I don't think I expected to get approved to read and review this one. I doubt I'll get around to it, but if I do I will update on my goodreads and (try) to update on my storygraph.

I'm sad to say that I was left very disappointed by this book. The concept was intriguing and I liked the fantasy game side of the book. But I think it this was an attempt at a literary commentary on capitalism and self - especially Musk's all in one App pipe dream of which there were nods everywhere, but it wasn't executed successfully.

Where to even start with this train wreck?
Let’s get a couple things out of the way quickly.
First, this book is really hard to find. I had an eARC of it and was disappointed to find out it’s not even been made into an ebook that can be bought. But don’t worry you are missing out on nothing worth your time!
Second, I love a well written, engaging story. One that evokes a certain style or sense with its word choices. What I do not appreciate is a seemingly endless use of ridiculous words, chosen for some unknown reason, that require me to have my dictionary handy. And while yes my Kobo has a dictionary function that is not the point. Stumbling over terminology is no fun. For example some of the worst offenders were: eschatological, solipsism, verpertine, unctuousness, adumbrations, trophallaxis, vinaceous, furfuraceous, and diaphanous. When spell check thinks your words don’t exist then they are probably too archaic.

With those two mini-rants out of the way let’s get into the real depth of what doesn’t work in Red Dust, White Snow.
It was difficult to tell what the real goal was here. We are brought into a complex fantasy world, via an odd device our leading gal uses. Inside this world the descriptions and sense of self is huge. Yet we suspect it’s not quite real early on. I mean it takes a device to generate this world in your dreams. Obviously not a natural phenom.
Yet later on in the story we are treated to the type of ‘twist’ and moral that is most common in short stories. It cheapens the experience and made me wonder why bother with generating all the details and plot of the fantasy world if you planned to unravel most of it anyways? It makes no sense.
It’s as though the author couldn’t decide between writing an impactful, twisted, moral giving short story and an epic fantasy. These two things are so different, and they don’t work when put together. I wished to be reading each of the different types of books as the plot itself is interesting enough (albeit not as original as I might have hoped for). Instead we get this mixture of story that is unsatisfying as it can’t meet the needs of either story format. A huge let down in the end.

There is some brilliance to be pulled from this for a future attempt at writing. But someone needs to sit the author down and really talk about the overall goal. Select what kind of story it is before launching into writing it. If it’s an epic fantasy or sci-folk then it needs more of the linking scenes (otherwise it feels like an outline with only the most important scenes written out so far; leaving the reader to feel disconnected); or if it’s a short story with a distinct moral and lesson then all the superfluous details and extended plot of the fantasy world need to be stripped out. Either way there could be something to be made of here. As it stands right now it’s an amateur debut that needed some serious guidance so it didn’t feel like someone’s first crack at a story they hadn’t decided on the goal of in the first place.

Unfortunately this hot mess is not worth reading, in my opinion. Unless you are an editor or publisher that wants to reach out and help refine it (a lot) into something that has purpose and a clear goal for the reader.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

“Do you consent to enter into a parallel universe?”

I enjoy a good parallel universe story, and this book delivered on that. I was really caught up in the story and couldn't put it down!

Huiting's Red Dust, White Snow takes he classic premise of using futuristic sci-fi as a device for discussing modern day problems, in this case the smartphone.

The world in which Red Dust, White Snow is set is a world where people's daily lives are heavily driven interaction wise via the digital world and more specifically an app, the main character whose name is never mentioned throughout is a middle-aged office worker who lives a decidedly monotonous life until one day she receives a device which appear to teleport her to another realm in her sleep yet somehow this fantasy dream life is beginning to collide with her monotonous waking life as an office worker.

It's an interesting novel in many ways and has to me at least given a moral in relation to society today in regards to smart device addiction...

Many thanks to NetGalley and Fairlight Books for the ARC.

3.25 stars
red dust, white snow follows an unnamed main character, who, as an office worker, is tired of the mundanity of her life. the novel starts as she discovers a mysterious white cube on her doorstep one day. assuming it’s just another marketing stunt, she doesn’t pay much attention to it, but later that night, and for many nights after that, she is swept into another fantastical universe in her dreams.
i’m still not really sure how i feel about this book. i liked the premise and found it intriguing but as many other reviewers have said the execution was not as well done. there were some confusing things in the story that i didn’t really understand or couldn’t understand the reason for. i didn’t struggle with the writing style as much as other reviewers have stated to though. most of the novel follows an alternating format between the real world and the dream world, and somehow i actually preferred the real world. i liked getting to read about the mc’s reflections on how technology (and specifically just one major company) had taken over everyone’s lives and how she didn’t really fit in with others. i usually ended up being confused during the dream world chapters because i felt like the world-building wasn’t enough, or done very well either. i would’ve liked to learn more but also in an easier to understand way. the fact that the parts of the book that take place in the dream world were written in present tense in comparison with the real world’s past tense kind of took me out of the story each time i started a new chapter set in the dream world. i understand that it was probably written that way to create a contrast between the two, but i feel like it could’ve been done better? i don’t really understand why some of the dialogue was used without quotation marks tbh but it didn’t bother me and i felt like they were quite easy to discern from the rest of the text. i couldn’t really connect with the characters but i think that might have been intended to be that way? surprisingly, despite all the negative points here, i found myself enjoying this a lot while reading it! i can’t exactly tell why, but i felt a kind of familiarity and personalness while reading, if that makes any sense. (and i’m sure it does *not*).
overall, i still have mixed thoughts about this novel, but i feel like if there’s a potential of you liking this type of narrative *and* you go in with the right expectations, you might end up enjoying this.
thank you to the publisher fairlight books and netgalley for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting dystopian sci-fiu concept with an overlap of reality and fantasy. I struggled with the choppiness of the writing which sometimes took away from the plot. I can see some people will enjoy this but for me it was only okay,

I was drawn to this book by the premise of dreams overlapping with reality. I found that the majority of this book was hard to follow. I stuck with it and found the ending to be good and thought provoking. Overall I would rate this maybe a 3 or a 3.5 stars and wish that the first 80% was written as well as the remaining 20%..

Thank you NetGalley for my advance copy! In a world that is increasingly living life virtually, this one was certainly a good perspective

This book is set in a futuristic world where people's lives are heavily influenced by an app. We follow a middle-aged office worker as she navigates society. She is an administrator in a company and limits her interactions with people in the "real" world. Most of her social interactions are through the digital world.

You read the whole story in her POV and the reader never knows her name. Her monotonous life is changed when she receives a device the seems to teleport her to another world when she sleeps. Slowly, her fantasy life and her waking life start to collide. I don't want to say more because it will spoil the ending/plot twist.

I would definitely read more books by this author.

Thank you NetGalley for the E-Arc.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

I think the premise of this book is good but the execution was somewhat lacking. It felt a little stilted and drawn out, and I feel like the reveal of the technology came too late, by then it had failed to capture me although I did think the last part of the book was the best. The only problem with this is if you can stick it out long enough to get there!

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this at 40%. From the first page, the writing style was very stilted and unnatural while also including a lot of unusual words that required me to look up their definitions. It was almost like this book (set in Singapore) had been the victim of a bad translator, but I don’t see a translator credited so I assume that this is just how the author intended. Overall the writing is very impersonal, telling us what the unnamed main character is doing throughout her day without much dialogue. (When there is dialogue, it is without quotation marks.) I assume the writing style is supposed to be a reflection of the main character, because she is characterized as an outsider who lacks social skills.

There is a plot but the book seems to be more focused on exploring philosophical ideas posed by the main character’s situation. She is switching back and forth between her two “realities”, and obviously the reality set in ancient Japan is implied to be more interesting than her original reality. In the “real world” reality, an app called Empis has pervaded most aspects of daily life and people are so obsessed with a drama tv show that it’s known as a “pandemic”. It was kind of Black-Mirror-ish but it was too on the nose.

I did prefer to read the chapters set at the Japanese academy, but the over explanation of Japanese names (Why were the characters known as their names’ English translations?) and magical lore got to be boring.

Maybe there is someone out there who will like this, if they like philosophy and ancient Japanese culture/Japanese fantasy.

I really don't like to say but this book just didn't do it for me. Set in Singapore and is somewhat time travel, somewhat dual-timeline and very mush hard to follow at times.

It really missed the mark for me and I felt it didn't flow well and the story just didn't interest me at all In the end I just couldn't finish reading it as hard as I tried.

Thank you NetGalley and Fairlight Books for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

DNF @ 35%. At a different time in my life, I might have been more into this. The concept is amazing, but the execution was boring mem to tears. I found myself skimming much of the parallel universe stuff despite loving the idea of it. Also, a lot of the real-world commentary was a bit TOO on the nose for me — it bordered on being a bit corny as a result. I wanted this to work so much but at the moment, it's just not.

Set in Singapore, this book was unlike anything I've ever read! An office worker is transported to another universe using a device she mysteriously gets in the mail one day.

I liked the different tenses- past and present used to convey the story. By third person POV, this was an intriguing read, complete with a dreamworld and an academy-like setting. I love the cover and it was a lot of fun. The writing was easy to read and elegant at times. I'm so glad I read this, because I love sci-fi and this was EXACTLY what I needed!

Highly recommend if you want a sci-fi that is defying the genre and is just so much fun!

I was really excited to read this book as it dealt with parallel universe and dystopian future. It started out interesting but it kind of turned out into nothing. Maybe it was only me but i didn't get the purpose of the book and the ending was unsatisfactory. (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

Sorry, I don't think this is a book I would recommend. It's a good idea, but not a compelling read. I did not finish the book.

This debut novel is a relatively slight affair about an administrator in an unnamed Singapore drifting into a parallel world while asleep. It is more interested in the philosophical aspects of its setup than the narrative and practical ones and has an issue while ping-ponging between waken and dream life in as much as the former one is set up to be extremely isolated and boring. The point is that her second life (hint) is much more interesting, but that means the daytime "Red Dust" (Chinese synonym for mundane) life ends up reading that way. Huiting fills the daytime segments with philosophical musings about the role of immersive social media channels, ongoing soap-style dramas, and the lead's lack of human contact. The fantastical world set in a magical college where fantastical creatures are summoned seems more interesting, but I think its design tips the wink of what is really going on far earlier than the narrative would like.

Red Dust, White Snow follows in the grand tradition of non-sci-Fi books using rather common and old-hat sci-fi tropes and trying to be profound about it. And it's not terrible at that, its talk of immersive worlds, and social media does resonate, though its fictional mega-corp doesn't quite have an analog, and the item and method in which our heroine is thrust into her parallel life would clearly be actionable. As ever though with things like this, it's the design of the parallel world that is initially beguiling and then you discover what it really is and you wonder if it really is that compelling. The book does however capture a generational malaise, not for nothing the closest analogue I have to it is My Year Of Rest And Relaxation, another book about longing to be asleep but in a very different context.

I received this book via NetGalley from the publisher for my honest review.

What would you do if an unmarked, unassuming package was at your doorstep one evening? Would you open it? Would you take a chance on adventure to get away from your stable, no frills, no surprises life as an admin at a technology company? Would you look up from your constant swiping, liking, purchasing in the online world to take a chance on the unknown?

Our nameless female main character chooses just that, to open the package and explore the contents inside that whisk her away to a completely different world than she's ever known to lead a life bigger and louder than her own.

I really loved the description of this book and the premise, so was very excited to read it. If I'm completely honest I HATED the first 25% of this book, and I'm still not entirely sure if I like this book or not. There are a lot of things about it that just grated on me and perhaps that simply means it isn't for me which is, of course, always possible. Every book isn't for every person! I took extensive notes as I was reading along and it's funny because you can see the exact moment I became wrapped up and invested because the notes stop.

Before I get into what I did not care for about this book, I want to mention the things that I did. As I've already pointed out, the premise was fantastic. New and Avant Garde? Of course not, but in a modern society where our entire lives truly can be managed from our phone, this novel explores what if we abandoned that and went back to a lifestyle where we relied on our hands and mysticism to survive the day to day. The depictions of the parallel universe were mesmerizing and enticing for me as a reader and at points reminded me a lot of Manga and Anime scenes like Inuyasha (which I'm a big fan of). The cultural references here all made sense and taught me a lot as a reader and I was googling a lot to better understand the context I was being given which only added to the ambience of the universe.

Another really interesting and positive aspect of this novel for me was that reflection on the influence and hold social media (the online world as a whole) has on our day to day lives. Our main character barely looks up from the Empi world and what a well named world it is, an empire indeed. We briefly see her grow brazen enough to engage with the world of influencers and try her hand at having a voice, only to back quickly out of that when she begins to feel too odd about it.

What didn't I like and what caused this to be a 3.5 star read for me? There's a few things that can be lumped together I believe: the writing, the random references and the feeling I was prepping for the SAT. The writing came across cold, stilted and very staccato in that first 25% of the book which was a lot of my issue with it. It somehow came across incredibly dramatic and pick me (see the FIRST page) and yet completely disassociated. Perhaps this was an intentional choice to parallel our office worker going thru the motions and wearing her mask. The random references in the first half ish of the book most notably were around Western Pop Culture that was very niche, or the casual Italian sentence, or hyper specific and graphic anatomy descriptions. The most jarring of these though was the SAT word prep or $5 dollar words scattered throughout the novel. If you have a teen prepping for the SAT or PSAT, this is the book for them. Perhaps the high brow, literary vibe was the intention for the author but having to stop to google these words to understand the context alongside all the cultural words (which I did not mind in the least) made reading the book take a lot longer. I'm not a dumb person, but I'm also certainly not the smartest person and if the goal of this novel was to appeal broadly, I think these aspects I've pointed out will halt that. The irony of the protagonist calling a writer in the story desultory was not lost on me, perhaps again intentional to align with our main characters life at the beginning of the novel.

TLDR; How do I feel about this book? I have no idea! I need to continue to sit with it and ponder. Will I recommend it to you reader or your friends, my friends? Absolutely.