Review
The Ink Readers of Doi Saket
2013
Tor
Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #8 (March 2017).
I really do warm to this story, which placed 4th among the Hugo Award short story shortlist in 2014, and Tor have done the right thing by presenting it in its own ebook edition.
There is only one event in the story which casts the whole as speculative fiction, as everything else is believable from the standpoint of trying to understand the Thai obsession with superstition, myth and fable. As the story of Tangmoo, an untypical young man who does not appear to have any wishes or ambitions, and who instead stumbles upon a group of crooked monks who are making big money off people’s willingness to follow their animistic urges, ‘The Ink Readers’ both entertains with humour that doesn’t patronise and lifts the spirit while questioning the truth of such beautiful Thai rituals as Loi Krathong: if our lives are to be dictated by myths, we should at least make them beautiful ones.