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Author of more than sixty books, Chang Kuo-Li has attained mastery over writing technique. So, when he set his sights on the international market with The Sniper, he knew how to attract readers outside of the Chinese language sphere: sharp pacing, striking visual imagery, precisely tailored technical knowledge. He built readers’ trust, and put his well-practiced prose to use presenting uniquely Taiwanese story elements, giving readers a strikingly original reading experience without the foreign locale becoming a barrier. His sequel, The Third Bullet, continues in this vein, using real events of the 2004 Taiwan presidential election to set the stage: an attempt is made on a candidate’s life, but the gunman’s bullet just grazes the candidate’s belly, leaving only a minor wound, much as the bullet intended for US presidential candidate Donald Trump only nicked his ear. While Trump’s would-be assassin was shot and killed on the scene, the assassination case in Taiwan was never solved, giving the author full-reign to develop his story.

The author excels at packaging heartache with humor in this cinematic and fast-paced narrative spanning a broad range of modern dilemmas: divorce, dealing with the in-laws, and the secret to how your personality quirks just might make you kill someone. The cast of characters is a realistic portrayal of contemporary Taiwanese society: the housewife who abandoned her career for her marriage, the intellectually and expressively precocious children, and the primary school cliques that form based on whether kids come from dual or single parent households.

A menagerie of animal imagery provides rich material for metaphors, while the human characters drift between home, office, storage unit, and other locales, as if searching for some place to finally settle down when even private spaces seem to force one into various relationships with others, and with society. As the protagonist attempts to get to the core of the mystery, layer after layer of obscurations are peeled away, testing her ability to face up to the fact that the man she loved never revealed what he was really thinking, and now, he never will.

If we were to divide folklore-based works into two classes, beginner and advanced, this book – a detective novel wrapped in the raiments of folklore – would belong to the advanced class. The author has already explored this terrain with The Spirit Medium Detective, but this time he expands the scope, and deepens the integration of local history as a battle heats up between two gods vying for the title of Prince. Relatively speaking, the reading difficulty is also taken up a notch. After conducting extensive field research, author Chang Kuo-Li, a novelist with decades of experience, infused his smooth and direct prose with the literary stylings of myths and legends, making the folkloric content more accessible to readers.

In fact, it wouldn’t be impossible to use the novel as a travel guide of sorts. To crack the case, the three investigators travel Taiwan from north to south, traversing many a mountain (though also shortchanging the sea). Train aficionados could also put the book to good use.

With razor sharp prose, the author dissects the vulnerability and cruelty of human relations. When a society is content to find excuses for poor mothering – even inventing wounds to justify it – perhaps the implication is that we just aren’t ready to see women in their full range of possibilities. The author believes we must bid farewell to this formula if we are to truly understand gender inequality and the subtle influences that inform gender. The author is attempting to contemplate a world that is far from perfect, in which there will always be people we cannot understand, and questions that are difficult to answer. To the author, the true oppression of women is any image of women, or motherhood, that flattens out our individual differences.

Social workers are far more than the vague image in the public mind would suggest. They play an important role in society that is often overlooked. Within the novel Fantasy World, however, the importance of social work is given flesh and bones. While lawyers worry about winning the case, social workers worry about the possibility of restoration, seeking spiritual compensation for what was lost. The depiction of social workers in Freddy Fu-Jui Tang’s novel are an expression of his commitment to every stage in the process of justice.

The core motivation of Fantasy World is the author’s wish to display the pervasiveness of sexual assault. The collective pain of sexual assault is not a lone tree standing out from the landscape of society – chop it down and be done with it – it is the weeds that we see all around us, almost impossible to uproot. The purpose of art isn’t to lessen this pain, but to display its many facets, and open up more possibilities for dialogue.

Reading Joyland Above is not unlike indulging in a hot pepper. Each bite, while inflicting fiery discomfort, invariably entices you back for more.

This rainy, earthquake-prone island, where even the location of a new garbage dump triggers a heated debate, is nevertheless deeply beloved by many, with those who leave often making excuses to return. What is it with this island? Joyland Above frankly shares with readers the many apocalyptic bogeymen that have visited this island…from epidemics and natural disasters to the devastation of war; from the death of a nation to self-obliteration. What on its face seems a bloody tragedy, is portrayed by the author as subtly ironic. The fairy-tale airs of this work craftily rework warnings of a doomed nation into a bedside story.

Considering our present-day reality, should Joyland Above be read as a prophetic warning of apocalyptic doom or a fairy tale in which, true to form, a happy ending awaits? Who can say?