a compelling read! Literally i did not put this down once I started. It's a very action-oriented book, and the momentum did not let up. I had a fun tia compelling read! Literally i did not put this down once I started. It's a very action-oriented book, and the momentum did not let up. I had a fun time - this honestly pairs well with Natalie Parker's Seafire trilogy, they have a similar aesthetic of action and brash female leads.
My spoiler caveat: (view spoiler)[ There is a 3 quarter book Twist, as there always is, and honestly - I did not buy it. The narrative really wants you to buy it, and when the narrator voice gave up and was like "hey i promise i'm not up to anything" I was like ?? I simply do not believe you. So - it mostly worked for me. I'll continue to check out new books from the author. (hide spoiler)]...more
The art is fucking gorgeous, with a lot of beautiful detail work on every single page. the fantasy world is fascinating, with ghosW O W that was good.
The art is fucking gorgeous, with a lot of beautiful detail work on every single page. the fantasy world is fascinating, with ghosts of dead gods and magic all around. and it's fascinating thematically as well, digging at perhaps one of my favorite preoccupations, "what makes a monster?" there's a lot of presented answers.
ALSO just FULL of ladies which is just so nice all the time.
a lot of really excellent lady characters with huge capacities for guts and gore and a big variety of grossness and so worth reading
Merged review:
W O W that was good.
The art is fucking gorgeous, with a lot of beautiful detail work on every single page. the fantasy world is fascinating, with ghosts of dead gods and magic all around. and it's fascinating thematically as well, digging at perhaps one of my favorite preoccupations, "what makes a monster?" there's a lot of presented answers.
ALSO just FULL of ladies which is just so nice all the time.
a lot of really excellent lady characters with huge capacities for guts and gore and a big variety of grossness and so worth reading...more
The art is fucking gorgeous, with a lot of beautiful detail work on every single page. the fantasy world is fascinating, with ghosW O W that was good.
The art is fucking gorgeous, with a lot of beautiful detail work on every single page. the fantasy world is fascinating, with ghosts of dead gods and magic all around. and it's fascinating thematically as well, digging at perhaps one of my favorite preoccupations, "what makes a monster?" there's a lot of presented answers.
ALSO just FULL of ladies which is just so nice all the time.
a lot of really excellent lady characters with huge capacities for guts and gore and a big variety of grossness and so worth reading...more
A YA (maybe MG) story about overcoming grief, in verse. Fairy tales as a focus. A young Black girl fighting her way out of depression (metaphorically)A YA (maybe MG) story about overcoming grief, in verse. Fairy tales as a focus. A young Black girl fighting her way out of depression (metaphorically) in order to rescue her best friend. I thought it was pretty good! Maybe not exactly For Me Right Now but that's unrelated to its overall quality...more
The first Polk I've connected with!! Unsurprising: it's a neo-noir novella with lesbians - one of my favorite genre choices. AND deals with the devil The first Polk I've connected with!! Unsurprising: it's a neo-noir novella with lesbians - one of my favorite genre choices. AND deals with the devil AND private detectives (i guess I already said neo-noir). delightful stuff....more
kickASS. I'm up for anything Liu and Takeda do together, because the story and the visuals are amazing. It's an immigrant kids story; it's a horror stkickASS. I'm up for anything Liu and Takeda do together, because the story and the visuals are amazing. It's an immigrant kids story; it's a horror story....more
When I read that the original concept was that the Alex Stern mysteries be like, 15 books long, i got so deeply depressed that we were only going to dWhen I read that the original concept was that the Alex Stern mysteries be like, 15 books long, i got so deeply depressed that we were only going to do 3. these are fun, dark, pulpy-ish mysteries set at Yale, where magic is real and secret societies are propping up the world order on the guts of underprivileged. I think they're neat!!...more
(view spoiler)[ So, this book is a dark allegory, set in a world where people begin compulsory and then institutionalized cannibalism practices; alhm.
(view spoiler)[ So, this book is a dark allegory, set in a world where people begin compulsory and then institutionalized cannibalism practices; all of the animals of the world have a virus that kills humans (OR DO THEY??? OR IS IT THE GOVERNMENT), and so people kill all the animals and then turn factory farming on themselves.
Like "The Jungle," I think this works as a pretty easy criticism of capitalism (in this case, a little more metaphorical); unlike "The Jungle," it's just horrifying all the way through, but with a sort of detached tone, so that the reader can bear the atrocities enough to get through it, but then the culminating moments of violence hardly land. the whole thing is The Atrocities.
(eg. The Laboratory is a place our initially-sympathetic protagonist Hates the Most, and when we tour all the other meat processing facilities with him, you begin to go, 'well it's gonna be a nazi lab.' when you get to the lab, as one of the penultimate stops on the journey, it is literally so over the top heinous that it is almost a joke. torture porn melodrama. with a brief detour into weaponized feminism talking points by the evil scientist head. this part would work perhaps as a short story but loses so much power for just being a SAW XII horror in a sea of horrors.)
My takeaway was "if I want to read about atrocities I suppose I should just go look in the history section instead" where you can see all of the things in the book play out non-metaphorically. (hide spoiler)]...more
Kingfisher's new horror novel is a retelling/deeper exploration of Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and like most things KingfisheKingfisher's new horror novel is a retelling/deeper exploration of Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and like most things Kingfisher writes, I Wouldn't Be Reading It If I Didn't Trust Her. Deliberate horror sends me off into nightmare land.
Despite spending the majority of my evening yesterday in a fungal-threat induced anxiety (I feel like I should note that I can wig myself out thinking too hard about Paras, the fungal pokemon that took over the body of a perfectly innocent crab), I did, in fact, enjoy this story quite a bit. Kingfisher likes a rather rambling protagonist, and I thought the asides about sheep-to-gloom ratio was well-balanced! I liked all the characters, I liked the star-filled tarn under a shadowed sky, and I liked the way that the creeping dread of being unable to leave was, in fact, a well-answered question. (view spoiler)[IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE INFECTED WITH A WORLD-ENDING PARASITE YOU SHOULDN'T BREAK QUARANTINE YOU KNOW. (hide spoiler)]
Light spoiler about the tone of the ending: (view spoiler)[THANK GOD in this world we eliminated the threat and even the beautiful horse is fine. This allowed me to achieve some sleep. (hide spoiler)]
Anyway lots of fun lots of nightmare fuel, Kingfisher advises in the author's note that you should run off and read "Mexican Gothic" if you haven't yet and you need more mushroom gothics.
Merged review:
Kingfisher's new horror novel is a retelling/deeper exploration of Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," and like most things Kingfisher writes, I Wouldn't Be Reading It If I Didn't Trust Her. Deliberate horror sends me off into nightmare land.
Despite spending the majority of my evening yesterday in a fungal-threat induced anxiety (I feel like I should note that I can wig myself out thinking too hard about Paras, the fungal pokemon that took over the body of a perfectly innocent crab), I did, in fact, enjoy this story quite a bit. Kingfisher likes a rather rambling protagonist, and I thought the asides about sheep-to-gloom ratio was well-balanced! I liked all the characters, I liked the star-filled tarn under a shadowed sky, and I liked the way that the creeping dread of being unable to leave was, in fact, a well-answered question. (view spoiler)[IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE INFECTED WITH A WORLD-ENDING PARASITE YOU SHOULDN'T BREAK QUARANTINE YOU KNOW. (hide spoiler)]
Light spoiler about the tone of the ending: (view spoiler)[THANK GOD in this world we eliminated the threat and even the beautiful horse is fine. This allowed me to achieve some sleep. (hide spoiler)]
Anyway lots of fun lots of nightmare fuel, Kingfisher advises in the author's note that you should run off and read "Mexican Gothic" if you haven't yet and you need more mushroom gothics....more
(making a note to come back and maybe write a better review)
A book that is deeply engaging, difficult to put down, and yet I have no idea how I feel a(making a note to come back and maybe write a better review)
A book that is deeply engaging, difficult to put down, and yet I have no idea how I feel about it.
(view spoiler)[I think my main qualm with the thing just a qualm with the entire premise - that I never fully bought in to Anna's justifications. Which, she also steps up into a role of Villain, and perhaps being fully bought in is not the point...
Anyway I found it interesting and compelling, and then parts of the finale deeply horrific- I don't know, I think I need to gnaw on it a little longer. (hide spoiler)]...more
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