The Good Women of Fudi

'The fate of all women does not have to be ours.’

The Good Women of Fudi is set in Imperial China after the Opium Wars and follows two friends, Jiali and Wu Fang. The two women have grown up with wealth and are both seriously accomplished. Jiali is a proclaimed poet and swordswoman, and Wu Fang is attending medical school in Japan - to potentially become the first Chinese surgeon.

At the outset of the story, we join Wu Fang on their boat journey back to Fudi from Japan where she meets English Edward, who mistakes them for a Japanese man.

Edward is travelling to join the Fudi Naval College having recently lost his wife, and his and Wu Fang's lives continue to entwine when he realises his closest Chinese colleague Yanbu is Jiali's new husband.

I was really interested in the history of the period, especially the conflict and rising tensions between the differing Chinese factions - the reformers looking outward to Japan's modernist practices and ideas or the traditionalist ruling Manchus and how spiritualism, religion and family weaves a complicated set of values and ideas. I found the suffering attitudes towards the Ocean People (foreigners like the English) really interesting too and was grateful to see things through Edward's eyes as he became more and more fascinated with Fudi's culture and inhabitants.

Wu Fang's gender identity is explored throughout the book but never directly explained, which is the same for the complicated physical and emotional relationship between Wu Fang and Jiali, Edward and Yanbu. I was really swept along with the complicated study of love, gender and sexuality in it's many fluid forms.

My only gripe is that the book ended on a massive cliffhanger - and I've no idea if the book is a series!

I thought this was a fantastic book, I had such a great time getting to know such a queer facet to China through the cast of the Good Women of Fudi, but I'm reeling at the ending -- is that a cliffhanger? Or is the story complete? I would really appreciate an indication from the blurb one way or another to manage the expectations better.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.