This is another of the book sent by a Filipino friend. You can buy it over here.

I’d not come across Kenneth Yu’s work before, but apparently this is his second collection of short stories. There’s a really interesting variety in the stories presented here.

The eponymous story is very clearly science fiction, and told non-linearly, about a man who starts off as a boxer/MMA etc on Earth and then leaves the planet to find more career options fighting aliens in the arena. Certainly on one level it’s about fighting as a sport and sport for money, but of course it’s also about family and inheritance and Place as home.

Then there’s “Spider Hunt,” which feels more like fantasy; “The Probe” is maybe SF, maybe fantasy, and works by muddying the lines. “Beats” is also genre-defying, intriguing and mysterious.

While I can see, and appreciate, what “Operation: Bleach” is doing, I’m as white as they come; I suspect it hits far harder for folks with browner skin than mine and who live in a society that upholds my sort of skin as somehow preferable. It’s another story told inventively – a series of newspaper articles and comments – and it’s probably my favourite story of the collection.

I found “Lost for Words” a bit confusing, to be honest – it’s very short, and I don’t think entirely works as a story. Then “All That We May See” tips into horror, “One Morning at the Bank” is a superhero story, and “Blending In” feels basically like realism.

And then “For Sale: Big Ass Sword” is told entirely as an ad on Talipapa, which I understand to be an online trading site for the Philippines; the story leans into folktales/fairy tales, and is a really solid conclusion.

It was never predictable what the next story would be like, and I really enjoyed that aspect, as well as the stories themselves.