Epeolatry Book Review: The Girl With A Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

Mercy arrives on the shores of Hong Kong with nothing, not even her memory. She builds a new life. She can talk to ghosts, so she gets hired by the local triad. As the years pblock, she becomes the right hand of triad leader Cobra Lily. When Kit Ling, a bureaucrat from Hong Kong, finds a way to pull down the walled city—Mercy’s home, Mercy finds her world, past and present, colliding at an explosive rate. 

Mercy will need to remember her past to save her future.

The beginning of the novel reminds me of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Mercy comes across very much as the female version of Harry Dresden. Tough as nails and always seeming to get in too deep because of others or of random cirblockstances where she finds herself. The action is almost constant. There is a flow back and forth through time, Mercy’s past and present, that is handled very well. 

Once you get halfway through the novel, Dean turns the story on its head. So well done! It’s not that what you thought you knew was wrong… It’s just not the full story. The novel is expertly layered. Dean peels back layer after layer, revealing at its core hurt, hate, forgiveness and healing. Not the least of which is caused by war and family. How do you forgive those wrongs that have cut the very thing that made you you almost completely out? How far will you go for revenge? Conversely, how far would you go to right the wrong you have done? What would you do to heal a festering hate that seemingly wants to destroy everything?

The Girl With A Thousand Faces is a ghost story in its truest sense. Not just the ghosts of people but the ghost of the past. A past that comes back to haunt everyone. The ying and yang of war as well as just living an every day life is explored. This is a novel, that after finishing, you sit back and relive it in your mind. You go back over it and see connections from the beginning that you didn’t know were there. And just like the sea that made these ghosts, this novel is deeper than it first appears.