Exploring Dark Short Fiction #5: A Primer to Han Song

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
Later in the book when asked what's the greatest compliment you can receive, the author answers absurd, which is exactly what I found these stories to be...

Every story was interesting because they are from a Chinese person's point of view and seeing their culture dealing with sci-fi/horror themes was enjoyable. Every story is also full of social commentary but as each tale goes to about an eleven on the crazy scale I doubt that's what you'll come away remembering most from each one.

A different version of the Christopher Columbus legend, a man gets trapped on a subway car that never stops, a baby born with many eyes, all of China forced to work at night and never dream... A lot is going on in these stories and it's not easy to summarize them really. For the most part, I didn't know where each story was going and found them very original. ‘My Country Does Not Dream' was by far the highlight of the collection to me, what an amazing story.

After each story, you get a short commentary that talks about and explains it which I found helpful, except in the case of ‘Two Small Birds' where no amount of explanation will ever help me understand what the heck was going on there.

Han Song's stories were great to read, and the collection is just otherwise well put together and worth the time.