Shanghai Immortal: A richly told romantic fantasy novel set in Jazz Age Shanghai

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Lady Jing is a Celestial in the making (so to speak) und gets paired up (not entirely by accident 🤫) with a human who is the cinnamonest roll you can ever imagine. And their interactions do not annoy me at all (contrary to Lady Jing). I love how vulgar, unapologetic and stubborn Jing is. She is one of the most well built, interesting and real characters I've read. And she made me laugh so much, it also made my heart hurt with all she had lived and I felt the sentiments were very relatable, and connecting with her and loving her is so easy ❤️ As I mentioned, the worldbuilding is complex, full of Chinese folklore and magical creatures, which was definitely my favourite part! I want my own Pixiu so I can call them cutie. The gods, demons, swords, and creatures are amazing. The fact that Lady Jing, the main character, is half-vampire and half-deity adds insight to the story. She feels misunderstood and that she doesn’t belong in her own world which makes her relatable. I won't say any more than that. I galloped through the book, delighting in Jing and her adventures, and her slow, wary approach to growing up and into her powers. Along the way we get a thorough grounding in Chinese myth; what I loved most, I think, was Mr. Lee's reason for coming to Big Wang in the first place. That resonated with so many of the Chinese stories I've been inhaling over these past few years. Likewise, I loved the scattering of Chinese vocabulary through the story, exulting in the fact that I recognized all these words.

Accustomed to being lied to, being humiliated especially by her grandmother’s handmaiden , Jing didn’t know what to do with Mr Lee and his kindness. His sweetness was disarming. This book was not what I thought it was going to be in a delightfully unexpected way. It is full of humor and mischief.

At first, I thought I would be annoyed by her behavior but Lady Jing grew on me. Since her vampiric father is absent and her hulijing mother was killed, Lady Jing was sent to Yan Luo Wang for protection. However, Lady Jing assumed that she was pawned by her mother to the King of Hell to repay shopping debts. With resentment and hidden disappointment growing, Lady Jing hides her true feelings behind her rebellious actions and impatient personality. In actual fact, she just wants to be friends with others and live a normal life without people looking at her for being different.

It’s a fast-paced book that will keep you hooked from the beginning. An easy and fun reading where the author presents a fantasy setting with great worldbuilding but that is close enough to the real world to make it relatable and natural. Jing lives in Yin Shanghai, the Shanghai for deities and half demons, mirror of Yang Shanghai. The mortal Shanghai.The result was a satisfying immersion in a world I want to revisit, leaving me looking very much forward to Lady Jing's further adventures. With the help of a gentle mortal tasked with setting up the Central Bank of Hell, Jing embarks on a wild chase for intel, first through Hell and then mortal Shanghai. But when her hijinks put the mortal in danger, she must decide which is more important: avenging her loss of face, or letting go of her half-empty approach to life for a chance to experience tenderness – and maybe even love Adventures ensue, with plenty of earthy observations by Jing, as she painfully comes to terms with aspects of her birth and early years. Perhaps symbolic, she fights hard against wearing the qipao, the gorgeous silk gown of the period--skin-tight, it looks spectacular on the right body, at the cost of moving. Or even breathing freely. And Jing, trained in martial arts, needs to be able to move. Lady Jing is requested by Big Wang to meet a mortal who is proposing a bank for the undead. Big Wang is interested in modernizing Hell, which means creating a bank. So Jing meets Tony Lee, a mortal who is clearly (except to inexperienced Jing) smitten with her, pretty much from the start.

An absolutely delightful romp of a book. It's impossible not to be charmed by Lady Jing as she gets up to shenanigans in mortal and hell Shanghai. I was entranced from start to finish. I really enjoyed the emotional moments at the end, when she realized she wasn't sold, but adopted! Big Wang really cared for her, he knew she was afraid of water way before she told him, he always kept her safe. It's a very sweet parent-daughter relationship. This was a really fun read and I devoured it over a few days. I love a sarcastic main character and Lady Jing made me laugh throughout the entire book. Oftentimes it seems authors include sarcastic, arrogant characters without giving them any other personality and thankfully A.Y. Chao avoids that trap. Lady Jing is sarcastic but grows as a character in the book without losing her charm. I also quite liked her side characters with Horsey being my favourite.

The world building and mix of Chinese mythology in 1930s Shanghai with mandarin phrases Romanized throughout the book was a fantastic and funny move. I loved how funny Jing could be in her inner thoughts and insults. As lady Jing gets into a lot of trouble, Big Wang sends her to mortal Shanghai with mr. Lee. Adventure ensues. The book I first read as an ebook, then listened to the audio version read by Mei Mei Macleod. She is a fantastic narrator and I was happy to hear the correct pronounciations of the Chinese. When the synopsis depicts Lady Jing or Jing as “half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit and all sassh0le”it’s exactly our heroine!

Relationships, whether romantic, friendly or familial, play an important part in the story throughout and yet Jing can’t seem to shake those self-doubts. There’s a wonderful found family aspect to Shanghai Immortal and if you’re a fan of those kinds of stories then this will definitely be a book for you! Every one of the “good” characters has something incredibly endearing about them. Where this book really shines though, is the worldbuilding. We get to experience two really interesting settings- immortal Shanghai aka hell that is ruled by Lord Wang and abundant with mythology and real Shanghai in the 1930s. Mortal Shangai feels like a clash of cultures from both the West and East and was so fun to explore.I absolutely loved Lady Jing as a protagonist. She has absolutely no filter, saying and insulting without discrimination, and speaking her mind no matter who is in front of her. Her snarky, sarcastic comments and insults made me laugh multiple times. But beneath the string front she puts on, it's a young woman unable to let go of her pain and of everyone's opinion of her. I also enjoyed her most vulnerable moments, her growth, and the growth of the relationships with those around her close circle. The secondary characters are so complex and well-explored that I know the story wouldn't have been the same without them, their strengths and their unwavering love for Jing. Gigi is a particular favourite of mine. Shanghai Immortal follows Lady Jing as she seeks to expose a plot to steal a dragon pearl from the king of Hell. Her escapades take her through both Hell and mortal Shanghai in search of information to prove the hulijing courtiers are behind the plot. And we’ll see that slowly but surely, Jing will mellow thanks to Mr Lee and other acquaintances that will prove being her friends, to Jing’s utter astonishment. I admire how A. Y. Chao combines sarcasm, humor, and a badass MC with poetry and politeness. It's a strange combination although it worked. I learned some new phrases and new words. As a non-native speaker, I sometimes struggled with words such as piss-fart and stink-eye. But it was fun. This book is a really good debut and I highly recommend it. This book was so much fun! It’s fast, it doesn’t take itself too serious, it’s amusing. I had such a great time reading this book.