Ghost Month Chinese Novel Thoughts

   I made a post about Ed Lin's other novel called Incensed which was the second novel in his Taipei night market series. The two books won't be talked about in correct order because I didn't read Ghost Month first like I should have. Instead I chose which novel to read based off of the story synopsis and Incensed seemed more exciting to me at the time. Go back and read my thoughts on Incensed to know my in-depth feelings about the book. Ghost Month's pages tells the beginnings of Jing nan before the events of Incensed. The second novel makes several references to the events that happened in Ghost Month but both book could stand alone in my opinion. Ghost Month does however, come across more as a thriller than it's follow up novel. There's not a lot of wiggle room for Lin to add a dozen of foot notes about Taiwan and Chinese culture in this book. The plot itself is a bit too deep to spare any details about a man that is trying to find out the truth behind the death of a women that was going to be his wife to be. Most of the book takes it's time filling the pages with background information of Jing Nan. You learn about his life growing up and how he became a huge fan of late seventies post punk English rock band, Joy Division. Information about Chinese culture is included in this type of storytelling without adding too much attention to the notion. Unlike Incensed, Lin's desire to teach readers about Taiwan flows with the plot so Ghost month doesn't come off like the reader is studying a history book. I was really interested in the tradition of Ghost Month where Chinese people are extra superstitious causing them to got to temples to worship different Gods. Also information about the different Chinese gangs was fun learning about through reading Ghost Month's pages(Loved the reference to the gangster film Monga.).

   The plot just seems more well thought out for Ghost Month. Jing Nan goes from one exciting action to another while meeting people from his past and people keeping him from knowing the truth. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue reading novels written by Ed Lin but I might. He has other books that seem interesting for those who want to support Asian authors and writers.