Daughter of Calamity

In Jazz-Age Shanghai, Jingwen dances at the cabaret by day and runs errands for a powerful gang by night. But when a mysterious attacker steals faces from her fellow dancers, Jingwen is plunged into a world of wealthy businessmen, silver-limbed gangs and vengeful gods as she tries to uncover the culprit.

Darkly atmospheric and richly layered , Daughter of Calamity fuses the luxury of 1930s Shanghai, its criminal underbelly, and the powers of the gods themselves. This is a story that seeps into your imagination and persists to the very last page

Unfolding against a backdrop of shadowy club interiors, steam-filled alleys and overlooked temples, Daughter of Calamity is a novel that demands you turn the pages. I was utterly swept up in this tale of glittering cabaret girls and deadly gangsters , and Lin's incarnation of Shanghai-seductive, sprawling, full of malice-is a character in itself

Rosalie Lin crafts a world dripping with atmosphere and intrigue where gods and shamans wreak havoc in mist filled alleys while dance girls spin on clouds of gold and desire. Lin’s Shanghai bursts from the page, decadent, dangerous, and addictive . A thrilling debut

Daughter of Calamity transported me to dazzling, blood-soaked Shanghai . I was swept away by the spectacle of vicious feuds between gangsters and gods, caught up in the heart-pounding twists and betrayals that kept me turning the pages. A dark and fantastical read

Lin’s Shanghai invites you in with an open hand or an offer to dance; here, every page is full of glamour , possibility, treachery. Daughter of Calamity will pull you in like a fever dream

This debut is a genre blend of mystery and fantasy with some amazing world-building . . . Fans of fantasy will want to know Lin's name

The author’s love for Shanghai is clear from the early pages, and her descriptions of the Jazz Age and its effects on the city unfold in gorgeous , vivid detail

Lin successfully creates a world that is as much a character in the novel as the people who live in it . . . historical fantasy enthusiasts will be delighted by the worldbuilding

Superb world-building. Characters are vividly believable and vastly diverse . . . A splendidly imaginative debut

Rosalie M. Lin is a Chinese-American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. She has, at various points in the past decade, graduated with a degree in Comparative Literature, pole-danced in two Beijing nightclubs and dropped out of a biomedical PhD program, before seriously pursuing her original dream of becoming an author. Daughter of Calamity is her debut novel.