I do not usually enjoy fantasy books but this one was very good, though a little slow for me at the start by the end I was loving it.

Reading Yan Ge’s “Strange Beasts of China” takes place in the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, where humans live alongside various species of “beasts” - creatures who mostly resemble humans, yet in each case, there are quite a few characteristics both inside and out that set them completely apart. One such human is the narrator, a writer who devotes every chapter to a separate beast. However, this is more than just a field guild made as a creative exercise. With each chapter, a grander story progresses, one that sweeps up both our narrator and those in her orbit.

Reading this felt like both a new experience, yet also a familiar one. The setting, the assorted beasts, and characters are of course all of the author's making. Yet the total work produced similar feelings to those I have had stirred up while reading Gabriel García Márquez or Italo Cavino, where fantastical elements all work together to intrigue the reader yet also to call forth a variety of themes. Now to be perfectly honest, it was hard to decipher exactly what deeper messages the book was trying to get at. While it felt like some beasts and their interactions with the characters were meant to touch upon modern-day urban living, others definitely felt more tied to present-day China, and I could practically feel them going over my head. Still, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out the ideas underlying this unique magical realist setting and the various nearly-human creatures that lived amongst it.

5 stars *may change
TWS: death, self-harm, drugs
I cannot for the life of me believe that I'm giving a perfect score to an under-200 page short story collection. Believe me when I say that this is completely random for me. I went into this thinking it would be a 3 star, like most books I read are, and here I am now.
I thought about it for a bit, and the best comparison I can come up with for this book is Devilman Crybaby. Yes, the 2019 Netflix anime that was completely insane. That being said, just like the anime, this book isn't for everyone. I mean, I don't even like short story collections. There was just something about this that drew me in. It's short (Although I swear some stories felt so long) and completely, unapologetically brutal. I genuinely couldn't believe that certain decisions were made. This book actually made me *cry,* but I'm going to skip over that because it's embarrassing.
Each chapter centers around a specific beast that our unnamed protagonist encounters or writes about at the time. The stories are seemingly in chronological order as we follow a cast of recurring characters. Mostly. It's written in such a way that switches from the history of the creatures to a story and comes back with more history to tie it all together. It's full of all these philosophical ideas that I'm not nearly smart enough to consider and has some really fantastic thoughts I liked highlighting.
"Mutual destruction is the only way to survive. That's the circle of life. That's the truth."
Characters...characters...Yeah. The narrator is so relatable in her completely depressive way. She's a bit cynical, but she has all the right to be. It brings some interesting choices in her storytelling. Zhong Liang was completely loveable from the start. His sidekick nature was cute and I always appreciated him showing up. The beasts that came and went every chapter vary from relevance and importance. Some of them I didn't care for much, and others I completely felt for. There are some narratives that stick with you, and they had them.
I think the only gripe I'd have with this book is that the dialogue often lacks tags for the speakers and is spaced out a bit odd? Like, There'll be text in one paragraph with quotation marks (Actually, they used ' instead of " but for the purposes of simplicity in writing this I'll go with the latter) at the beginning and end to signify stopping. Yet the next paragraph would be the same character speaking in the same breath and it would lack quotation marks at the beginning. To be fair, you can pretty much tell from context clues who's speaking most of the time, and it didn't take away from my overall experience.
Again, this just landed with me. I know it probably won't with most people considering the fact that it's a collection of stories instead of one. I don't really know how this happened. There was something about the overall vibe that just had me hook, line, and sinker. I really did love this.