Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M Lin follows Jingwen, a cabaret dancer in 1920s Shanghai who moonlights as a messenger for her physician Grandmother delivering bones to a powerful gang. When a series of dancers are attacked and the attractive parts of their bodies removed, Jingwen is drawn into a world of ancient gods and rivalry between the modern and the traditional.

The setting of this novel is the star of the show: Lin effortlessly wraps the reader in the glitz and glamour of 1920s Shanghai, then lifts the sheet to reveal the dank underbelly beneath. This story is full of dresses, dancing, and drinking and the story plays out in your head with sparkling cinematography and an award-winning array of costumes. Lin has a keen eye for details in this world she has created and liberally sprinkles them throughout.

Unfortunately, everything else about this book falls flat. 

The characters are two-dimensional stereotypes with predictable character arcs and no real substance. Jingwen is torn between her love for dancing and her distaste for her grandmother’s profession and doesn’t make a single logical decision in the entire story. The plot hangs on her every nonsensical move and she is nothing but a puppet obeying its whims.

The plot is contrived and tenuous, clinging to sensational moments that should have been shocking and gasp-worthy, but instead fall utterly flat in the face of the limp character reactions. In what world does someone have their lips cut off in the middle of a dance floor and only one person seems to care? This story should have been thick with intrigue and dripping with danger, but when every other character apart from Jingwen is apparently too cool to care about the dramatic events unfolding, why should they bother the reader?

The magical worldbuilding in this story is based on the divine magic of ancient gods – an incredible premise for this setting. However, this thread of world building is an oil slick in the ocean: it looks pretty but never meshes with its surroundings. The juxtaposition between the modern and the traditional is a recurring theme but it’s handled poorly, and the result is jarring and often laughable. The blurb mentions that the members of the gang that Jingwen’s grandmother associates with all have one silver arm. The point of these arms is poorly explained until the very end of the book, leaving the reader with the mental image of these gangsters as Colossus wannabes until it’s too late. This only adds to the haphazard feel of this world.

With speakeasies, wealthy patrons, gangs, gods, and magic mushrooms, this book could have been a fantastic historical fantasy story with poignant conversations about colonisation and the influence of the West on Shanghai, but instead it felt like a bunch of snazzy concepts strung together with overwritten prose and no real substance. This book clearly came from a well of incredible, gutsy ideas but was ultimately poorly executed and a real disappointment.