Li Lin lives in colonial Malaya with her opium-addicted father and her beloved Amah. All is satisfactory pretty much until she receives a marriage proposal from the son of an influential neighbor. However, the son is dead and the proposal is for Li Lin to be his ghost bride. When her intended haunts her in her dreams and she falls in love with the new (live) heir to the family, Li Lin embarks on a fantastical voyage among the dead.
Choo creates a marvelously rich and detailed world of the dead, from paper funeral offerings and hell money, to the Plains of the Dead and the afterworld bureaucracy. Along the way, she meets Er Lang, a guardian spirit who is not at all what he appears to be.
This novel is utterly original and impossible to label in a particular genre. It's historical fiction, and fantasy, and a bit of horror, and a bit of romance as well as being wonderfully suspenseful and beautifully written. Much of the mythology is based on Chinese folklore, and Choo's notes section outlines the original stories and her own creations. CRIPES, I loved this book.