Thumbs up for The Archer Who Shot Down Suns: Scale-Bright Stories by Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Fantasy.
Gender-swapped Chinese folktales, in prose so exquisitely beautiful I could cry. I wish I could write like Sriduangkaew: and that is not something you will often hear me say. The story collection is free at the link above.
The ghost animals have neither voices nor words of their own. A few eels and frogs can be coaxed to echo Chang’e, and that suits her purposes. The trouble lies in luring them. They do not behave much like their living counterparts, neither eating nor mating; owls and starlings sometimes swim languidly in the lakes, and twice she’s seen carps up in the branches of a stone cypress. She’s tried to tempt them with cakes, fruits, wine, dumplings. None avails. Tatters of fabric and melted candle wax do even less.
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