Black Water Sister by Zen Cho
Publisher – Macmillan
Published – Out Now
Price –£14.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook
Her grandmother may be dead, but she's not done with life . . . yet.
As Jessamyn packs for Malaysia, it’s not a good time to start hearing a bossy voice in her head. Broke, jobless and just graduated, she’s abandoning America to return ‘home’. But she last saw Malaysia as a toddler – and is completely unprepared for its ghosts, gods and her eccentric family’s shenanigans.
Jess soon learns her ‘voice’ belongs to Ah Ma, her late grandmother. She worshipped the Black Water Sister, a local deity. And when a business magnate dared to offend her goddess, Ah Ma swore revenge. Now she’s decided Jess will help, whether she wants to or not.
As Ah Ma blackmails Jess into compliance, Jess fights to retain control. But her irrepressible relative isn’t going to let a little thing like death stop her, when she can simply borrow Jess’s body to make mischief. As Jess is drawn ever deeper into a world of peril and family secrets, getting a job becomes the least of her worries.
Ghost stories come in all shapes and sizes. They can be stories of unexplainable evil such as those we meet in The Shining, redemption if you look at a Christmas Carol and even love if you remember that film with the pottery wheel. a key thread though is the ghost connects the current world with the past in some form - the ultimate culture clash! In Zen Cho’s excellent Black Water Sister we get a brilliantly plotted ghost story that delivers some excellent surprises that keep you watching until the very end.
Jess is a woman in her mid-twenties who has moved with her middle-aged parents from the US to her family’s native Malaysia. Jess out of college was already feeling a bit lost with an unclear career path; a father recovering from cancer and financial losses plus she is not yet ready to come out to her parents that she is gay and already has a girlfriend. Now Jess is finding herself in a country that she is not wholly familiar with in terms of traditions, culture or even language. Living in a relative’s house and trying to reboot life was going to be hard enough but now Jess starts to hear an old woman’s voice who seems to know a lot about her. This turns out to be her maternal Grandmother the hard as nails Ah Ma who is taking a keen interest in her granddaughter – albeit from beyond the grave. Ah Ma needs assistant to help save a temple and stop one of the richest and most dangerous people in Malaysia from developing the site. But Jess is about to find the supernatural world of Malaysia contains far more than ghosts and dangers of all types are about to focus her attention.
This was an excellent story for many reasons but in particular I was enjoying how brilliantly constricted the story is weaving several initially quite disparate threads together. Initially the tale seems as if it will be a family drama with the second-generation immigrant Jess trying to create a new life and we get lots of family scenes with extended relatives and gossip mixed with family hierarchy. Cho by making Jess unfamiliar with Malaysia helps explain this country and its beliefs, language history and customs. It underlines just because you have family ties to another country doesn’t mean you automatically understand everything about that place. Cho makes this whole country come alive and it is fascinating which elements western readers will recognise – that desire to make our parents pleased with our life choices to the very different such as how gods and ghosts are very much just accepted as part of the world, we all live in.
When Ah Ma enters the story, we initially think this may just be a comedy tale of a modern woman and a very tough traditional grandmother bonding despite one being a ghost. Ah Ma is very much unlike Jess a woman who knows her own mind and says what she thinks; their scenes have some delightful back and forth as each tries to make the other see their perspective. But impressively Cho then starts to subtly darken the story and we realise Ah Ma is more interested in delivering her own agenda rather than caring for her family. Jess wakes up tired and discovers she has agreed to jobs or having conversations she has no memory of and Ah Ma is behind it all. Jess starts to realise why her own mother rarely mentioned her and when Ah Ma reveals she if trying to aid a god only known as Black Water Sister who demands her own sacrifice the story touches almost on horror. It’s really impressive that Cho moves quickly from scenes of humour and culture clashes to something a lot more chilling. When we finally see Black Water Sister appear we realise that here is a spirit of death and vengeance who wants another offering. Jess now has to face quandaries on what are the best options as well as try to hide this from her other family.
This leads to an exploration of Malaysian gods and ghosts and for the ignorant western reader like me it was fascinating to find that normal people even now can be declared Gods and have offerings and prayers or even mediums explaining their wishes. Jess gets into the origin stories of Black Water Sister and also Ah Ma’s early life fleshing out both characters’ backstories and motivations without diluting their own strength and ability to make you fear them. Jess also discovers that connecting her family and this threatened temple is the shady businessmen Ng Chee Hin and that leads to the story becoming a thriller as Jess tries to challenge one of the most powerful people in the country and she starts to find some confidence in her own ability only for Cho to then show the stakes here aren’t small and there are towards the end some dark and terrifying situations Jess and her supernatural ally need to find a way out of and Cho really makes these scenes uncomfortable reading and yet that finale totally works for the story’s finale. I think these regular tonal switches are well handled and this change of approach gives the story constant energy and pace.
Black Water Sister was a delight to read, and I was very happy to stay up late to finish in order to find out what happened next. Cho after delivering two excellent regency style fantasies has now delivered a modern supernatural thriller marking them as one of a great versatile writer well worth looking out for. Strongly recommended!
