Fiction Reviews
Daughter of Calamity
(2024) Rosalie M. Lin, Tor, £18.99, hrdbk, 343pp, ISBN 978-1-035-01126-1
Shanghai between two world wars makes for an intriguing setting for a historical fantasy. A port growing rich on both legitimate trade and opium smuggling, a Chinese population coming to terms with modernity and imperialism, changes made tangible by the presence of French and British-American districts carved from the city itself. And all this overlain by an atmosphere of freedom comparable with 1920s Paris or Berlin.
Daughter of Calamity – the debut novel by Rosalie M. Lin – takes this Shanghai both as its setting and its theme, using the city and its contradictions to create an fascinating if imperfect piece of work.
In herself, the protagonist Jingwen represents the city divided. A taxi dancer at the Paramount, an exclusive Shanghai nightclub catering to Westerners and the Chinese elite, she’s a flapper on the make. Things look up when she catches the eye of mysterious American Dr Bailey Thompson and receives a not unconnected promotion to lead dancer in the Paramount’s troupe.
But Jingwen also runs errands for her grandmother, a traditional figure who provides medical and magical assistance to the powerful Blue Dawn gang. Grandma’s rather cyberpunk speciality: swapping arms and hands for new, more powerful limbs made of silver.
So far, so noir. But things get even weirder when Jingwen’s fellow dancers start having accidents out on the ballroom floor in which parts of their faces - eyes, lips – inexplicably disappear. In spite of her cynicism and self-interest, she feels compelled to investigate, driven by both a sense of solidarity with her fellow dancers and her fear of her suitor and her grandmother’s potential roles in the mutilations.
The story’s first half does as a very good job of immersing the reader in Shanghai’s occult demimonde, introducing one oddity after another and greatly complicating Jingwen’s investigations. There is a lot of showing rather than telling in Lin’s world-building and use of Chinese mythology – the cumulative effect of stacked oddity and assumed knowledge reminded me somewhat of Tim Powers. After a while I let it all enjoyably wash over me rather than reaching for the search engine and breaking the spell.
Being the kind of novel it is, no-one in Daughter of Calamity is entirely on the side of the angels. All the characters and factions are either complicit in the city’s corruption. And while Jingwen is trying to do the right thing, her journey through the novel is about becoming a power in her own right, in order to protect the people she loves, rather than to change the system itself.
Where the story loses out is on the back end, with Lin rushing so much to finish that the climax is over almost before it begins and some noticeable loose ends are left lying around. The main antagonist is seemingly dealt with in less than four pages; another walks away from mass murder and out of the novel entirely. Only a slim 336 pages in hardback, I suspect the book could have expanded to at least 500 and would still have very little to trim.
Given its underwhelming conclusion it is hard not to have reservations about Daughter of Calamity, but half of it is good enough that I find myself a harsher judge of its failings than I would a book that is simply average all the way through. So read it - immerse yourself in supernatural Shanghai and support a promising new author - but hope she hits the landing better next time.
Tim Atkinson
See also Steven's review of Daughter of Calamity.
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