Siren Queen
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR NGHI VO COMES A DAZZLING NEW NOVEL WHERE IMMORTALITY IS JUST A CASTING CALL AWAY
"Natalie Naudus's skilled narration adds to the luminous and otherworldly qualities of Vo's historical fantasy." -AudioFile on Siren Queen
It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic.
"No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers." Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.
But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.
Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com Books.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Many have described the unscrupulous men who controlled old Hollywood as “monsters”—but Nghi Vo takes it a step further. Her transportive supernatural tale, set in the 1930s, reimagines the studio heads as magical creatures who use mysterious rituals and chilling sorcery to run their entertainment empires. Enter talented actress Luli Wei. As a queer Chinese American woman, she knows the odds are stacked against her dream of achieving fame, but that only makes her more determined to succeed, no matter the cost. We were blown away by Vo’s fantastical world, where movie cameras actually consume actors’ souls, moguls conjure obedient automatons to work as background extras, and megastars achieve immortality by literally ascending into the night sky. Narrator Natalie Naudus portrays Luli as a smart, sarcastic heroine we root for at every step. Siren Queen gives the phrase “movie magic” a clever new meaning.
