disappointing. I hope to read more Chinese horror in translation in the future; I equally hope it will be translated and edited in a way where the story is allowed to be the star of the show—as it should be.

Sinophagia is a chilling collection of modern Chinese horror stories. Most were hits for me but even the misses had something interesting to offer. In particular I really loved the stories in isolated countryside locations in the mountains. But the ones in modern settings especially the stories involving social horror were intense and left a strong emotional impact. There is also quite an overlapping of horror and science fiction in this collection which was really interesting and intriguing.

The editors notes in the introduction at the end of each chapter discussing each story were insightful and interesting in themselves and were really appreciated. I also felt this was really nicely translated with many lines being quite impactful and staying in my thoughts long afterwards. This was a well curated collection and even the order the stories were introduced in were well thought out beginning with the moody haunting The Girl in the Rain and ending with a story that left me absolutely destroyed with The Death of Nala.

If your looking for ghosts and folklore, social horror and urban legends, you will find it in this collection. It’s a thought provoking collection of modern Chinese voices in horror and should not be missed.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Solaris Books. I received an advance review copy, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.