I enjoyed Zen Cho's books about the Sorcerer Royal. They were fun and they were funny. The sudden eruption of Malay witches into the staid ranks of English wizardry was an excellent and fruitful joke. But it seems that these were warming-upexercises, a joyful romp before she got down to serious business.

The protagonist of this novel has accompanied her parents back to Malaysia after spending her childhood and adolescence in the USA. This wrench - her father has returned because he failed to make it in the states, and is now dependent on family charity for employment and living quarters - accentuates her liminality. She has to face up to being neither child nor adult, neither American nor Malaysian, and, as she gloomily puts it at one point, neither straight nor gay (she has an ongoing relationship with another woman, but is unable to tell her parents, or indeed, anyone else). And most pressingly, as someone who seems not be religiously or spiritually inclined, she finds herself to be possessed, first by her grandmother's ghost, and then by the spirit of a powerful goddess. It's through her struggle with the two supernatural beings that she finally comes to recognise her own inner strengths, and determine her own pathway.

This is obstensibly weightier stuff than the earlier books - although racism and cultural confusions were already central themes. I missed the lightness of touch, the playfulness of the earlier works. There are moments of comedy in this book, but it is, for the most part, serious stuff. It is well written - Cho is a writer - and reads easily.