For No Mortal Creature by Keshe Chow review
- Danielle Robinson
- Mar 25
- 4 min read
Gothic/YA Fantasy, Afterworld, Ghost Lore
Keshe Chow’s For No Mortal Creature is a novel preoccupied with what lingers—after death, after love, after trust has already begun to fracture. It enters the crowded space of YA fantasy with familiar surface markers—an otherworldly realm, a central romance, a heroine navigating power she does not fully understand—but quickly reveals a more intricate interior, one shaped as much by grief as by spectacle.
Jia Yi’s story begins with her own death, an event that feels less like rupture and more like initiation. What follows is not a simple passage into an afterlife, but a descent through layered states of being, where existence continues in altered, increasingly unstable forms. The governing idea—that even ghosts can die, becoming something further removed—is more than a clever hook. It gives the novel its underlying architecture, allowing Chow to construct a world that feels recursive, slightly disorienting, and persistently uneasy.
Plot, in the conventional sense, is handled with restraint. The broad movement is clear: Jia Yi follows the thread of her grandmother’s death into a realm she does not trust, forced into uneasy alliances with Lin and Prince Essien. Yet the novel resists the urge to over-explain itself. Information is revealed gradually, sometimes obliquely, which creates a reading experience that mirrors Jia Yi’s own partial understanding. At its best, this lends the narrative a quiet tension; at other times, it edges toward opacity, particularly as the rules of the afterlife multiply.
What anchors the novel is not its mythology, but its emotional undercurrent. Grief sits at the centre of everything, not as a single-note motivation but as a shifting force that shapes Jia Yi’s decisions and perceptions. Her relationship with her grandmother is the most convincingly rendered element of the book—there is a specificity to that bond that feels lived-in, and it gives the story a weight that extends beyond its fantasy frame.
The romantic structure is more complex, though not always as fully realised. Lin carries the intensity of shared history, a connection that feels immediate and volatile, while Prince Essien offers something more measured, if less vividly drawn. The tension between the two is clearly intended to evoke a push-pull between devotion and danger, but the emotional clarity of that dynamic fluctuates. At times, the novel gestures toward a deeply felt exploration of attachment and harm; at others, it feels as though the relationships are moving faster than the interiority supporting them.
Chow’s prose is clean and controlled, favouring clarity over ornament. The tone leans gothic without becoming indulgent, and there is an ease to the pacing that keeps the narrative moving even when the worldbuilding becomes dense. The imagery of the afterlife—layered, shadowed, and slightly askew—lingers more strongly than any individual scene, suggesting a writer more interested in atmosphere than spectacle.
Where the novel divides attention is in its balance. The conceptual ambition is undeniable, particularly in its use of Chinese folklore and the idea of recursive death. Yet that ambition occasionally comes at the expense of character depth, especially in the secondary cast. The result is a book that feels intellectually assured, even imaginative, but not always as emotionally immersive as it might have been.
Still, what remains after the final pages is not confusion, but impression. A sense of a world that continues beyond the edges of the story, and of relationships that resist easy resolution. For No Mortal Creature is less interested in offering clean answers than in tracing the instability of love and identity when both are subjected to loss.
It is, ultimately, a novel that lingers—quietly, and in unexpected ways.
For No Mortal Creature Keshe Chow
Pages: 480
Genre: YA Fantasy, Gothic Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy
Tropes: Afterlife world, ghosts & layered death realms, love triangle, morally grey relationships, grief-driven quest
Publisher: Penguin Random House (Delacorte Press / Penguin Australia)
Release Date: 7 October 2025
ISBN: 978-1761348143
RRP (Australia):Paperback: ~$22.99 AUD
eBook: ~$14.99 AUD
Formats Available:Paperback, eBook, Audiobook
Where to Buy:Available via Amazon AU, Booktopia, Dymocks, Apple Books, Audible, and independent bookstores across Australia.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic, writer, and interior curator whose work explores the relationship between literature, home, and heritage through a reflective lens. Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she brings academic rigour to her writing alongside a cultivated, deeply aesthetic sensibility. Danielle is an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist and former fashion stylist and interior stager, with over 30 years’ experience shaping visual and cultural spaces. She reads widely and rigorously, reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through her platform and podcast, Silk & Sentences, she considers literature not simply as text, but as atmosphere—something that informs the way we live, curate, and remember. She writes from her meticulously curated rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, her dog, Oscar, and surrounded by family & close friends at every opportunity.
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