Cora Zeng does not get angry. Not because Auntie Lois says anger is a sin, or because Delilah could never be bothered with such an emotion, or because Cora is sage enough to understand that it is a pointless, destructive feeling. Cora Zeng does not get angry because anger always melts through her fingers until it’s a pool of anguish under her feet. There is not enough oxygen inside Cora to keep anger burning. No matter how hard she tries, she can only wield her sharpest thoughts against her own flesh. She knows, on some level that most of the problems in her life are her own fault in one way or another. Anger is just one of of those thoughts that can never quite sink its teeth into her–she is not solid enough, and its jaws close around nothing at all.
page 90
Table of Contents
Why Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng?
I have been hearing good things about Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng from various sources for a while now. Kylie Lee Baker also has a new book out this year that is one of the books for the lexi aka newlynova book club. So when I saw a copy of this available at my local book store in early September I picked up a copy so I could see what all the hype was about.
Horror is not one of my usual genres but as with other such genres I am trying to expand my horizons and read outside my comfort zone. And what better month to dip my toes into horror than October? I am going to try and read more horror this month and see what kind of horror I gravitate towards. My bet is that I will gravitate towards psychological horror as opposed to physical & body horror.
This is my first time reading anything by Kylie Lee Baker. I read a paperback edition (ISBN/UID – 9781335001528) published by Hanover Square Press in March 2026. The book was originally published in April 2025 by Mira Books. Author blurbs on this edition of the book are from Grady Hendrix and Paul Tremblay.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a psychological horror novel that follows the story of one Cora Zeng who witnesses the murder of her sister Delilah Zeng who is pushed in front of a subway train in New York City. The time period is important here – the book starts in April 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic is ramping up. Anti-Asian racism in relation to this new virus is on the rise and Cora and Delilah are both visibly Asian women.
As the description of the book mentions, the murderer shouts two words just before pushing Delilah in front of the train – bat eater. Which in this context is a racist insult directed against Asian people, a reference to the origin of the COVID-19 virus in a live animal market in Wuhan, China.
What follows is a ghost story. Cora takes on a job as a crime scene cleaner along with her coworkers Harvey and Yifei. In the most recent series of cleanups, all of the bodies have been East Asian women and she keeps finding bat carcasses at the crime scene. It is also August 2020 and the month when hungry ghosts come out of the underworld, including the ghost of her dead sister Delilah.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng has a lot going on. It uses the ghost story of Delilah as a way to explore the specific kind of grief that Cora is feeling. Cora is someone who sees herself as being in her sister’s shadow even after her death and she constantly feels like she is making the wrong decisions without Delilah around. It is an extended exploration of Cora’s depersonalization.
The murder of the East Asian women is also quite clearly an exploration of the rising Sinophobia as the COVID-19 pandemic kicks into full gear. It also showcases the acute fear that many of us faced at the beginning of the pandemic, Cora herself is more afraid of the COVID-19 virus than she is of the hungry ghost of her dead sister.
There’s something peaceful about your worst fear coming true. Cora had hidden from the the virus for the last half of a year, the fear of it chained to her at all times, the feeling of needing to cry but not being able to always lodged in her throat, choking her. Now that it’s here, Cora can live through it one minute at a time. It’s no longer the faceless entity of her nightmares. It’s been defanged, as her therapist would say, because the not knowing and guessing is always worse than the knowing. And even when Cora thinks she’s going to die, it’s not as bad as the fear that came before, the fear that might have killed her anyway.
page 222
To the books credit, I found the true horror of Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng to be the COVID-19 virus and how it affected our lives. Uncertainty, fear, grief. Cora’s life during this book is an extreme representation of the emotions we faced during the height of the pandemic. For many of us, COVID-19’s impact is something that continues to affect us just as the ghost of Delilah that continues to haunt Cora.
Concluding Thoughts
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng was a book I ended up reading in its entirety in one sitting. I couldn’t stop reading this particular ghost story and its exploration of COVID-19, grief, depersonalization, and Sinophobia – it is quite effective at tackling those themes. This is a depressing book and it is very good at being depressing. I now understand why this book has been getting the praise it has.
As far as my experience with it as a horror novel, I think this is the kind of horror novel I’d like to read more of. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic is waiting for me at the library and I expect to get my hands on it soon and read it (after a short detour into some historical fantasy).
That’s all from me, see y’all in the next one.
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