Creatures of Near Kingdoms - some reviews
Creatures of Near Kingdoms has been available since late September. I was worried that it’d come out and meet benign indifference. “Oh, okay, cute.”*
But, hey: people seem to love our book! So many have said so many wonderful things about the book -- in person; on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook ephemera**; on blogs and Goodreads and elsewhere.
Here are some:
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“Each story was a perfectly packed spoon of nasi lemak, to use an entirely Malaysian cliche because this book makes me feel so very connected to my roots and surroundings here in the Nusantara, where the bite is balanced and has a bit of everything and just right.” - Syar S Alia, on Goodreads
“... this is probably a very different book if you are Malaysian, or just live in SE Asia, and if you are not ... the book is twice-reflected. There is an extra hovering layer of interpretation. And also a lot of it is just the impression of someone in a cold grey place reading about a bright warm place (you actually feel a little colder in comparison when you read) ... The extra layer, or double gleam of unknowing, either doesn't hurt, or helps you feel like you know the place in an intimate way. There are lots of fragments of life that would never show up in any story you would read. You feel like you know what its like to be in a traffic jam because of Buffalo, to worry about parking your car beneath rare and aggressive species, to wake up prickling because of lizards, pigs under the house. Complex meanings in relatives gift-plants, an aggressive bioform on the beach, neighbours with ritual problems.” - Patrick Stuart, falsemachine.blogspot.com
“... a beautiful and creepy catalogue of the local flora and fauna of Port Dickson, Malaysia, where the writer and artist are based, and offers a sincere vision for writing an environment without taking from it.” - Kaitlin Rees, for the Asian American Writer’s Workshop
“What Zedeck managed to do was letting us see the world through his eyes, but at the same time made us think these are all what we have been thinking about all along.” - Anis Suhaila, on Goodreads
“I suffer from Insomnia. The bad kind, the capital I kind, the kind that dictates the rhythms of a life, that affects my relationships with people. Lately I have taken to reading this curious little book before I go to bed. Three to four stories at a time. Stringing it out, savoring it. The nights that I do this, I sleep easier. Something about this book runs counter to the sharp, jagged metal anxieties that keep me up at night.” - Matt Bozin, tarsostheorem.blogspot.com
“THE LANTERN SQUIRREL: the cellophane squirrel that escapes into the forest to run wild after the lantern festival, & my FAVOURITE ANIMAL of 2018, found in my favourite book of 2018,” - Stephanie Dogfoot, on Instagram
“I wish Giant Skunk Pleco was a real being ... As for the illustrations - so gorgeous! I had to resist the urge to colour them in with all that lovely, lovely white space.” - Alyssa J, on Goodreads
“The creatures are there, you know now, after reading the book. You wish to see them, to touch them. However, you know that your meat-constructed fingers could never brush against beautiful patterns in shadows shaped by true things in the world but misshaped by true things in the mind.” - Khairul Hisham, hishgraphics.com
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*Sharon didn’t share my fear, because she is wiser.
**There isn’t any way to retrieve / refer back to Insta stories, is there???
Thank you. Thank you. I feel like the Smaug-y civet above, hoarding the warm words everybody has given me.
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Creatures of Near Kingdoms has gone to a second printing.
