Library Journal - Audio
06/01/2022
Twelve impossibly unique tales make up Fu's (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore) story collection about things that go bump in the night, lurk in the shadows, and cavort in the daylight. Each of the unlinked stories introduces a different "monster" and takes place in the modern world—at a vendor show, in a suburb, at a dinner show, in an old house. Fu delights in giving us wholly new and imaginative monsters that defy expectations. There's a career woman who can fall asleep at night only if she is visited by the sandman; a haunted doll that gives nightmares to neighborhood children; a preteen who sprouts wings on her ankles to the delight of her friends; and a bug-infested house that steadily grows more unstable. Piper Goodeve and Sean Patrick Hopkins narrate with calm, earnest deliveries that make the stories even more intense. VERDICT Thrilling, sexy, scary, and daring, this is a gem of a short story collection.—Erin Cataldi
FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
A stellar cast comes together to create a rich listening experience rooted in magical realism. Piper Goodeve, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Samara Naeymi, Gary Tiedemann, and Jeena Yi deliver 12 inventive short stories each in turn with smooth confidence. The narrators maximize the creativity at the core of each of the narratives; the inventive plots include a girl who is growing wings on her legs and almost limitless simulation capabilities in the future. Seamless transitions between all the narrators make it easy to lose oneself in the writer's imagination. For those looking for variety in audio fiction, this is going to become a fast favorite. M.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 11/22/2021
Poet and novelist Fu (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore) delivers a stellar story collection that grounds tales of magical realism in her characters’ emotional realities. In “Liddy, First to Fly,” preteen narrator Grace and her friends pop the bumps on Liddy’s legs, prompting the appearance of feathers and wings. The mysterious development dovetails with the friends’ own normal pubescent changes, and Grace muses, “The realm of pretend had only just closed its doors to us, and light still leaked through around the edges.” “Time Cubes,” set in a mall where kiosks sell cubes that demonstrate the life cycles of plants and animals, follows a woman named Alice who lives and works in the building as a lab tech. Identifying as a “Depressive Insider,” she goes to therapy in the mall and she tries dating apps. In “Sandman,” a hooded figure shows up in the night on a woman named Kelly’s bed wearing a robe that contains a multitude of sand, which Kelly, who is unafraid of the sandman and suffers from insomnia, is eager to consume. An earnest coworker gives Kelly tips to help her sleep, but the sandman becomes her salvation. Fu’s stories crackle with quirky plots, and her characters’ problems and hunger for new possibilities are palpable. This is a winner. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists. (Feb.)
Patch
"If you want your fiction as weird as it can get while still being compassionate, resonant, and beautiful, look no further. . . . Super excited about this one."
Seattle Times
"Unsettling and downright strange."
Tor.com
"Stellar. . . . Fu is a master mixer of the speculative, the witchy, and the real."
TIME
"Bold. . . . profound. . . . surreal and clever. Fu brings magical realism to exciting heights."
Starred Review Shelf Awareness
"Strange and fantastic. . . . sheds an uncanny light on the emotional dissonance of modern life."
Book Riot
"Exhilarating. . . . Electrifying and haunting."
South Seattle Emerald
"The best speculative fiction seeks to decenter, decolonize, and disrupt what many have taken for granted as the universe’s natural order. Or at least, that’s what I decided after reading Monsters, because in it, Fu leaps so nimbly from story to story, center to center, taking whatever perspective necessary to take nothing in the multiverse for granted. . . . Fu, who has published two novels and one book of poetry previously, excites me as an emerging speculative fiction author of unique voice and considerable talent."
SFF YEAH!
"Fu’s stories keep you locked in and riveted. She does the thing great short story writers do, which is to say, she pulls you into the story from the jump and keeps you there. . . . [It's] fabulous, you should read it."
Locus Magazine
"Stunning. . . . Her stories engage all the senses. . . . A terrific collection of speculative fiction, with evocative, textured prose that left a lasting impression."
Full Stop
"With exceptional sleight-of-hand and significant literary talent, Fu dazzles readers."
Starred Review Booklist
"A dozen sly, provocative, fabulous short stories sure to delight and shock. From doll parts to winged ankles to stockpiled gold bars, Fu flaunts an inimitable imagination. . . . Irrefutably fantastic fiction."
The New York Times Book Review
"The strange and wonderful define Kim Fu’s story collection, where the line between fantasy and reality fades in and out, elusive and beckoning."
Starred Review Foreword Reviews
"A breathtaking collection of speculative fiction stories about how new places and innovations affect timeless emotions."
Lightspeed Magazine
"This is storytelling at its finest."
BuzzFeed
"Inventive and mesmerizing. . . . Vivid and surreal, readers of Carmen Maria Machado will enjoy this collection."
Thrillist
"A modern, mystical playground."
NPR Books
"There’s something for everyone in this outstanding collection, which cements Fu as one of the most exciting short story writers in contemporary fiction."
West Trade Review
"Vibrantly imaginative."
The Rumpus
"An incredible collection, one with sweeping variety that is unified by a singular vision of what it means to be human."
NYLON
"Mesmerizing. . . . 12 stories about macabre, beautifully dark images (not unlike a Lana Del Rey song). . . . Think: sexuality, guilt, contradictions, drama!"
Porter House Review
"Deft and vivid. . . . Fu paints us pictures of the monsters that loom in the distance of our 21st century lives, at times both abstract and clear as day."
Kevin Brockmeier
"Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is one of those rare collections that never suffers from which-one-was-that-again? syndrome. Every story here lights a flame in the memory, shining brighter as time goes by rather than dimming. Kim Fu writes with grace, wit, mischief, daring, and her own deep weird phosphorescent understanding."
International Examiner
"Stunning. . . . A must read."
Necessary Fiction
"Fu boldly carries all that I loved of Bradbury’s fiction—its variety, sensitivity, and immense creative power—into a new era with short stories that captivate and terrify, shock and inspire. Lesser Known Monsters is a uniquely mesmerizing collection."
The Washington Post
"A lovely, new collection of eclectic tales."
The Hollywood Reporter
"A speculative short story collection ideal for streaming audiences accustomed to Black Mirror and The Haunting of Hill House."
Ploughshares
"Each story feels like a potential episode of Black Mirror, exploring futuristic technology and the dangerous hold it has on all of us."
In Cold Books
"Delightfully, darkly bizarre. . . . I sped through this collection because it was just too good to put down."
62 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2022 - Electric Lit - R.O. Kwon
"Fu’s fiction is mesmerizing, and her new book is a collection of fantastical tales featuring sea monsters and haunted dolls."
Danya Kukafka
"Precise, elegant, uncanny, and mesmerizing—each story in this collection is a crystalline gem. Kim Fu’s talent is singularly inventive, her every sentence a surprise and an adventure."
F(r)iction
"Deeply vivid. . . . Fu’s writing is incisive, lyrical, and inventive."
Naben Ruthnum
"When a collection is evocative of authors as disparate as Ray Bradbury and Stephanie Vaughn, the only possible unifier can be originality: and that’s what a reader finds in Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. The strangest of concepts are tempered by grounded, funny dialogue in these stories, which churn with big ideas and craftily controlled antic energy."
Peter Ho Davies
"How I loved the cool wit of these speculative stories! Filled with wonder and wondering, they’re haunted too by loss and loneliness, their imaginative reach profoundly rooted in the human condition."
The Orange County Register
"A dazzling and surreal collection that grabs you by the throat. . . . Riveting."
Ms. Magazine
"Will have you questioning reality and loving every minute of it."
ALTA
"Strange and fantastic. . . . offers commentary on relationships, technology, and what we think we know about one another."
The Maine Edge
"Smart and sharp. . . . a first-rate collection for any fan of speculative fiction. . . . a marvelous collection of work by a writer of tremendous gifts."
The Adroit Journal
"Fascinating. . . . In the vein of Carmen Maria Machado and Mariana Enríquez, one of Fu’s greatest strengths is her ability to turn horror on its head, focusing less on the terror the modern-day monsters incite, but what they reveal about ourselves."
South China Morning Post
"Enchanting, mystical and shining with ingenuity, Fu’s book is strongly recommended."
BookBrowse
"The title promises something monstrous and it delivers."
LeVar Burton Reads
"Quite impressive. . . . Feels fresh and new while also having the elements of a mystery you'd find in an Agatha Christie novel."
Lucy Tan
"Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is for the adventurous reader—someone willing to walk into a story primed for cultural critique and suddenly come across a plot for murder, or to consider the dangers of sea monsters alongside those posed by 21st century ennui. Each story is spectacularly smart, hybrid in genre, and bold with intention. The monsters here are not only fantastical figures brought to life in hyper-reality but also the strangest parts of the human heart. This book is as moving as it is monumental."
The Star Tribune
"Wonderful. . . . There's nothing to fault in this book; it’s an endlessly entertaining bestiary from one of the country's most exciting practitioners of fiction."
Indra Das
"Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century crushes the coal-dark zeitgeist between its teeth and spits out diamonds, beautiful but razor-sharp. This will be one of the best short story collections of the year."
ZYZZYVA
"Fu’s mastery of clever, strange concepts is undeniable. . . . Tautly controlled language, often to the point of spareness, communicates the lyrical imagination that is the foundation for each piece."
Rain Taxi
"Shape-shifting. . . . recreates the shock of feeling in a landscape of disconnection."
LitHub
"This collection is akin to something out of The Twilight Zone: girls grow wings, sea monsters surface, children’s toys have the power to control time. The oddities to be encountered here will delight and surprise."
WIRED
"Rich and metamorphic. . . . [Fu] clearly has a knack for the form."
Chicago Review of Books
"The success of Kim Fu’s stories is the element of the unexpected. There are surprises lurking in these narratives, whether it is a quick final plot twist or unexpected peculiarity. . . . Fu is a master of imagery."
LitHub - February’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
"What makes these dozen stories really pop are the people around whom they are centered. . . . ultimately it catalogues human nature."
Bustle - Most Anticipated Books of February
"Haunting."
Patch Jr
"If you want your fiction as weird as it can get while still being compassionate, resonant, and beautiful, look no further. . . . Super excited about this one."
FEBRUARY 2022 - AudioFile
A stellar cast comes together to create a rich listening experience rooted in magical realism. Piper Goodeve, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Samara Naeymi, Gary Tiedemann, and Jeena Yi deliver 12 inventive short stories each in turn with smooth confidence. The narrators maximize the creativity at the core of each of the narratives; the inventive plots include a girl who is growing wings on her legs and almost limitless simulation capabilities in the future. Seamless transitions between all the narrators make it easy to lose oneself in the writer's imagination. For those looking for variety in audio fiction, this is going to become a fast favorite. M.R. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-11-17
Stories blending emotional realism with surreal imagery.
It’s worth mentioning this from the outset: The title of Fu’s latest book is not a metaphor. In the pages of this collection, readers will discover a sea monster more aptly described as “an amalgamation of brainless multicellular organisms”; a sinister doll that once belonged to a family beset by tragedy; and a being with a hood that pours out sleep-inducing sand. This book will likely resonate with readers of Karen Russell and Ben Loory; like them, Fu is equally at home chronicling bizarre events and pondering her characters’ inner lives. “June Bugs,” for instance, follows the travails of Martha, a woman who moves to a new place abounding with an uncanny number of bugs. Fu explores the circumstances of how Martha came to live there, including the way an earlier relationship curdled into something toxic and abusive; by the denouement, the story has arrived at a phantasmagorical place, but Martha’s challenges in life and work are what endure. Some of the stories venture fully into the speculative realm, such as “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867,” which is told entirely through dialogue between a customer and operator of a futuristic service that creates realistic simulations of the user's fantasies, exploring questions of memory and reality, and “Twenty Hours,” in which a couple pays for a service that allows them to murder one another repeatedly. Violence, trauma, and intimacy come to the foreground in many of these stories, including “#ClimbingNation,” about a memorial service for a man who died while climbing. Even here, in a more realistic mode, Fu addresses questions of technology and community with grace and subtlety.
A powerful collection that demonstrates Fu’s range and skill.
