Valerie Wu - Asia Blooming

August 29, 2026

‘Deadlock’ Re-Launches Itself into Technological and Narrative Evolution

With Deadlock, the successor to 2025’s Coldwire and the second installment of the Strangeloom young adult trilogy, Gong leverages the changing modern world of technological progress around us to complicate her own

by Valerie Wu

August 1, 2026

‘Taipei Story’ Travels Around Language to Find Itself

R.F Kuang’s Taipei Story reads like a travel blog, if that travel blog also contained extensive musings on the depth of language, diasporic existence, and national identity.

by Valerie Wu

September 30, 2025

‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ S3 Turns Pretty Angsty

Coming of age is messy and chaotic. The Summer I Turned Pretty has never shied away from that point. Belly’s already turned pretty. Maybe by the time the movie comes out, she’ll

by Valerie Wu

August 7, 2025

Chloe Gong’s ‘Coldwire’ is an Inventive Take on Innovation

Gong is most known for her historical fantasy young adult Secret Shanghai series, but this time she takes readers into the future in her latest dystopian, cyberpunk young adult novel Coldwire, which

by Valerie Wu

July 23, 2025

R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’ Spirals into the Depths of Hell and Academia

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, the latest from the author of Yellowface, is a fantasy novel about Hell. Beyond fantasy, it’s a satirical and literary observation about academia represented through Hell. Even as it

by Valerie Wu

July 15, 2024

‘Vilest Things’ Has Violence, Politics, and All the Chloe Gong Things

Vilest Things is the name of the second installment of Chloe Gong’s Flesh & False Gods trilogy, which reimagines Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Yet the book feels like it should be called

by Valerie Wu

May 6, 2024

‘King of Sloth’ Doesn’t Play Around, But Could Have Done More

How can laziness ever be a sexy trait, one might ask? Somehow, though, Ana Huang makes laziness appealing in her new book, 'King of Sloth,' in the form of its billionaire love

by Valerie Wu

February 23, 2024

‘Helga’ Experiments with Concept and Execution in True ‘Frankenstein’ Form

Catherine Yu's 'Helga' follows the story of a young woman, who is pieced together in Frankenstein fashion and later seeks to discover the world and create her own boyfriend.

by Valerie Wu

October 16, 2023

Ana Huang Enriches the Groveling Billionaire Trope with ‘King of Greed’

Ana Huang’s writing often makes her fans greedy for more. With King of Greed, the third book in Huang’s steamy and romantic “Kings of Sin” series, Huang shows that her writing isn’t