Book Review: BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG

by | Sep 13, 2025 | Book Reviews, Reviews, The Horror Review News | 0 comments

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
Kylie Lee Baker
MIRA (April 29, 2025)
Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a startling look at the Covid pandemic through the eyes of an Asian woman who loses her sister. Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner and is haunted by a serial killer and the ghosts in her head after her sister Delilah is pushed in front of a subway car as the person yells, “Bat eater!” It’s quite unnerving, the book. Be prepared to deal with a host of emotions ranging from grief to confusion to extreme anger. I feel it well portrays a marginalized community blamed for the pandemic and horrifically dehumanized and treated like animals and worse. This story made me angry and it made me cry.

The author’s voice is strong and if it weren’t for her aunt in the tale for comedic effect preparing for The Hungry Ghost Festival, I don’t think I would have made it through this book. Just the tiniest bit of humor offsetting the darkest of subjects of discrimination and ugliness added the respite needed in between the bizarre and morbid crime scenes Cora works daily while trying to mourn her cousin and seek revenge for her death.

I think this is a story that needs to be told. And Kylie Lee Baker was the perfect author to tell it. It’s difficult to bring me to tears and make me laugh in the same pages. And the reality of Covid is prevalent in the story quite starkly. It draws you back to that grisly time period we all lived through together and managed somehow to survive, some of us with more scars and stories to tell than others. The awful, hateful truth needed to be confronted.

About Nora B. Peevy

Nora B. Peevy is a cat trapped in a human’s body. Please send help or tuna. She toils away for JournalStone and Trepidatio Publishing as a submissions reader, is a co-editor for Alien Sun Press, the newest reviewer for Hellnotes, and has been published by Eighth Tower Press, Weird Fiction Quarterly, and other places. Usually, you can find her on Facebook asking for help escaping from her human body or to get tuna. Tuna is nice. Cats like tuna.

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