Corpse Recovery Diver

This is a unique find. If you like paranormal stories embedded in a slice of life type framework, give this novel a try. The setting is historical, but fairly recent. (Post Chinese Civil War/Communist Revolution) It’s set in a relatively rural Nantong village, where a boy is staying with his grandparents for the summer. After becoming entangled with a vengeful spirit and nearly drowning in the river, he gains a supernatural ability to see into and interact with the paranormal world and is sent to stay with a family friend, who is the village’s somewhat shady funeral rite provider and drowned corpse handler, hoping this family friend can change the boy’s luck following the near drowning and entanglement with an spirit. The boy is exceptionally intelligent but struggling with tendencies toward emotional detachment (much like his very intelligent but aloof and possibly even autistic mother). He immerses himself in the history and mythology of the regional beliefs regarding corpses, spirits, curses, and vengeance along side this Grandmaster and the mysterious family who live nearby and tend the Grandmaster’s fields and household matters. I started this for a new reading fast pass one day, but I’ve spent fast passes and coins to get me caught up to the current release. There are hints that cultivation will be touched upon further in the story, but this novel is focused on a boy discovering an eerie world previously hidden to him and learning how to interact with it and protect himself from what most around him can never truly see or understand. The recent historical setting provides familiarity in many ways, but it is well before the internet age. The main character can’t Google anything or seek out anonymous forums or chats for information. If he tried to explain to most of the villagers what he experiences, they would either think he is crazy or avoid him like the plague, believing him cursed. And perhaps rightly so, given his ability arose out of contact with a vengeful spirit. I look forward to learning more about these interesting characters and this both ordinary and extraordinary world. (In case anyone is wondering, I did take a bit off on the translation, but so far the translation has been far better than most MTL around here. There are some subtleties that are clearly being lost in the differentiations between types of corpses, which I assume are different words in the original but only get loosely stuffed into the English word corpse. Certain names are confusing in the pinyin and likely not so much in the original. Occasionally this is confusing, but this book I s still very enjoyable to read, even knowing some bits are lost in translation.)