[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 11, 2024
Reviewed by A. Bruin
“Threshold” by Audrey Zhou is set in a town designed to appear medieval Asian. The people there don’t accept death as the end of existence, as some gifted individuals can sense and delay spirits from passing on after death. The heroine has a gift for building realistic post-death bodies for such spirits to use which she learns to do for payment. When a friend and love interest dies, she builds a new body for free, hoping that the friend will want to stay rather than move on. Unfortunately for her, her friend does not want to merely occupy a mechanical body, she wants to live a flesh and blood life.
The story’s opening nicely foreshadowed the end, though this reviewer felt surprise at the ending, as the middle highlighted different physical aspects during the building of the spirit body. The middle built up a feeling of hope that the friend would stay mixed with confusion at the friend’s odd response to the process. The ending seemed to abruptly shift from a fantasy which asks if it is right to hold the dead to the living when the dead move on anyway, to a horror at what might happen should the dead decide not to move on after all. This abruptness mirrored the viewpoint character’s internal state well, making the story an interesting read for those who like a fright.