Books book reviews Ghosts and Shared Histories: The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean Mahvesh Murad reviews an ambitious novel about women—and ghosts— affected by war in East Asia across several decades. By Mahvesh Murad | Published on May 28, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Sunyi Dean’s second novel, The Girl with a Thousand Faces, is the story of Mercy Chan, a woman living in Hong Kong in 1975 who can talk to ghosts. It is also the story of young Siu Yin, who escapes Hong Kong before the Japanese Occupation in the 1940s. And it is the story of a woman and her two young daughters living in a little village on a remote island in the 1920s. Set against the backdrop of the Second World War and its repercussions on East Asia in the decades that follow, the novel explores the lives of these women and those of the communities they live in, both corporeal and spirit.  Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, 1975. Mercy works as an exorcist, a ghost-talker, because her innate ability allows her to empathise with the dead and offer suggestions as to how they can rest in peace, rather than simply banishing them against their will. This does sometimes mean the ghosts she is hired to deal with wreak revenge on those who did them wrong, be they family members or otherwise, but that’s acceptable justice, according to Mercy, and there are a lot of ghosts wandering around Kowloon looking for that. In particular, there are “many kinds of waiting-women ghosts, from wives pining for dead or unfaithful husbands to mothers wasting away as they hoped for the return of a child, to young girls with broken hearts, and so on. She felt sorry for them, but also annoyed by them. Bad enough to spend your life waiting on other people; even worse to spend the afterlife doing it, too.” Mercy isn’t the most patient 50-something aunty, but she is the only one who can do what she does.  However, she cannot recall anything that happened before 1942, when she washed up on Japanese Occupied Hong Kong’s shores. Right away, “the corpses are the first thing she sees here. Corpses in the streets and alleys, corpses on the boardwalks and slumping against doorframes. Corpses piled on corpses in wagons, in great stinking mounds of flesh. War has lefts its mark. Oddly, the sight of death doesn’t bother her, and she isn’t sure if that’s a bad thing or not.” She hides out in Kowloon Walled City, a densely packed area that exists outside of the law. Unofficially run by crime syndicates, Kowloon is “the city of darkness”, “left to rot while China and Britain uncomfortably dodged the responsibility for its poverty and spirit infestations, refusing to deal with any of it.” Mercy first joins the resistance during the war, then works with a local crime gang as a ghost talker. She knows right away what almost all the ghosts want and need, be it justice or revenge or acknowledgment and accountability. Mercy shows no mercy though, to those who have wronged the dead. Her own sense of justice is strong, and rather than banish or coerce or convince the ghosts to leave the living be, she is quite happy to let them have their revenge so they can rest in peace, even if it means they have to kill someone else for it.  But why is her empathy for vengeful ghosts so strong? Who even is she? How can she do what she does? Where are her family? Mercy does not know, but she is certain that the woman she has frequent visions of has the answers she needs: a “monstrous, ocean-drenched young woman, wearing the same ragged clothes” who keeps demanding that Mercy remember “the island”. This same ghost, Sea Sister, is more powerful than any Mercy has encountered before, easily and frequently killing people and drowning innocents. Buy the Book The Girl with a Thousand Faces Sunyi Dean Buy Book The Girl with a Thousand Faces Sunyi Dean Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget A remote island off the coast of Hong Kong, thirty three years earlier. Young Siu Yin and her mother have escaped the Japanese invasion, and are hiding out on her mother’s ancestral home island, a beautiful but remote place filled with ghosts. The original village was wiped out by a storm decades ago; everyone who died in it still haunts the island, visible to both Siu Yin and her mother. The ghosts are generally harmless, except there is someone—or something—in the waters surrounding the island who calls to Siu Yin, who may not be entirely benevolent. It is a call she cannot resist.  A remote island village off the coast of Hong Kong, the 1920s. A woman and her two young daughters are hounded by villagers who think one of the little girls is bad luck for them all. A terrible accident occurs, and the little girl falls into a cave which was once home to an ancient temple. The other girl goes on to move away to Hong Kong, and have a daughter of her own.  Each of these narratives is whole and detailed. Jumping between them isn’t always easy, though they do come together well. Mercy’s story remains the most arresting, entertaining one, but even so, when the big plot twist arrives, we are not sure who the protagonist or the antagonist really is, or whether it should even matter. No one is truly at fault, no one is a true villain, because Dean makes it clear that every character is a product of their environment, of their lived experience, of what was done to them, of what they carried forward from those who came before them. Even the ghosts who cause havoc cannot be blamed—a cultural aspect of death and spirituality that Dean explores well. When Siu Yi does not understand this, her mother tells her, “you are thinking like a Westerner, like one of the white nuns at your school. To them, ghosts are just a pest, a villain, a monster to kill. British people… they do not love their ghosts, as they do not love their ancestors. When their dead return, they are banished, When their souls cling, they are forced onwards… Ghosts are driven by hurt, and cannot help themselves. Do you think a storm is evil, because it pours rain on your head?” Our dead ancestors are as natural as the rain, as important and as vital, too. They make us all who we are, and without an understanding or empathy for our shared histories, we would not be able to appreciate the future.  Dean does not pick a side, and does not allow her readers to, either. If there is a villain in this story, it is not one of the characters, but rather the war itself, because “war does not finish… It is not a game that stops when enough players quit. It is a wound, sinking into flesh, leaving scars and rot that cause pain for a long time.” The horrors of the war, the atrocities of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the generation trauma called by what is left behind is the macrocosm of this story. When the bomb falls in Hiroshima happens, Mercy feels it… “she feels it, oh so clearly. Every ghost and shaman from here to China to Russia, to Guam and all the places in between—they feel the spiritual energy of a hundred thousand souls being blasted from flesh into spirit. “It is like a portal to hell has opened.” It is impossible for the ghosts to ignore what is happening in the corporeal world, because “humankind’s destructive power can impact even the spirit world.” Dean gives us a unique perspective of ghosts being involved in the resistance, ghosts who may have been created by the war, who have been embraced by those who needed to fight the invaders. She makes it clear that everything is affected by war: all our histories, every aspect of our culture, legacy, stories.  The Girl with a Thousand Faces is complex, not just in plot and story, but also because Dean makes some interesting choices with narrative structure and voice, taking risks that often pay off, though sometimes the dialogue can feel a little stilted, with most characters speaking in the same tone. There are frequent switches between perspectives, third and second person POV, timelines and spaces, and readers are required to sink into and through each of these. It’s an ambitious narrative, one that also asks us to consider the endless cycle of trauma and grief:  Where does it end? How can it end? Only by making a choice to let it go, by choosing peace instead of seeking justice, can we possibly stop the pain from continuing to be passed down. Forgiveness comes perhaps from living with your demons, accepting them, knowing they are as much a part of you as you are them. The Girl with a Thousand Faces can feel bleak at times, but there are many moments of grace and love, friendship and sisterhood, and ultimately of forgiveness.[end-mark] The Girl with a Thousand Faces is published by Tor Books. The post Ghosts and Shared Histories: <i>The Girl with a Thousand Faces</i> by Sunyi Dean appeared first on Reactor.