I encountered Ryan almost ten years ago, when we were both stumbling around on various writer forums as total newbies. He was kind enough to do a critI encountered Ryan almost ten years ago, when we were both stumbling around on various writer forums as total newbies. He was kind enough to do a critique swap with me in those days, which I appreciated greatly.
The book I read then wasn't the book you're about to read now; he has been through many manuscripts, with much perseverance, to reach this point. Ten years, many books, many hundreds of rejections.
I give this context because I want to convey how much, even then, he had a gift for turning tropes on their head, and possessed a startling tenacity. The grit you see in Paprick comes from its author. The socio-economic issues explored in these pages are a matter of experience (minus the kaiju, of course). The love of food, the sheer ambition of the worldbuilding scope, and delight in detail and maps and kingdoms and magic, are all testament to a dedicated reader who adores this genre, yet also wants to take it in fresh new directions.
If you're on the fence, let me encourage you to read "SEVEN RECIPES" and give it a chance. There is nothing else quite like it to hit shelves this year. It is a truly unique and imaginative work, from a incredibly dedicated and determined author....more
I did not know much about this book before starting it, except that several people I trust had really enjoyed it.
I'm a crime fiction fan (my secondarI did not know much about this book before starting it, except that several people I trust had really enjoyed it.
I'm a crime fiction fan (my secondary love, after SFF) and this is infact a crime fantasy novel. A crime EPIC fantasy, actually, which is genuinely quite rare. Crime and fantasy usually has a humorous edge, which is completely fine and enjoyable, but epic fantasy and crime is hard to find. This is because epic level worldbuilding adds a high degree of complexity to the book, and so does a crime structure. Combining both means you have a book with often unwieldy levels of complications to navigate. Not only is there is a puzzle to unspool for the reader, but there is a world to weave around them.
Bennett is no novice, though, and has a good many books under his belt. Perhaps it is no surprise that he turns his hand to such a challenging book. There is a LOT going on in Tainted Cup, from Sanderson-levels of worldbuilding (big leviathans! yearly attacks! complex political and magic systems! Wonderful stuff) to the tricksy nature of the plot itself, which is couched in layer upon layer of intrigue.
The characters of course are fantastic. We have the Holmes-style (quirky, intelligent, uniquely disabled) detective, and her first-person watson-style sidekick with his own secrets and issues. They work brilliantly together, as one can hope for and expect in the best of crime fiction.
As a crime nerd there were some structural things I found interesting. For example, the timing of the bodies. The reveal of second and third bodies is a Thing in crime, and I found it fascinating that SPOILER all the bodies died at the same time in this story, yet were only discovered at different times. That had knock on effects for how the information was dug up and how the characters reacted. But this is me being a huge structure nerd and probably not an interesting fact for most readers.
The book has its flaws, as all books do. Nonetheless I unreservedly give it five stars (see breakdown below.)
Well-written and not problematic > three stars. I enjoyed it and had a good experience reading it, fourth star. The novel achieved what it set out to do > fifth star.
(Yes, I'm kinder about reviews now that I write. that's normal. I have a more rounded appreciation for weighign books against what they wish to achieve, and more sympathy for the publishing process in general.)
If you're interested in the flaws that caught my attention, but did not lower the star rating for me, they are as follows;
-- the m/m romance felt like it was written by someone who had once glimpsed a gay person at a great distance through a telescope. It was pretty flat. Since I don't give a flying rat's arse about romance in books, though, this didn't bother me at all. Romance is neither here nor there and I don't really care if it features in a story. This probably shows in my own weak attempts to write romance, so I can sympathise with authors who also dont nail it.
-- the amount of GRINNING that Ana does was driving me up the wall. She must grin about 5 times a page in every scene she's in. I'm hyper sensitive to dialogue tics like that, though, so this won't bother most.
-- the title is Not Good. It just doesn't do the book justice. There's SO MUCH this novel has to offer and none of it is conveyed through the title--not the scope of its complexity, the blending of its genres, nor its tone.
Pros - GREAT story, great world, fun characters, truly unique in lots of ways. Impressive structural craft on display and just generally, a lot of fun. I did not drag ass reading this book and was keen to return to it, reading big swathes in one sitting despite its length. Autistic detective and dyslexic sidekick too, and M/M rep even if anemically done.
Bought and read on the recommendation of a friend.
Eerie, desolate, thoughtful, and hopeless. I have described it to a few folks as feeling like the cBought and read on the recommendation of a friend.
Eerie, desolate, thoughtful, and hopeless. I have described it to a few folks as feeling like the cross between a feminist answer to Albert Camus' L'ETRANGER, and Plato's parable of the prisoner. It is pure introspection, a story of insignificant yet deeply human experiences living out lives with no answers. You want so much for the answers to make sense, for rescue to arrive, for hope and purpose to match the spirit and passion of the main character, and they don't.
But isn't that life? We believe ourselves to be heroes of our own private stories, when really most of us are forgettable bit parts in a wider epic tale--one that, vast though it is in comparison to our own experiences, will still never amount to much.
Human life will eventually expire in all forms and ways, and the chances of our race being here in a few hundred thousand years is slim. I'm digressing now, but you can see the sort of mood that this story might put you into. ...more
A great book that really surprised me in lots of different ways. I was sent this as a blurb request originally, though due to various circumstances atA great book that really surprised me in lots of different ways. I was sent this as a blurb request originally, though due to various circumstances at both ends, by the time it arrived I was likely to late to blurb it (the book is out now, in trade paperback.)
Dark Academia isn't usually my cup of tea, I'll be honest about that. However the description sounded intriguing so I thought I'd give it a try, and I'm glad I did! The writing style drew me in straight away.
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Drayton College, the academy for which the book is named is almost certainly in conversation with our cultural obsession, Harry Potter (I'm not at all potterhead, but there were what looked like cynical, wry references here and there, plus those sodding books cast a LONG shadow.) It is much darker, though. The "persuasion" magic that the students learn at Dratyon is tied up with ethical issues of consent, and where the HP world distances itself from human society as much as possible, Drayton chooses to interfere wherever possible. It aligns itself with politics, with powerful people, with money and greed and corruption, using the magical talent of its students and staff as leverage.
Drayton does all this because it requires money to function, and to train its new students. The obvious ethical quandaries abound, of course--such as the knock-on impact of whatever wars and policies Drayton inadvertently or advertently fuels in the pursuit of financial security for its institution.
The other cost of Drayton is the toll it takes on those labouring to keep its metaphysical existence stable. Like HP, Drayton exists in its own dimension, sort of (it's complicated, and I won't attempt to sum up in a sentence what the book needs whole chapters to explain). Unlike Drayton, maintaining this state has a terrible human cost (more than that would be significant spoilers).
In all of these situations, Drayton justifies both its dubious social entanglements and ongoing psychological torture of staff/students by claiming that the magic it studies is not only greatly beneficial to humanity and therefore must continue, but also highly dangerous and only suitable for a select few. There are allegories and allusions to be drawn here between this philosophy and the elitism baked into real-life academia: knowledge is valuable, so the lower classes shouldn't have it, but we do expect their taxes to keep funding it.
FOr me, the central question surrounding Drayton was therefore this: at what point does the cost of maintaining something valuable, become too high to pay? For the staff who run Drayton, there is no limit.
But intriguing as Drayton is, what really sets this novel apart is the characters.
Enter Lennon Carter, the MC. Lennon is a deeply compelling person - flawed, complex, intelligent; she can be reckless and violent, manipulative and cruel, fickle and morally ambiguous. Yet she is also self-reflective and self-critical, forever analysing and examining herself with a detached gaze that spares none of her own feelings; this stops her being irritating or unlikeable, because she owns her mistakes and considers them at length. She is also loyal, and curiously naive at times--her instinct is to like the people she meets, and to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Like the other characters at Drayton, Lennon is glad to be at college. In Drayton, she can be someone special, instead of a depressed failure (how she views herself). Already damaged, she enters Drayton's distorting and morally ambiguous sphere and becomes equally distorted and confused as the story progresses; the challenges she faces demand that she constantly examine her own beliefs and positions, even as the situation and relationships she's in spiral into further complexity.
I give Lennon a lot of time here because I think she will make or break this novel for a lot of readers. She is NOT a cheerful good little Mary Sue; she's a brat, albeit a smart one. I love how complicated and slightly wicked she can be, but I don't need (or want) my MCs to be nice people.
There is nothing wrong with reading a story where the MC is nice, to be absolutely clear! But if that requirement is a crucial part of enjoying stories for you, then Lennon is likely going to be a source of frustration and shock. She's extremely messy, and not in the way folks mean on Book Twitter when they talk about mess; Lennon is VERY messy, as in "you soon understand why she's spent considerable time in psych wards" sort of messy.
Tldr; READ THIS FOR: complex, morally grey characters who make bad, violent decisions with good intentions, and whose twisted friendships redeem each other despite all the drama along the way. Plus a great atmosphere and interesting magic system that merges psychology with metaphysics. ...more
After much fcking around and struggling over the past few years, including a lengthy process that involved redrafting many times from scratch, I've soAfter much fcking around and struggling over the past few years, including a lengthy process that involved redrafting many times from scratch, I've somehow ended up in a position where I've finished two manuscripts in the autumn of 2024. It's been 3 years since I've "handed in" a novel, good lord.
at the time of writing I'm not sure which one my publishers will choose to put out first - that will be a calculation based on which book they feel is closer to being in a "polished" state, I suspect, plus an assessment of market, trends, timing, and so on. It could go either way, and both books have been through a staggering amount of work and edits already.
Stay tuned for updates! I certainly will be :P
Edit: It's looking like The Girl With A Thousand Faces is almost certainly the next book. I'm genuinely so excited for this one.
For the kind folks who are asking, I can't yet give a sequel to Book Eaters, sorry! I know what that book would be and have an outline written down somewhere, but I need to finish my current contract first :) the good news is that the two books I've written should clear out that contract!...more
WKHC joins the ranks of a handful of books I read this year, which were *not* blurb requests or market research reading. To clarify, I only read booksWKHC joins the ranks of a handful of books I read this year, which were *not* blurb requests or market research reading. To clarify, I only read books I enjoy, and that includes books which make the blurb list, but it is nonetheless a different experience when you are reading with an eye for endorsement. It becomes impossibly to not scan the text with a view to weighing up its potential readership and the kind of blurb you can give which will most help the book, if you enjoy it.
All that to say, I found WKHC at random, through a goodreads recommendation. The title and cover immediately intrigued me, and I was pleased to be given an advance copy from Netgalley when I requested it. (And this is why I keep my netgalley accounts open after all this time!)
WKHC is a Cinderella retelling, but it is not a retelling where the romance has been shuffled around, or the culture refitted from Western medieval to non-western. There is nothing wrong with those retellings (saying that for clarity!) but I must admit that my preference for fairytale-adjacent stories is one in which the roles of hero and villain are transposed, and in which questions are asked about *why* a story exists in the form that it does. To that end, WKHC was good bait for me. It is a 2024 debut, put out by a smallish indie press, and the story itself is a Cinderella retelling told from the POV of the "ugly stepsister".
In this version of the story, Cinderella is an eldritch monster of Lovecraftian bent, only barely concealing her form in human skin to appear like a beautiful young lady. For obvious reasons, Cinderella lives in the cellar where she cannot eat, harm, kill, or otherwise torment normal humans. Many references to the original tales/versions are included, with dark twists on the originals (eg Cinderella's influence over mice and rats, the magic of the pumpkin carriage, the glass slippers, and so on.) All of this is great fun, and interesting to see from the horror angle.
The main conceit of the story is that Cinderella is insanely powerful, but for reasons never fully unearthed, she will accept commands from people who she recognises as family. The MC, Eunice, becomes Cinderella's step-sister through the marriage of their parents, and as a result is required to carry the increasingly heavy burden of "caring" for Cinderella, along with her mother and step-father. She does this from the age of 11 onwards, with no rest or respite or thanks, suffering a terrible psychological and physical toll. The amount of trauma Eunice endures across the span of the book is quite staggering.
This theme is where I think the novel really shines. Because while you could nitpick the origins of Cinderella's nature or the rules surrounding her powers and interactions, they're almost not really the point. The real story, the true horror, is the experience of a child who is asked to grow up far faster than they should, to take on responsibilities that selfish adults have burdened her with, and to manage (effectively) the emotions and whims of a deeply abusive family member, mostly solo.
Read in that context, the novel has a lot to say about the complex ways in which we define family, and what those boundaries and bonds mean to us--both in the power they exert on our lives, and the prisons they become for people--like eunice--whose good natures are taken advantage of by others.
I thought this was a great little gem of a book, full of horror and gore and trauma and a fantastic portrayal of what it's like to grow up bearing the weight of abusive family (including family who are enablers of that abuse, as well as the perpetrator themselves.) It does, imo, exactly what you want from a fairytale exploration: engages with the original narrative to ask why the story was the way it was, and to wonder whether it could be seen in another light.
I also appreciated how the romance arc was handled at the end (not what you expect, especially in the current playing field of retelling novels).
If you're in the market for this kind of novel and have the time, do check it out!...more
I really enjoyed this murder-mystery-on-an-expedition story. I think fans of Frances White's "voyage of the damned" will find a lot to enjoy. It's notI really enjoyed this murder-mystery-on-an-expedition story. I think fans of Frances White's "voyage of the damned" will find a lot to enjoy. It's not super funny/light hearted like VOTD but it has a lively and magical world, and a very well developed rivals to lovers arc. The world is layered and the relationships fraught. It is quite dark with a slightly gothicky vibe throughout.
Where ADDT really shines, though, is its exploration of privilege, class, and antiSemitism. The issues are nuanced and compassionately presented, while still hard-hitting, and Saft goes to some lengths to examine how trauma and a lifetime of bigotry have shaped Lorelei into a hard, damaged person, and what she does to not only heal from that damage, but build into someone happier and stronger.
It is a tragedy that this book has flown completely under most people’s radar, perhaps in large part because its publisher seemed unsure how to marke It is a tragedy that this book has flown completely under most people’s radar, perhaps in large part because its publisher seemed unsure how to market it. (When books fly under the radar, this is often one of the root causes, if not the main culprit).
Ladies and gentlemen, we have for your reading pleasure a grimdark, no magic, thriller-paced western fantasy, filled with outrageous dark humor and razor-sharp prose, with a middle aged woman as the main character. It is just so much fun, in an era where fantasy often lacks any humor or levity. i think fans of Christopher Buelhman's BLACK TONGUE THIEF will find much to love with Javani and Ree and rest of this crew....more
Bought it for the trope I like (disillusioned priests in SFF settings) and read it very swiftly. I've since read The Sparrow, a novel with almost the Bought it for the trope I like (disillusioned priests in SFF settings) and read it very swiftly. I've since read The Sparrow, a novel with almost the exact same premise as this one, which nonetheless feels totally different.
Content warning for animal torture and gruesome pet death.
Both BOSNT (which does my head in because I keep wanting to write BOTNS, book of the new sun) and Sparrow feature religious men who go on a mission to spread faith to alien forms on a new planet. I will talk about Sparrow in my review of it, but suffice to say they handle their executions quite differently, and I believe a different vein is running through the heart of each story.
BOSNT is arguably the weirder story. So many aspects about it are surreal, from the company funding the mission, to the people who participate in it, to the alien planet and aliens themselves, which have all the complexity (as a setting) of a Hollywood cardboard set. It reminded me, rather oddly, of Severance (where totally absurd things are presented as normal, suggesting dark undertones beneath). But it is not really anything like Severance, of course, aside from a vaguely similar tone.
The main weird thing is that the aliens are absolutely ravenous for Christianity. They can't get enough of it. The missionary has a grand time on "planet god" (as his wife, who he left behidn on collapsing Earth, later writes in one of her missives). The experience of being on Oasis, a word given to this planet that the locals cannot pronounce, is very hermit-finding-enlightenment in the desert.
In all aspects it looks like the wet dream of any scifi-reading Christian.
This perhaps all sounds very negative. It isn't, at least not for me. I found the story oddly riveting, despite so few "plot elements" happening; it's a novel told almost entirely in microtension and negative spaces. What isn't said matters more than what is. The narrative that the MC constructs for himself is less interesting than the shadow his actions and words are casting.
But above all, it works for me as a novel because it increasingly begins to feel, as you read through it, like a metaphor for the escapism religion offers. Earth is falling into ruin, Peter's wife is struggling in their marriage as she struggles to cope with pregnancy alone in a post apocalyptic world, terrible corporate exploitation is happening all around, and yet Peter retreats. He runs from the harsh realities of a world he cannot face and escapes to Planet God where the aliens learn to sing Amazing Grace and uncritically accept everything he tells them as literal truth.
There's something here about how religion has always offered that element of escapism. In original Judaism, there was no afterlife as Christians now believe in it; folks believed that God rewarded good people with good fortune and happy lives. (this is the importance of Job, the story; it was a sort of legendary metaphor for explaining why good people might sometimes inexplicably lose everything.) Heaven was where god lived, not where mortals retired to (similar to Greek and Chinese myths.)
When genocide and other terrible misfortunes tested those beliefs to the limit, the religious leaders (in the book of Maccabees, which is only in the catholic version of the bible and not the protestant one) began to stress the idea of an otherworld existence, where God's reward came not in this life, but in the next, in a fantastical sky paradise.
Modern Christianity is all about the promise of a fantastical sky paradise. Time on earth is temporary and fragmentary. Think of heaven. You're only passing through. Earth is a tourist stop. God is home. Heaven is the destination. Death is something we can run towards with open arms.
In BOSNT, Peter makes a literal trip to Sky Paradise on Planet God. He is in a place that paints a literal picture of the kind of escapism religion offers, and he loves it. For me, the book is therefore about PEter working through this, remembering his connection to Earth, and realising that what is here and now and present matters more to him than he realised.
What other readers will make of this book, I can't say. ...more
Simply loved it. Profound, intricate, perfectly crafted.
Like so many cross genre books that I love, LEECH has (to my eye) a somewhat disappointing reSimply loved it. Profound, intricate, perfectly crafted.
Like so many cross genre books that I love, LEECH has (to my eye) a somewhat disappointing response from readers. Not because the book is disappointing--it isn't--but because it demonstrates to me yet again that cross genre is always going to be a struggle. Moreso with fantasy readers than with mainstream readers, who oddly read rather more broadly than those in our home genre.
One of the main complaints levelled against LEECH is that the worldbuilding isn't laid out in exacting measures, or spoonfed carefully to the reader. A decade-plus long trend of gamified worldbuilding from the bigger epic fantasies is perhaps partly to blame for this mentality; we have been trained to expect every rule neatly laid out, like an RPG splat book.
For those old and decrepit enough to remember previous Weird and then New Weird fiction waves, though, we're treading on familiar ground. The world of LEECH is almost Wolfean in its complexity, and furthermore it is post-post-apocalyptic: a planet so far future that humanity has survived its own end and rebuilt, somewhat, into a society drastically changed and only thinly recognisable. I think this might be why readers who were skimming have assumed the book is a secondary world fantasy.
Fundamentally, though, you don't need to know the detailed ins and outs of worldbuilding in this case. The plot doesn't hinge on it. The main things that matter are how the institute works, what the mc is, and history of the individual characters.
At heart, LEECH isn't a novel about the world, fun though the world is. The focal character is ultimately someone other than the mc, someone who is barely on scene at the start. It is really a novel about systemic abuse, consent, ethical dilemmas both personal and medical, and the long term impact of trauma on individuals, as well as a very literal story about regaining bodily autonomy and voice. (Hurrah for a nonspeaking support character, too.)
The soul of the story is not the apocalypse that happened in the distant past, but the very real and personal apocalypse that is happening in the lives of a handful of its characters, and that's very much why I loved it. The worldbuilding is just a safe (albeit weird) space to explore that.
One of the things I found most deeply profound is that in the context of the story, the characters genuinely do not grasp, at first, the scale of what's been done to them, and I think that's incredibly relevant and realistic to all discussions around ptsd, abuse, and trauma. First you have to undergo the journey of realising the harm before you can even process it, let alone deal with it.
And finally, the fact that you don't even realise who the focal character is at the start, is kind of the point in a way.
Because it means that you, as the reader, are complicit in being blind to abuse. Just like everyone around them. YOU ignored them, like everyone else did, even though all the clues were there. YOU didn't seem them. Like the MC, your attention was focused on what appeared to be a greater problem, but was fundamentally the root cause of everything that was going wrong.
Pain happens under our noses every day and we don't see it.
I thought hiron did an amazing job of point this out.
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Final notes:
LEECH cannot be accused of failing to live up to fantasy genre expectations, because it isn't aiming for them. This is the thing I find so frustrating about the reception to weird fiction, again and again: firstly, the complete lack of recognition from wide swathes of readers that a book might be trying to do something different from what they first assumed; and secondly, the collective reader blindness when it comes to discussing issues like genre.
Hoards of folks will claim that genre doesn't matter and that they'll read anything as long as it's good, but in fact this is generally untrue. Not only to readers tend to expect books that hit the rights beats of their favourite subgenres, they also have a tendency to punish books which move outside that.
I would advise authors to never fall for the trap of believing the lie that everyone is looking for highly original fiction, when all evidence points to the contrary. Most readers what precisely what they're used to, especially in a structural sense, but with only a few deviations from the expected to feel fresh. Definitely write the strange edge of bizzarity if it calls to you, but be prepared for a few reviewer tables to get flipped as a result....more
I finished this book a few weeks ago (managed to find a signed copy! In the UK! at my local indie! wow haha) and thought it was genuinely a brilliant I finished this book a few weeks ago (managed to find a signed copy! In the UK! at my local indie! wow haha) and thought it was genuinely a brilliant little gem, one that took me by surprise.
I don't quite know what I was expecting with a 'serious' Chuck Tingle novel, which admittedly was half the fun in picking it up. (If you don't know who Chuck Tingle is, I suggest quickly googling him, and the Sad Puppies; it's an education!)
My thoughts are all over the place but here in brief are the two things that really made this novel stand out for me. the first was the protagonist's autistic perspective, which was so incredibly spot on and made my heart squeeze in a good way. That methodical assessment she makes in every conversation where she weighs up what people are literally saying, what they actually mean, what her instinctive response is, and then sifting all that to work out what they precisely what to hear, which is so often illogical and disconnected. He captures so perfectly the towering mountain of work that every social interaction can be for young autistic folk (and even some older ones.)
The other side of it is the portrait of evangelical thinking. How your whole psyche is steeped in that particular way of thinking, how it brackets every encounter or conversation. The way you see people and judge them, the way you watch shows and think "ugh, it's secular". The mindset that grips you as a young evangelical. Far be it from me to presume an author's background, but I feel that Tingle has either had deeply personal encounters with evangelical upbringing, or else done a ton of solid research. Both are great by me.
There's a really interesting intersection between autistic teens and religion. Religion imo has a strong draw for autistics; it has clear rules, a neat kind of logic, and all sorts of systems which are initially appealing. But the culture surrounding religion is often anathema to us (the resistance to questions or debate, among other things) and often backfires long term. That exact scenario plays out here, in Tingle's book, and is fascinating to read. It brought back a lot of memories, shall we say.
I also really appreciated the character who still kept their religion despite the things happening in the book, because I think that's realistic too (not everyone reacts the same way to these kinds of experiences).
So. Who is this book for? Queer exvangelicals who like horror, will probably eat this up. It has broader horror appeal to other horror folks, but I think that is the crowd--like me--who will truly enjoy this book for all its facets and strengths. (But if you're hoping for some quirky Tingle sex scenes, there aren't any in this one.)...more
PHENOMENAL nonfiction read! I got this as an audio and was totally entranced. My partner listened to some of it while we drove down to fantasycon and PHENOMENAL nonfiction read! I got this as an audio and was totally entranced. My partner listened to some of it while we drove down to fantasycon and also found it fascinating. Incredible story of medicine we discovered against the odds, and then nearly lost for a century....more
I read this book while travelling to Belize, and for a short period of time it utterly consumed me.
At a basic level, MITS is about a human scientist I read this book while travelling to Belize, and for a short period of time it utterly consumed me.
At a basic level, MITS is about a human scientist working with the world's only android assistant on a protected island, both of them attempting to study and understand a new species of octopus. As introduced to us, the scientist is a recluse, the android is socio-political exile, and the octopuses are a local myth.
In broad terms, the story depicts humanity grappling with two, brand-new types of intelligence: technological intelligence, built by humans (a true AI in the form of the android), and evolved intelligence, in the form of the octopuses who, due to the destruction of their habitat and other stressors, have begun to form complex societies.
That alone makes it a fascinating premise and an unexpected comparison. The android has perfect recall, unlike humans, meaning intelligence and memory are intersecting for them in ways which quickly deviate from standard human norms. The octopuses, meanwhile, have intelligence which is totally reframed by their different biology, origins, needs, and perceptions.
But what could be more illusory than the world we see? After all, in the darkness inside our skulls, nothing reaches us. There is no light, no sound—nothing. The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus.
—Dr. Arnkatla MÃnervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds
At its heart, though, MITS is a book about communication and loneliness, and this is the emotional soul of the novel that draws me in. Every single character is deeply, resonantly lonely. For the whole of her life, Ha (the scientist in question) is both driven to try and connect with other people, even as she finds repeated psychological barriers.
As a girl, she is heartbroken when the boy she is obsessed with does not even really register her existence, has no concept that she is her own person with thoughts and feelings; a classic case of cognitive empathy failure on his part, though a common enough experience:
“It was the indifference of the world—the indifference of the boy I loved to me, the indifference of the guards to the suffering of the people in the cages, the indifference of all of it, that made me crazy. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t stand to be a part of it. I felt cut off from people. How could they just ignore what was going on around them? The suffering of others? The striving of others? Their feelings? It was like they were clad in armor, and I didn’t have that armor."
Throughout the story, we are shown snippets of a controversial nonfiction book which Ha, the MC, was infamous for writing. Her thoughts support and surround the rest of the story, anchoring its dramatic elements in its philosophic themes.
One such quote which stayed with me a long time:
I want to help my readers imagine how we might speak across an almost unbridgeable gap of differences, and end forever the loneliness of our species—and our own loneliness.
How starkly the author speaks to us, through a mirror darkly - fictional words attributed to a fictional character, folded inside a fictional story. If I could sum up THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA in a single quote, it would be that one.
I was so excited to see this added to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ so that I can finally rate it!
Get your hands on this wonderful, bittersweet, lonely, maddening, horriI was so excited to see this added to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ so that I can finally rate it!
Get your hands on this wonderful, bittersweet, lonely, maddening, horrifying little novella as soon as you can.
There are a lot of things going on in The Night Guest, the main one being the premise: a woman who suffers from seemingly chronic exhaustion buys a fitness watch (as part of her plan to cope with the health problems) and discovers she is walking 40,000 steps in her sleep. Yikes. Nighttimes soon become a source of terror as the MC gradually works out what exactly she has been getting up to in the night.
But at its heart, this is a novella about the horror of not being believed: by your boss, your friends, your family, your lovers. About being ignored when you have concerns over health, when your safety is compromised, when you're slipping away and society doesn't seem to notice. ...more
Great little novella with bonus stories at the end. Fascinating, introspective, sad, thoughtful, melancholy. Not everyone's cup of tea but it suited mGreat little novella with bonus stories at the end. Fascinating, introspective, sad, thoughtful, melancholy. Not everyone's cup of tea but it suited me....more
A masterclass in action, set against a complex science fantasy world.
I picked combat codes up shortly after starting to train Jujitsu, at the ripe olA masterclass in action, set against a complex science fantasy world.
I picked combat codes up shortly after starting to train Jujitsu, at the ripe old age of 35. I finished it the week before testing for my first belt. Oddly surreal experience! The story captured that unique bond between student and teacher, in this case between Murray and Cego, and the sense of ethics that underlies any martial arts learning, and I had huge appreciation for how every right scene was handled. I don't write fight scenes well myself. So I learnt a lot :)
If you don't know much about JJ there's still plenty of story to keep you engaged, and the science fantasy setting allows for some very dramatic plot twists throughout. If you are a martial arts fan, though, you'll get a whole extra layer out of it for sure. ...more
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