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Surreal and grotesque, with gestures towards supernatural, fabular and weird fiction, this is a mixed bag of stories. The first half of the collection was better for me (The Head, The Embodiment, Cursed Bunny, The Frozen Finger, Snare) then there's a transitional AI/speculative fiction entry with Goodbye My Love that feels over-familiar even to me and I rarely read in that genre but it's similar to Machines Like Me, Klara and the Sun, Little Eyes. The final four longer tales just didn't really work for me and feel like Chung is trying things out without the assurance of voice and vision that characterises the early stories.

At their best, though, these stories use a vocabulary of the grotesque to articulate truths about female bodies, living in a patriarchy, and the brutal vampiric logic of capitalism. Surprisingly, there's little sense of place in these tales which could pretty much happen anywhere - except, ironically, the last one located in Poland.

Definitely worth a read for the creative imagination shown here and dark, dark humour, even if the collection is somewhat uneven.