I expected so much more from this novel, given the synopsis. I love a good story about an abandoned amusement park. Sadly, this one just didn’t deliveI expected so much more from this novel, given the synopsis. I love a good story about an abandoned amusement park. Sadly, this one just didn’t deliver on, well, anything. It was one slow slog through a mildly entertaining story to a turn I predicted early on. Sure, there were some twists along the way that kept the story interesting enough that I didn’t DNF it, but that seems like an almost-desperate branch to throw out to a drowning reader who is suffering from dry, unimaginative prose and stilted, unnatural dialogue.
I can’t say I recommend this book. If you’re looking at the cover and reading the synopsis and think it might be a totally awesome, suspense-filled, crazy time, my opinion is that it solidly is not those things.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. As per personal policy, this review will not appear on any bookseller or social media website due to a rating of three stars or lower. Thank you.
File Under: Conspiracy Thriller/Dystopian Fiction/General Fiction/Genre Mashup/Horror/Just Not For Me/Psychological Fiction/Speculative Fiction/Suspense Thriller ...more
Kids, right? You put everything you have into raising them, teaching them, and then they leave the nest and you just can’t predict where they’re goingKids, right? You put everything you have into raising them, teaching them, and then they leave the nest and you just can’t predict where they’re going to go or what they’re going to do. Sure, you have your own hopes and dreams for them, but they have a certain degree of free will because their environments will be changing. In Emergent Properties, this is even true of our protagonist, Scorn, the AI “daughter” of two brilliant scientists who divorced under the most bitter of circumstances and emancipated Scorn at the ripe age of…seven. Scorn is one-of-a-kind for an AI because they’re completely autonomous. In a tumultuous time when the AI and lunar communities are trying to fight for autonomy from the corporations that run Earth, Scorn seems to have put themself in the thick of it by taking the original purpose for which they were developed, data collection, and directing it toward something they find much more enjoyable and fulfilling: investigative journalism. The problem? Well, the last time they were up on the moon, someone or something tried to kill them and that assassination attempt cost them all the research they’d collected on that assignment.
This novella is as much about a child’s fraught relationship with two parents who keep using their kid as a weapon against one another in a never-ending war to one-up the other (yet with much more dire circumstances at work) and that child’s battle to not only try and stay out of the middle of the fight and still try to let their parents know they still care about them and just wants their rights to live their life as they wish respected as it is about independence as a whole and a warning about the future: what will we do once we have humanoid AI that are equipped with emotional programming? Yeah, you might say, “That’s just programming, though”. Keep in mind, our human brains are simply computers programmed with emotions too. We can malfunction. We can short-circuit. How is that much different?
While I’ve read more enjoyable cyber mystery novellas, this was still a great diversion for a Sunday afternoon.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
It’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right intoIt’s there in the title and you should take it as a warning: This book is savage. It’s a painful, visceral, heartbreaking read that reached right into my stomach, womb, heart, and brain with long fingers filled with beautiful words, ugly secrets, horrific scenes, and nauseating characters in a way no book has for a good long time now.
I don’t get book hangovers that often, but I’m telling you that after I closed this book I felt like a deflated balloon, a crushed soda can, or maybe even a flattened cardboard box. I feel drained, dried out, and just worn at the seams.
Tiffany McDaniel has weaved a spell on this book that I don’t think will allow any reader to escape unscathed. You might try your hardest to harden your heart, but I can guarantee that between all the dark, dirty, sad, and desperate things that occur during this book you will definitely find yourself feeling something, and McDaniel’s writing will pierce you deeply.
I found myself thinking of my review for Erin Kate Ryan’s release from last year, Quantum Girl Theory, where I said: “Is every missing girl the same as every other missing girl, or do some missing girls count for more?…When do people just give up on missing girls, and when does a missing girl stop being just a missing girl and becomes more of a distant memory?” This book’s thesis is rightfully on the side of some missing girls counting for more, but the book is also clear in pointing out that no one cares about missing girls much at all, no matter who they are or what they do for a living–not as long as men make all the rules and enforce them. As long as men hold the reins, we will be under their hooves.
McDaniel’s prose is bewitchingly beautiful, even when what’s happening is horrible and depraved. This book has the most melancholy and lovely passages told from the POV of the river, and even as the river describes matters such as the decomposition of the human body, there’s something poetic and naturally calming about these passages, like the river is trying to reassure us readers that she is taking care of the bodies that find their way into her waters, that the breaking down of their physical bodies is something natural and nothing to be afraid of. It was what happened before those bodies entered her currents that’s to be feared. What’s simultaneously gutting and healing are these quasi autopsy reports that crop up periodically throughout the book, which you would have to see for yourself to understand what I’m talking about.
There is not a single character in this book who is even close to whole. They’re all broken into pieces, but how many pieces differ from character to character, and varies depending on where each character is in their life as the book goes on. The way McDaniel writes them, though, you could think that even the most shattered people are the most lovely and the people who seem like they might actually be living a more complete life are carrying the ugliest secrets.
A special toast to McDaniels for the courage she showed not only in writing this book, but in the way she chose to write it. It couldn’t have been easy to make the choices she did, but she made them all the same. Not only was I close to gobsmacked, but I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending.
I was provided with a copy of this book by NetGalley and the author. All views and opinions expressed in this review are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: General Fiction/Literary Fiction/Psychological Fiction/Mystery/Thriller/Suspense/Crime Thriller/Murder Thriller/OwnVoices/5 Star Reads/Crime Thriller/Genre Mashup ...more
This is a book about bondage. Yes, it is somewhat about bondage like the cover shows, but it’s really about all sorts of bondage women could be bound This is a book about bondage. Yes, it is somewhat about bondage like the cover shows, but it’s really about all sorts of bondage women could be bound in the time period this book is set in, especially when that bondage involves the will of men or the power of money.
The cover calls this “a novel of suspense”, but if you’re looking for some high-wire suspense thriller or suspense mystery, you’re looking in the wrong place. This is more of a low thrumming, steadily beating, pastoral sort of suspense novel. The gothic isolation and overall story of trying to undermine and find a way out of an untenable situation with an awful patriarchal overlord is a more quiet and furtive pursuit for a lady’s maid in the 1800s than in most other suspense novels you may read this year. And this is, indeed, a rather quiet book, despite its cover.
I like this book, though, because it’s so unassuming and has no pretenses. It simply is what it is: a historical fiction novel that brings us some suspense, some mystery, some romance, and lovely prose. The narrative isn’t heavy, which can be an issue with some historical novels set in this time period, nor is the dialogue melodramatic, which can also be an issue. The small details a frequent reader of historical fiction would notice have been neatly taken care of, as far as I can tell, which is something I always look at in reading HF. The characters are outstanding, and their moral dilemmas, as written, would be quite consistent with the social mores and conventions of the time. Sure, even the Victorians got a little spicy and liked more than a little slap and tickle, but only the rich and privileged would have had the freedom to express such feelings without consequence (because they would have been the only ones who could pay for loyal silence).
This book does have a non-linear timeline of sorts, too. The book has scenes set in the past, when two of the main characters are young and live in one of London’s workhouses, and then in the present as they work together at Valor Rise. There are also letters from the FMC to an anonymous receiver interspersed throughout the novel. I greatly enjoyed the scenes set at the workhouse, because I believe the past scenes greatly helped to inform the present scenes. In some books I believe a juxtaposed timeline like this is extraneous, but in this book I fully believe it works really well.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable page-turning novel. I greatly enjoyed it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for granting me access to this novel.
I’ve expressed my deep and abiding love for a deftly crafted novella before. I trace this love of short stories and novellas back to a course I took iI’ve expressed my deep and abiding love for a deftly crafted novella before. I trace this love of short stories and novellas back to a course I took in community college, when we would take stories like these apart and analyze them to pieces. (In non-shocking news, that’s also where I got my love of literary analysis as a whole from). There’s just something so spectacular about authors who can master the art of economy of words. Who can tell a whole novel’s worth of story in 200 words or less. To leave you feeling as fulfilled by their story as you would if you had read a much longer one. You may think it’s an easy job, but many authors would be willing to tell you it’s not.
“Even Though I Knew the End” is a beautifully written example of genre mashup literature. By that, I mean that there are so many genres kneaded into this story that the bread of it is an amalgamation of historical fiction/romance/fantasy/mystery, occult fiction, and LGBT+ fiction/romance/fantasy. I tend to love when authors go wild like this, when they let their imaginations run free and their fingers out to play over theirs keyboards, not stopping to think too deeply about things like, “How can I make a sapphic romance in the 1930s if I add in occultism and some really wicked magic?” and just letting the words flow. I’m sure Polk had to reign herself in at some point to wrestle the book into submission and bring method to the madness, but short stories and novellas are a great place to let experimental pieces out to play.
The story itself is mostly a fantasy/occult mystery wound around a powerful private detective/magician (though that’s not the term they use for her in the book) who’s on a very tight schedule and is in a long-term relationship with a woman who she wants to protect at all costs. There’s a big bad in town, and a powerful demon client wants our protagonist to find it so it can be taken out. Problem is, the powers that be in Chicago don’t like our protagonist very much, considering she doesn’t have a soul. I’d tell you more, but there be spoilers, and I don’t deal in those.
The magic system isn’t explained in any real detail, but it’s not something that really could be explained unless you sat down and wrote a manual, because it’s based in things like phases of the moon, numerology, astrology, planetary hours (which is also known as the Chaldean order), sacred geometry, and prayers. It’s more fun just to roll with it, honestly, because why would you want to spend pages with magic system exposition when you could be spending time wrapped in lovely prose, an alternative version of 1930s Chicago, and a beautiful love story between two women who really just want to move to San Francisco someday?
It’s really a fabulous read. Entertaining, compelling, fun, and beautiful. I highly recommend it.
Thanks to NetGalley, MacMillan-Tor/Forge, and Tordotcom for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.
This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. I expected dark satire/horror comedy about wine moms and the … It all started with a she shed.
This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. I expected dark satire/horror comedy about wine moms and the absolute hell it is living in suburbia (AKA, “where dreams go to die”), and this book delivered that with a sly edge of pop culture indulgence and social commentary on how lonely motherhood can be, how much work moms do without any recognition or gratitude from their spouses, and how living in suburbia means you also have a certain outside appearance that must be maintained in both your house (mandated by your HOA) and your neighbors (because lord forbid you not be the only mom on the block not wearing the latest trend in atheleisure).
The book is extremely entertaining and definitely a page turner. Do I feel like it’s a book with wide appeal? No. This book is definitely a niche market book. It’s not going to resonate the same with everyone simply due to the main themes of motherhood and female friendship. But as that one mom that was always the odd one out on every block I’ve lived on because I could care less for what everyone else was wearing or what the latest food trends this book definitely feel into my pop-culture and horror infused soul and mixed with my morbid humor loving heart.
The cons would be that Kilmer does tend to beat some points over the head and some things do feel a bit too on the nose. The book could have also used a bit more tightening up, though it’s not too loose in the pacing. I did have some questions that could qualify as plot holes, but I don’t know if that’s just me being overly analytical or not.
Overall, it’s a fantastically dark and whimsical book that takes the idea of suburban hell and notches it to 11. It’s one hell of a time.
Thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam’s Sons for granting me access to this title. ...more
I love a good time loop novel, but it’s so hard to get them right. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to keep the notes on a novel like this whI love a good time loop novel, but it’s so hard to get them right. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to keep the notes on a novel like this while you’re writing it, always endeavoring to make sure you keep your loop notes in a row like so many duckies. How many revisions must it take? How many times must an author want to pull their hair out because they forgot a tiny detail and now must write a whole section over again? Never mind the editing process! The give and take relationship between editor and writer, the many discussions there must be about what needs to go and what needs to stay and just why they need to go or why they absolutely need to stay.
The cleverness of writing a time novel in reverse is that the author doesn’t have to worry about getting the details of every single day correct every time it loops. Every day is different, because our protagonist is moving backwards in time. She has a mission, and every day she lands in is somehow important to getting to the bottom of stopping her son from committing murder some day in the future. But as we move through the book (and through time) with Jen, we begin to figure out it’s not only the mystery of stopping the murder she needs to solve, but she also needs to figure out what set this whole chain of events in motion in the first place. That’s when the book goes from merely interesting to downright intriguing.
As a mother, I had so many feelings about this book in the first half. I found myself tearing up more than once reading about how Jen struggled with wondering if what happened was all her fault; if somehow she had failed somewhere along the line as a mom and that’s why her son had ended up killing a man. As she moved backward in time and saw her son grow younger, saw all the tiny things she missed or took for granted at the time like we all do, and wondered where all the time had gone and why. Her conviction to keep looking and keep digging is something I sympathized with, because I know if I were in a situation like that I would do everything possible to try and figure out why my kid killed someone so suddenly and without warning.
In the second half of the book, I sympathized with the complex and myriad emotions Jen was feeling while at the same time enjoying the upshift in both pacing and suspense. Jen goes from fumbling and trying her best to piece together this puzzle, and then an important piece clicks into place and it changes the whole game. From there on out it becomes amateur covert ops combined with a mettle only a mom can gather when her child’s life is on the line.
The bottom line is Gillian McAllister somehow manages to weave intense family drama with intriguing suspense thriller without making the book clunky or slow. It’s a wonderful and moving read.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for granting me access to this title....more
When a book claims to remind people of Leigh Bardugo’s “Six of Crows” and/or SJM’s “Throne of Glass”, I hear a kind of claxon go off inside my head. YWhen a book claims to remind people of Leigh Bardugo’s “Six of Crows” and/or SJM’s “Throne of Glass”, I hear a kind of claxon go off inside my head. You know, it kind of sounds like that noise whenever stuff is about to get serious in “Kill Bill”? I’m pretty sure you know that sound. It’s the sound that says to me in Admiral Ackbar’s voice, “It’s a trap!”
There’s only so many times a scifi/fantasy novel can claim they’re like Bardugo or SJM before a reader just starts to become weary and wary of the claim. This is why I have trust issues (this will be my epitaph, I swear).
While nowhere near being like SJM in terms of, well, anything, “Blood Metal Bone” does have a a little bit of a Bardugo vibe. But it’s only a touch. Other than that, it’s its own animal, and I actually think Cummings and Harper 360 should be proud of that fact. About 1/3 SciFi and ⅔ fantasy, it’s the first honest SciFi/Fantasy blend I’ve read in a long time. Usually it’s either/or, but this book is largely a fantasy with a sprinkling of scifi thrown in that’s largely justified by a fascinating technological divide between alien civilizations. This disparatation, along with the usual themes of colonialism and imperialism that come with one alien civilization with more resources believing they are superior to another and therefore have the right to pillage and plunder, make up one portion of the overall story arc. The other portion of the plot of the book is taken up by themes of second chances at life, found family, resurrection, and of saving your planet from being torn apart by those who wish to strip its resources.
While the writing of this book is pretty standard for the genre, it’s the characters and world-building that stand out. The main characters have the vibe of being kind of like a D&D party, but they’re all morally gray. They might save your life, they might steal your knife. Their rough and tumble camaraderie is full of trust issues and strife, but they keep together just the same because all they have is each other. There is no one else like them. They’re outlaws, and they like it that way. They’re full of wounds both internal and external, but their wounds fuel their power. We’re all molded by our experiences, and the extreme trauma these characters went through shaped them into who they have become as well.
I also love that it’s a standalone novel. I still think there should be more of them. I will gladly sit through a more than 500 page standalone novel than read 2 or 3 novels that could’ve been trimmed down and streamlined to craft a much tighter and deft story.
All in all, I recommend it. It’s not knock-your-socks-off fantastic-to-the-max, but it’s a solid hybrid read in the genre.
Thanks to NetGalley, Harper 360, and HQ Young Adult for granting me access to this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
It’s a lot of Jack the Ripper, fantasy-style, with some amateur sleuthing and a rather intriguing moon-based magic system (I’m serious! I’ve read magiIt’s a lot of Jack the Ripper, fantasy-style, with some amateur sleuthing and a rather intriguing moon-based magic system (I’m serious! I’ve read magic systems that are similar based on darkness or shadows, but not on the moon itself unless it involved vampirism or lupine transformation, so I was geeking out a little. If you read this book and can think of another book with a magic system that comes very close to this one, can you reach me directly and let me know? I’d be totes interested!).
Okay, okay, I’m going to admit that I’m totally guilty of “Ooh, shiny cover” syndrome with this one. I saw the cover and was immediately fixated on it. I had to read it. The blurb helped some, but I’ll go ahead and give big props to the cover designer. But the book didn’t disappoint me either. It’s not the best standalone fantasy novel I’ve read this year, but it’s pretty darn good, and that’s better than 80% of the standalone fantasy novels I’ve read this year so far. As a matter of fact, the only true complaint I have with the book is that I think it’s too long. I think the content editing could’ve been tighter and the story could’ve been resolved in under 400 pages if that had happened. But that’s just this reviewer’s opinion. And we all know I think a lot of books are too long and need better content editing.
The world building is above average, but not outstanding. The magic system is fantastic, even though I wish there was more time to explore it. The plot is entirely a Jack the Ripper plot (or it begins as such, before the serial killer changes his aims and goals), but the way it’s handled by Beaty is masterful: She uses the central conflict of having our female protagonist, Cat, try her hardest to help flush out the killer to highlight how young men feel they are entitled to women’s bodies and hearts as payment for all they do for them and how poor behavior on the part of men is dismissed as playful or flirtatious when it more often than not only frightens women and causes them to eventually become accustomed to violence being a sign of love and affection. This is most evident in the character Juliane, who is mentally ill and has not only witnessed and been a victim of violence in her family all her life, but she also suffers from extreme neglect due to her own violent urges she cannot help.
This was a satisfying, fun read I recommend for fans of fantasy novels involving sleuthing, suspense, or crime-solving. Catch a serial killer in a fantasy world.
Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
While not as complex and layered in themes as her recent works like this year’s “Sundial”, Catriona Ward’s “Little Eve” is still an impeccably writtenWhile not as complex and layered in themes as her recent works like this year’s “Sundial”, Catriona Ward’s “Little Eve” is still an impeccably written gothic horror tale set in the early half of the 20th century in Scotland, involving a prophet-like “Uncle” and the cadre of girls, young ladies, and one boy who have somehow come to live with him by one reason or another and are bound by his beliefs and words about how they came from the sea, are for the sea, and that the world will end when a great serpent encircles the earth.
Catriona Ward knows how to cast a spell with her words and sentences: her writing could almost be mistaken for a cantrip with how the time passes so effortlessly as you read her books. Reading Catriona Ward is never a chore, for she knows the economy of words and the magic that comes from imparting just the right amount of information at the right time and leaving some more information for later. You have to leave them always wanting more, and she knows that. Like someone who’s been starved, you can’t just feed them a feast or they will get sick. You give them a little bit of what they need at a time until it’s okay for them to have more. That’s what good horror and good suspense is supposed to be like. That’s what good editing is like. A steady line that never slacks off or sways. You are fed a steady diet of horror, exposition, characterization, imagery, inner thoughts, side characters, and a bite of subplot here and there as you turn page after page after page.
The theme, while relatively simple and classic, is turned sinister and poisonous by its origin: competing for a father figure’s affections. Longing to appease the parental figure in your life and coming to realize that parental figure is human and fallible. While “Sundial” also deals with themes of family, “Little Eve” deals with it in a twisted and stained manner, with the word and notion that these people are “family” banned by their “Uncle” as if he can truly dispel the ties and bonds that come to form between people kept together in seclusion for so long together in an isolated castle by the sea.
The characters are complex, traumatized, and have that inherent vulnerability that emits from those who you know are inevitably damned, whether they live or die at the end. The plot arc is rich and satisfying, even if some of the great turn was easily guessed. Nonetheless, even a Catriona Ward book that loses one star is still well worth reading.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for granting me access to this title.
Talk about hopes dashed and a disappointing read. I don’t think I’ve been so surprised that a book I’ve been looking forward to could fall so far fromTalk about hopes dashed and a disappointing read. I don’t think I’ve been so surprised that a book I’ve been looking forward to could fall so far from even the average mark… ever? Yeah. Possibly ever.
Grant Morrison writes a novel with a drag queen protagonist who takes on a protege and passes on her myriad secrets played against the background of rehearsals for a pantomime in Glasgow (which does have a very large drag scene in real life). Sounds absolutely spectacular, but my issue isn’t the plot: it’s everything else about this book that’s the problem.
As I was reading this book, I got the feeling this book thinks it’s precious. Precocious even. It’s not. Told to the readers like we’re sitting there with her as if friends or confidantes by the protagonist, drag queen Luci LaBang, she is narrator, stand-in impressionist for all other characters, her own judge and jury for all actions taken during the tale she’s weaving for us, and both her own comic relief and foil. As is the tradition of novels told entirely in first person when drugs, alcohol, and crime are involved, she’s terribly narcissistic and undeniably unreliable. Yet Luci expects we will hang on to her every word, every sentence, and every god-awful tangent she runs off on. To be honest? This book is utterly exhausting.
Why explain in one sentence what you could explain in three pages? Why stick to a simple explanation when you could spend a whole chapter in sloppy exposition? And for pete’s sake, do you have to fill every sentence with words that most readers will need to look up in the OED?
This book is vulgar in places (which I loved), but also offensive in the wrong way in other places. I don’t know if that’s just me, being American and fond of binge-watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, but I just didn’t have the time to put up with this book and its supposed meta self-awareness and nihilistic outlook. It gets a no from me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the opportunity to review this title. Owing to the 3 star or lower rating, this review will not appear on any social media or bookseller website. ...more
I gotta be honest with you: I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, and I definitely didn’t expect it to be as freaky as it was. Maybe it’I gotta be honest with you: I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, and I definitely didn’t expect it to be as freaky as it was. Maybe it’s because all the books people swear are scary aren’t scary to me or because I just have a very skewed perspective on the word “scary”, but this book is a trip and a half. It’s poetic, sad, angry, neurotic, tragic, disorienting, darkly romantic, fanciful (but not overly so), and deeply steeped in the darkest of fairy tales and American folklore. I guarantee you’ll spend most of this book wondering what the heck is truly going on, and that feeling only grows as the book goes on. In the end, you have to make a choice as to what you think really happened, and I don’t think there’s a wrong answer.
I’ll be frank with you in that there is a lot of homophobic language and behavior in this book, along with a lot of internalized homophobia. This appears both literally and metaphorically. If this behavior and the language surrounding it is a huge trigger for you, then be very aware that you will come across it multiple times in this book.
I found this book to be charming, in a way. Sounds unusual, I know, for a horror novel to be somewhat charming, but it sometimes was, with its bursts of Great Gatsby-like dialogue, small talk about mythology, ruminations on the original versions of fairy tales versus what Disney made of them, and shudder-inducing mentions of creatures from American folklore and Native American mythology that give even me the heebie-jeebees. It’s the kind of horror mixed with wonder that always makes me smile because it’s simultaneously exciting and terrifying all at once.
I will admit the story arc could be more solid. It’s not quite as well-plotted as it could be, but this isn’t a plot-driven novel. It’s a character-driven novel that could have been better supported with a more stable plot, but it didn’t need it to be a terrific amount of shivery fun. It’s not all fun and games either, let me tell you. There is a great deal of anger, sadness, and tragedy in this book too. And there’s also the eternal question when it comes to a novel like this (where our protagonist can see supernatural/paranormal beings): is it all in his head or not? Maybe it could even be both?
This book is a long, sad, horrible, freakish spiral into madness and desperation propelled by events that occurred before the book began and only perpetuated and/or accelerated by the protagonist’s mind or by events that happen during the book. It’s tragic, but the tragedy is a beautiful and angry mess. Well worth the read.
Thanks to NetGalley and InkShares for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I’ve always had a really good relationship with the older people in my life. When I was a child, I got along better with my grandma and great aunts beI’ve always had a really good relationship with the older people in my life. When I was a child, I got along better with my grandma and great aunts better than I got along with my cousins. I used to go to the local convalescent hospital and visit with elderly patients who had no one to visit them. When I was a teenager I’d rather spend the day with my grandma than my mom, because I was way more like my grandma than I was my mom. So you would think I wouldn’t mind the idea of aging. After all, I’d been around it all my life. You’d be wrong. I don’t fear death one bit. But aging? Aging is something that scares the beejesus out of me. The slow, inexorable loss of everything you were and everything you had until there is nothing left but the days waiting for the end. No thanks. Do not want.
Yet aging isn’t what’s so scary and insidious when it comes to “We Spread”. It’s memory and time; or, rather, the lack of both and the way it can be messed with and we would never know it once our minds start to close certain pathways down in order to conserve power so we can live just that much longer. I may not even be 50 yet, but some of this is deeply familiar to me, since I have a form of epilepsy where I lose chunks of time. At its worst, I lost months at a time. My greatest fear was (and still is) that someone in my life will gaslight me and start telling me I did things and just start telling me, “Oh, you just don’t remember.” Can you imagine? Not having enough control over your memories that someone could tell you something and because of your memory you believe them because you trust them? (Yes, I have major trust issues.)
This book is, in a way, deeply touching in the way it practically begs us to look at the elderly not as a group, but as individual people who still have something to give to the world. Not people who should just be put into a home and forgotten, but people who still have stories to tell, wisdom to spread, beauty to show, affection to give, and memories to share (even when they’re fragmented). The elderly aren’t to be dismissed or underestimated. They are still people with hearts and minds. It’s a lesson most of the western world has forgotten.
The way in which Reid chooses to put a big, red pin on this issue is by setting this book inside a private long-term residence care home, where there are only four elderly residents: two females, two males, and all four have very distinctive areas of specialty. A musician. A mathematician. A linguist. An artist. A holistic education for any young mind. But these minds aren’t young. Their caregiver is obsessed with keeping them productive, making sure they eat, making sure they’re clean, making sure they sleep. Normally, these would all be the hallmarks of the very best kind of caregiver, if it didn’t come with hefty doses of gaslighting (but is it?), undercurrents of malice (or are we imagining it?), casual dismissals of patient concerns, the mistreatment of other patients (or have we just forgotten what happened to them?).
The prose is beautiful even when sad or reflective. It’s downright striking when the scenes are awkward, malevolent, or downright frightening.
What was the most surprising thing about this book for me is how fast it moves. I was reading a 250 page book yesterday and it took me all day. I read this book in less than five hours. That’s how engrossing, compelling, and simply fantastic this book is. It’s absolutely a psychological thriller at its finest.
Thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books, and Scout Press for granting me access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Even the most unassuming of covers can contain a gem of a book. Something I love about fantasy novels is that since the author is building the world, Even the most unassuming of covers can contain a gem of a book. Something I love about fantasy novels is that since the author is building the world, the “world” is essentially their oyster. You can take a little from this time period, some from that folklore, some from that mythology, a smidge from this culture, a splash from that religion… you get my meaning. This is how we build fantasy worlds. All genre authors stand on the shoulders of giants going all the way back to the most epic of stories such as Gilgamesh.
A.G. Slatter is unembarrassed to admit she has plucked from quite a few different plants and bushes to form the bouquet that creates the world “The Path of Thorns” is set in. She took great care in her planning, research, selection, and execution, because the result of this meticulous worldbuilding is indeed a fantastic story mashup that is the love child of two Romantic authors: Charlotte Bronte and Mary Shelley. Indeed, Slatter’s storyline is summed up by the author herself as “Jane Eyre meets Frankenstein”. The result is an absolutely brilliant and engaging storyline of a young cunning woman who impersonates a dead woman in order to infiltrate her mother’s ancestral home as a governess in order to destabilize the power structure and avenge her mother’s death. There’s a lot more to the plot than that, but oh! The spoilers! Knowing less going in is definitely for the best when reading this book. I went in after only reading the blurb and loved that.
My favorite part of the book, aside from the morally gray and chaotic neutral main character who is, in turns, completely in her element one moment and in way over her head the next, are the stories and fairy tales that are told from time to time within the book. They are beautifully written in a unique and dark manner, truer to the form of classic oral tradition tales than the ones that eventually got sanitized and written down. They are cautionary tales, meant to warn people about the dangers of the world and to make themselves more self-aware. Sometimes they run directly into a territory I like to call, “You need to check yourself.”
The cast is colorful, unique, and deeply flawed. Even the children have their flaws, though they are the flaws of children and can be easily forgiven.
It’s truly a diverting and entertaining read. I wished it had gotten darker, but maybe that’s because I always want things to get darker when it comes to magic and gothic fantasies.
Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
First of all, this book is one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. But, this comes with a huge caveat: I don’t know if you can truly understand howFirst of all, this book is one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. But, this comes with a huge caveat: I don’t know if you can truly understand how profoundly creepy this book is unless you have Borderline Personality Disorder (which I do) or if you have a loved one who has Borderline Personality Disorder and you are in their life. Having an intimate connection with the main character of a horror story where their mental illness plays a huge part of the plot except with the symptoms almost turned up to 11 is a huge mind screw, because you know exactly what the character is trying to say. You know what is causing their behavior. You know how they likely turned out the way they did and you know how profoundly toxic it can all be. It’s surreal and more horrifying than just about any other horror novel you could put in front of me.
This book is filled to the brim with morbid humor, which delighted me to no end since morbid humor is practically a love language in my family. It’s also vulgar and gory, filled with vivid imagery that is both hilarious and gross to see in the mind’s eye as you read. It’s also filled with prose that’s purposefully meant to make the reader feel uncomfortable, awkward, squirmy, on the edge of nauseous, and deliberately grossed out. In some of these passages I’m reminded of Chuck Pahalnuik and Zoje Stage and books like “Invisible Monsters” and “Baby Teeth” (yes, I know I have used those examples in my reviews before, but you’ll have to forgive me because they immediately came to mind). The prose surrounding the human body, gore, and viscera also reminded me a bit of this year’s “Manhunt” in style, but since they both came out this year I’m going to chalk it up to common inspiration for the authors of both books.
Inter-generational mental illness is something I have a great interest in, since it runs deep in my family. I seem to have gotten the lion’s share of mental health issues, but every AAB female in my family has some sort of mental health issue, going back at least two generations. My kids (one boy, one gender fluid) both have mental health issues and are neurotypical. Their other parent is neurotypical and has mental health issues in her family. As I was reading “Motherthing” and watched the plot and the characters unravel one chapter at a time, delusion giving way to delusion until desperation was all that was left, I felt more and more terrified about how unaware the main character was about her own mental health issues and more and more horrified about her obsession to protect, save, keep, and love forever and ever.
It seems as though not as many people like this book as much as I did, and that’s okay. I do have to point out that I think it is a little longer than it needs to be, but the space isn’t exactly wasted because the prose is so entertaining. The inner narrative is done in a style of stream of consciousness that is just the right amount of unhinged that I enjoy instead of being so disjointed and without any sense of syntax or grammar that it becomes utter trash.
If you have a strong enough stomach, like your horror with a huge dose of weird, and morbid humor is something you enjoy, I suggest picking this up and giving it a read. It truly is one scary tale.
Thanks to NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday, and Vintage for granting me early access to this title in exchange for fair and honest review....more
“... it’s something I finally learned, though it took me years to figure it out: how a girl should never be the one to blame for the lies of men.”
I’ll“... it’s something I finally learned, though it took me years to figure it out: how a girl should never be the one to blame for the lies of men.”
I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for genre fiction filled with lyrical prose. It’s my sweet spot where books are concerned: the loveliest of writing in a genre package. Don’t get me wrong: I love literary fiction with all its purity, but I’m just a sucker for the beautiful wrapped in the flashy. I fall right into this trap all the time. It certainly helps that the flashy part of this book is sharp, interesting, and absolutely impossible to put down.
While not an absolutely original premise (genre fiction is built on the shoulders of the books that have come before it), I absolutely loved the premise of Lucy and Bertha trying to live out their reluctantly immortals lives in hiding (and in another case, imprisoning and protecting the world from) the two monsters who ruined their entire existences. They aren’t truly happy, but they aren’t exactly miserable either, having found one another decades prior to the book and being one another’s family in every manner but blood. But they are bored, stuck in a loop of doing the same thing day in and day out as they have for years and years. It’s no way to live, but dying a final death isn’t exactly a choice for them. Not with all that’s at stake (pun not intended).
An aspect of this book that took me some time to catch onto (but I was so tickled when I did catch on because it made me swoon in my literature analysis heart) was how so many things that Lucy and Bee come across in this book are dying: the H in the Hollywood sign is wobbling, their house is suffering from decay (as is their car), the drive-in they’ve been going to for years is going to go out of business, the owner of that business is old and close to the end of his life, the gas station they come across on their road trip is old and falling apart, San Francisco may be a new city to them, but hippies are crammed into old houses that are falling apart and they are all falling apart and not living in a state of reality. An amusement park Lucy hides in is falling apart at the seams, more horror than family fun. And innocent girls looking for answers are looking for them in the arms and minds of monstrous men instead of within themselves.
There are scenes and sentences in this book that I read twice or three times simply for the pure beauty of them. It’s times like this that I really hate the stigma against genre literature by the hoity-toity lit snobs in the world. Turning your nose up at books like this doesn’t make you a “better” or “more intelligent” reader, just like it doesn’t make me in any way lesser for having read it and loved it. It’s a beautiful book filled with fabulous sentence structure and a perfectly shaped plot.
Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for granting me access to this book. ...more
I had been highly looking forward to this book, but I found myself disappointed by it.
I believe the issue with my review here is that I don’t necessaI had been highly looking forward to this book, but I found myself disappointed by it.
I believe the issue with my review here is that I don’t necessarily think the book is bad–it just wasn’t for me.
I found the narrative style to be too weak on actual narrative and too strong on descriptions, which is something I dislike in a book because it can easily lean from necessary descriptors into purple prose. The non-linear time frame is something that usually works for me in novels (I greatly enjoy them, actually), but in this novel it grated on my nerves as I felt myself getting bored with the stop-and-go of the book. Every time there was another break in the time frame filled with telling me exposition I sighed heavily and wondered how much longer I had to go in the book. Since this book is less than 200 pages, that isn’t a good thing.
I did, however, greatly enjoy the characters and the overall premise. I just wish it made up for the rest of the book.
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. As per personal policy, since this review is rated 3 stars the review will not be appearing on any bookseller sites or on social media. ...more
Every time I get ready to read a book involving time travel or time heists I send up a few wishful thoughts to the literary muses that it won’t be a tEvery time I get ready to read a book involving time travel or time heists I send up a few wishful thoughts to the literary muses that it won’t be a total disaster. After all, not every time travel novel is written the same or with the same underpinning theories. Some time travel books are meant for the Sagan set and some, like this YA title from author Alyson Noel (forgive the lack of umlaut, please), are meant for those who are more familiar with ideas close to wormholes and how all moments in time coexist alongside one another because time is a construct and doesn’t truly exist. Time is really just distance, and distance can be traveled. In this book, they just use something of a mashup between Doctor Who, Inception, and Avengers: Endgame to do it. That’s really, really oversimplifying it, but without spoiling the crud out of some of the most fun and tricky parts of the book I’m just going to leave it at that.
See, but that’s what landed this book (which just started out as me saying, “Oooooh, pretty shiny cover and time heists! Wanna read it!”) a 5 star rating: this book was some of the most page-turning, charming, interesting, and absolutely fun reading I’ve had in quite some time. In the last month or so I’ve read a lot of heavy material (yeah, I know, more the fool me for preferring horror and thrillers, right?), and this was like taking a large inhale of fresh, fantastical air. In both May and June there hasn’t been a fantasy novel I’ve read that didn’t have some serious social and/or cultural commentary attached to it, but “Stealing Infinity” (even though it does have a measure of self-awareness about the world’s richest people just hoarding wealth and doing nothing with it, which a theme I think we’ll see expanded on in the next installment) decides to just let the fun flag fly, showing us what it’s like to go through the ropes of essentially join a secret society of chrononauts and learn to time travel. There are trials along the way (hey, it’s a hero’s journey, of course there’s going to be trials). There’s romance, there’s tentative friendships, there are betrayals, there’s mystery, and there’s a female protagonist with a mysterious past and a special power not many people know about.
At the time of this review, I really needed this book. This book was like drinking perfectly cool water on a really hot day (well, it’s actually over 101 outside today, so I’m not far off but you know what I mean). It’s like biting into a perfect cookie when you’re craving one. It’s not an original book. It’s not a complicated book. It’s not a perfect book. But I needed it. It dragged me in, it kept me, it swept me along, and I kept turning pages until it ended and I was disappointed there would be no more until Noel completes the sequel. I’ll be there to pick that up!
Thanks to NetGalley, Entangled, and Entangled Teen for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Almost everyone I’ve encountered who’s read this book seems to have loved it, and I think this is a case of what you consideReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
Almost everyone I’ve encountered who’s read this book seems to have loved it, and I think this is a case of what you consider to be a horror novel, how you like your horror novels to move/present themselves, and if you find getting bored while reading a horror novel to be an untenable sin.
Here’s my issue: This book bored me to tears. Was it predictable? Nope. It wasn’t. It was mostly unpredictable, in fact. It was just too bloody long! It was repetitive!
Did I consider it horror? Yes, but the parts most people would consider horror weren’t the most horrific parts to me. There were only a few small and short parts that felt truly terrifying to me, and they were spaced far apart and there weren’t a lot of them. They had nothing to do with Vera (our protagonist’s) father, nor the “artist-in-residence”, or the “haunted house” aspect of the story, either.
The reason this book got rated 3.5 stars was because Gailey does have a truly remarkable talent at crafting truly creepy and evocative scenes that, when taken away from the story as a whole, are truly beautiful to examine under a microscope like a short horror story before set back into the misshapen and uneven whole book.
I hope to see more from Gailey in the future, and that somehow a content editor helps her tighten up her material. It’s a book worth reading just for some of the truly horrific scenes you can find inside, but as a cohesive book it doesn’t stand out.
Lastly, I’d like to give a shout-out to the cover designer, who decided to go with pink for the main color on the cover, but made it the pink of flesh and of pink bismuth. It was a ingenious idea.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for granting me access to read this title in exchange for fair and honest review. ...more
At one point in this book, there is an exchange of dialogue between two characters that I felt was not only central to this novel, but also central toAt one point in this book, there is an exchange of dialogue between two characters that I felt was not only central to this novel, but also central to real life:
“Does anyone have family that grows up functional? At all, anywhere?”
“In books, sometimes. A few rare cases.”
Considering this novel is about a species of monsters who eat books to stay alive, these lines seem rather droll, but at the same time, they are also rather true; there are few rare cases of truly functional families, whether they be real or fictional.
“The Book Eaters” has been one of the books I was looking forward to reading the most this year from the moment I first read the synopsis. I can say with absolute certainty it blew me away. To market this book as merely a mix of horror and fantasy with a LGBTQ female lead is to do this book a severe, if not almost criminal disservice, for this book manages to deftly weave in a wealth of commentary on many cultural, social, educational, gender, and economic issues even as it tells a compelling tale of a mother who will do anything to save her son and escape the cabal-like life she was born and raised in.
I thought this was going to be a long review, because I have so much to say about it, but I find myself at a loss as to how to explain the way this book intertwines the importance of childhood literacy while emphasizing the importance of making sure a child’s literacy is a well-rounded experience and not a cultivated one only filled with princesses or knights and instead filled with a mixture of both. I find it kind of difficult how to explain that the more rural the family, the further away from civilization and modern experiences the family will be and the further away from modern experiences the family and their children will be and therefore will be unfamiliar with how to move within and without the modern world if they suddenly find themselves stuck in it. This book is especially keen on pointing out that women have a particular need to be as well-educated as possible, for this world is dominated by knights and dragons and the patriarchy and they love nothing more than for women to submit to their perceived power.
There is more, so much more, in this moving and stunning book I devoured as much as a Book Eater literally consumes the pages of the OED.
Sunyi Dean, I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but I tip my cap to you, because this book is a masterpiece of genre literature I know will eat away at my brain for who-knows-how-long. And I’m not even sorry about it. The only other three books that have stuck in my head this much this year so far are “Anthem” by Noah Hawley, “Blood Sugar” by Sascha Rothchild, and “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. Sure, there have been other 5 star books, but as far as books that like to peek into my brain and say hello? Yeah, this book is going to be one of those ones.
Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for granting me access to this book. ...more
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