Yume - by Sifton Tracey Anipare (Paperback)

About the Book

"A modern-day fantasy novel about demons, dreams, and a young woman teaching English in Japan. Cybelle, an expat, lives in a small city in the Kansai region of Japan. Life is difficult: her coworkers don't treat her as one of their own and, outside of work, people dislike or even fear her. On top of it all, Cybelle is struggling to conform to the rules that have helped her survive so far. Elsewhere in Kansai, Zaniel navigates the dream realm, bringing women to have romantic encounters with a demon named Akki, his "bodyguard." When another demon -- the Yokai -- appears in Akki's territory and wreaks havoc in his domain with its voracious appetite, both Zaniel and Cybelle find themselves caught in the middle of the supernatural creature's antics. Will Cybelle be able to keep up her do-your-best attitude when she is pulled into the world of demons and the heated battle between Akki and the Yokai?"--

Book Synopsis

While Cybelle comes to terms with her life in Japan, Zaniel navigates a world of demons, namely by bringing women to have sexual encounters with a monster named Akki, until another demon, the Yokai, wreaks havoc in Akki's domain.

Review Quotes

Yume will leave readers wanting to become experts on Japanese mythology, watch a Studio Ghibli movie (or two), and read more stories from Anipare's otherwordly mind.

A captivating fantasy in the vein of Alice in Wonderland and Spirited Away, and yet possessed of its own unique vision and executed with precision, honesty, and feeling. Yume is more than a story about dreams and demons, it's about being a stranger in a strange land, and the yearning we feel to connect with someone ... even if they aren't human.

A love letter to the strange and nerdy Black girls who are willing to embrace life's oddities and adventures... a fun and vivacious ride.

At its heart, Yume is a compelling story about finding connections - to others as well as to parts of oneself - in an increasingly disconnected world. With empathetic characters, terrifying monsters, and a cinematic feel, Yume is a dream that will keep readers awake at night.

The two worlds in this novel create a whirlwind of chaos and colour, blending vivid descriptions and well-defined characters to create an intricate realm.

With a gleaming and uncanny glance at the racial inequality in societies, Anipare creates a dream reality from our fractured, ever-changing world.

[A] cinematic and terrifying story about a collision of cultures and the human urge for connection.

A growing aura of malice paints every successive page of Yume, an inevitable, unfathomable collision of cultures, desires, colour, light, and sensation. Rarely does a book shepherd a reader so deftly through the strange and magical while weaving in enough of the familiar to heighten the suspicion that, while this yokai-populated, fearsome Japan exists through the imagination of the author, it might also be found just around the next corner. And if you DO find it, beware!

Anipare successfully blends Japanese folklore and contemporary life, and readers will be entranced to see the mundane and the mythical collide. This thought-provoking story is sure to win Anipare fans.

The more I read, the quicker I read, and by the end, I struggled to put it down.

Yume will leave readers wanting to become experts on Japanese mythology, watch a Studio Ghibli movie (or two), and read more stories from Anipare's otherwordly mind.-- "The Sarah Berg Blog"

A captivating fantasy in the vein of Alice in Wonderland and Spirited Away, and yet possessed of its own unique vision and executed with precision, honesty, and feeling. Yume is more than a story about dreams and demons, it's about being a stranger in a strange land, and the yearning we feel to connect with someone ... even if they aren't human.

-- "Ian Rogers, award-winning author of Every House Is Haunted"

A love letter to the strange and nerdy Black girls who are willing to embrace life's oddities and adventures... a fun and vivacious ride.

-- "Real Change News"

At its heart, Yume is a compelling story about finding connections -- to others as well as to parts of oneself -- in an increasingly disconnected world. With empathetic characters, terrifying monsters, and a cinematic feel, Yume is a dream that will keep readers awake at night.

-- "Richard Ford Burley, author of Displacement"

The two worlds in this novel create a whirlwind of chaos and colour, blending vivid descriptions and well-defined characters to create an intricate realm.

-- "White Wall Review"

With a gleaming and uncanny glance at the racial inequality in societies, Anipare creates a dream reality from our fractured, ever-changing world.

-- "Quill & Quire"

[A] cinematic and terrifying story about a collision of cultures and the human urge for connection.-- "Helen Walsh, 49th Shelf"

A growing aura of malice paints every successive page of Yume, an inevitable, unfathomable collision of cultures, desires, colour, light, and sensation. Rarely does a book shepherd a reader so deftly through the strange and magical while weaving in enough of the familiar to heighten the suspicion that, while this yokai-populated, fearsome Japan exists through the imagination of the author, it might also be found just around the next corner. And if you DO find it, beware!-- "Jen Frankel, author of Undead Redhead"

Anipare successfully blends Japanese folklore and contemporary life, and readers will be entranced to see the mundane and the mythical collide. This thought-provoking story is sure to win Anipare fans.-- "Publishers Weekly"

The more I read, the quicker I read, and by the end, I struggled to put it down.-- "Books Outside the Box"

About the Author

Sifton Tracey Anipare is a Ghanaian Canadian writer who lived and taught in Japan for four years. She loves video games, bubble tea, and Japanese coffee mixes, and is an avid collector of stickers and stamps. Yume is her first novel.