I joked to my teammates that you could re-run my reaction to How Much of These Hills is Gold—Zhang remains a very good prose stylist, and there were passages that felt incredibly rich and sensual. And yet: it felt like there were too many threads fighting to emerge into a compelling story—for such a short book it’s absolutely stuffed with ideas. It’s partly a climate collapse gothic tale, a tale of familial estrangement and resentment, a romantic melodrama, and a kind of vampire tale? It didn’t hit emotionally, but I will say I got hungry multiple times reading this late at night, which is annoying because I didn’t want to tromp down the stairs to get something to eat.