James Nicoll Reviews

Hoa Pham’s 2014 The Other Shore is a stand-alone modern fantasy novel.

Sixteen-year-old Kim Nguyen is the other sister: not pretty, not engaged to be married, no known exceptional talents, in all ways the sibling her parents do not waste too much time thinking about.

A brush with death awakes an unusual gift, upending Kim’s life.

Quan Âm, the Goddess of Mercy, grants Kim the ability to read minds with a touch. Furthermore, Kim’s ability is not limited to the living. Touching human remains grants her contact with the dead, not a comfortable experience if the dead are unhappy… as are so many ghosts in Việt Nam.

Kim’s father isn’t slow to explore the possibility of monetizing Kim’s gift. At last she can be useful and not just another mouth to feed! It does not occur to Kim’s father to keep Kim’s new abilties secret, an oversight that will have consequences.

While the Việt Namese government dismisses gods and goddesses as superstition, they not only accept psychic phenomena as real, they have a government-funded unit of psychics. Once the government learns Kim is a psychic, she is recruited.

The task awaiting Kim seems worthy, at first. She and those like her are employed to determine the origins of newly discovered human remains so these can be disposed of appropriately. It does not take Kim long to notice that there is a strict hierarchy at work: Northern remains are treated with respect, and American remains are valued as an income stream, but Southern remains are ignored at best.

Were the above not alarming enough, Kim discovers that her boss Bác Phuc is in no way the kindly fellow he pretends to be, nor is he actually a psychic. When not persecuting religious groups, Bác Phuc pursues personal enrichment. Kim is too valuable to let her squander her gifts in pious good works. Therefore, he decides they should marry.

Bác Phuc is well-connected. There is no refuge for Kim in Việt Nam. Happily, a visiting American is willing to help her escape to the United States. Freedom and democracy await! As does a hostile US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose only interest in refugees is finding a pretext to send them back to whatever they were fleeing.

~oOo~

Ah, another candidate for the terrible parents’ club. Kim worries about the effect her flight could have on her family. This reflects well on her, because her family does very little to justify any such concern. If the tables were turned, they would not hesitate to throw Kim under the bus.

There are not a lot of contemporary fantasy novels that recall Milovan Djilas’ 1957 The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. Shore is most definitely one such work. As a character asserts, ​“democracy depends on compromises, dictatorships on corruption.” Shore’s plot is driven by how that plays out in a Việt Namese context.

This is not one of those novels in which a fish discovers water. Kim is aware of the role corruption plays in her Việt Nam; she had to bribe teachers not to bully her. However, Kim discovers that she hadn’t appreciated the full scope of corruption in Việt Nam. This is an unpleasant learning experience. Later she learns that the US has its own issues, which is also an unpleasant learning experience.

Pham’s plot is fairly linear, and her style rather flat, both of which undermined my interest in the novel. Pity, because the novel does have intriguing aspects. Also, I got to cite Djilas. Ah, well. I have another book by the author. I will see if I enjoy it any more than I did this one.

The Other Shore is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).