The Undertaking of Lily Chen

On a Chinese military airbase, two brothers have a spat – in the course of which the older brother dies. According to ancient tradition, when a man dies he must be buried with his wife or his soul will be lonely in the afterlife. The surviving son, Deshi, is equipped with all the money the family can spare and the family donkey and sent off to find a corpse bride, which they can marry to the older son and bury with him for eternal companionship. But corpse brides are hard to find. Despite the dearly-bought patronage of China’s best grave robber, Deshi is unable to find any recently deceased woman. And then he meets Lily, a living girl who will keep as long as he needs her to.

I hated this book. The pictures are poorly drawn, the plot is bland, the characters are shallow. It is an insipid romance surrounded by tepid and forgettable villains who aren’t even really villains, just mundane peasants bullied into following senseless traditions. It’s a good thing the author is enlightened enough to see the way to freedom for her repressed characters! Bleh.