[On May 10, 2021 Strange Horizons officially expressed its political support for Palestinian solidarity. The views of Tangent Online reviewers are not necessarily those of Strange Horizons. Fiction critiqued at Tangent Online is, as much as is humanly possible, without prejudice and based solely on artistic merit.]

Strange Horizons, March 7, 2022

“The Pigeon Keeper’s Daughter” by Su-Yee Lin

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

The title character in “The Pigeon Keeper’s Daughter” by Su-Yee Lin is a young woman working as a groundskeeper at a university in the city of Taipei. She recently left her home in another part of Taiwan, and receives enigmatic messages from her mother, sent by birds. Birds follow her around, and at night she has dreams of being with birds. A pigeon racing contest leads to a dramatic conclusion involving a natural disaster.

If this synopsis seems vague and incoherent, that is because I found this story opaque. The author writes very well, in a clear and elegant style that makes the setting come to life, but the speculative content is perhaps too subtle. At times I thought the protagonist was a bird transformed into a human, or that her father controlled the actions of birds in some supernatural way. There is no real evidence for either of these hypotheses, and the story remains a mystery.

Victoria Silverwolf thinks it’s interesting that the author of this story chose not to make use of the magazine’s usual content warnings.