Reviews and Comments

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eldang@outside.ofa.dog

Joined 2 years, 4 months ago

Also @eldang@weirder.earth

I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.

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Showa 1926–1939 (2013, Drawn & Quarterly) 4 stars

"First volume of Shigeru Mizuki's meticulously researched historical portrait of twentieth century Japan. This volume …

Taught me a lot, beautifully drawn, at times confusing

4 stars

Well, I was wondering if this would be a quick read because manga or slow because of the heaviness of the material. Quick won out, though it certainly is very heavy material.

It's two stories interwoven: Mizuki's personal memoir (this volume is from early childhood - young adulthood), and the history of Japan. He's a great storyteller, and the art is beautifully done. At times he editorialises explicitly, and at times intentionally lays off passing judgement. In the middle of the book this was confusing, but by the end I felt like I could understand the editorial choices he was making. It comes across as a very compassionate way to tell stories that in the end he is clearly horrified by--both the politics and some of his behaviour as a kid.

The personal memoir + history book work better together than I'd have expected in this volume. My reservations were …

reviewed Countess by Suzan Palumbo

Countess 3 stars

A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which …

I wanted to like this book but it ultimately frustrated

2 stars

The concept is one I really want to like: a twist on the Count of Monte Cristo that recasts it to make racism the motivating factor of all the betrayals, and uses a future setting to make a point about the durability of colonialism. But the pacing is so off that it takes away the impact from most of its own story.

#SFFBookClub

Our Share of Night (2023, Granta Books) 5 stars

Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly

5 stars

Content warning relatively minor setting spoilers

Those Beyond the Wall 5 stars

Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …

Bitter, entirely devoid of subtlety, and very very good

5 stars

This is the rare sequel that I like even better than its predecessor. The action is all in one world this time, and that lets the magical physics element disappear into the background. It also lets Ashtown and Wiley City both feel more developed - they're much more complete places in my mind now. More importantly, this is a much more direct, much more straightforwardly angry book. Johnson clearly wanted to wield a chainsaw, and she's very good at that.

It was not an escapist read in 2025, but the conclusion was very satisfying.

#SFFBookClub

Our Share of Night (2023, Granta Books) 5 stars

I'm actually about 3/4 of the way through this by the time I got around to updating here. It is an incredible book but oh god it needs so many content warnings especially right now.

Obvious general things: gore, violence, intense macabre, supernatural death cult, lots of abuse including sexual, including intra-family, including of children. More specific: a major strand of it is the author wrestling with the trauma of Argentina's era of military dictatorships, and the role of colonialism in them, by way of a supernatural horror story.

One thing it doesn't have, at least so far, is jump scares. The plot unfolds slowly and every new horror revealed is such a clear consequence of or context to what happened before that it's never terribly surprising. Which in itself feels like a stunningly effective allegory for a lot of political horror.

I'm very glad to be reading this, but …

Those Beyond the Wall 5 stars

Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …

Can someone remind me what Mr. Cross's significance in the first book was? #SFFBookClub

[and as an aside: I'm just a few chapters in and it is already very clear that this one should be read second. I think there's juuuuuuuuust enough recapping that it would be intelligible on its own, but there have already been multiple mentions / introductions that have way more impact with the first book for context]

Bones and Runes (2022, Unknown Publisher) 3 stars

This was the #SFFBookClub January selection, and I bounced off it kind of hard. Which is particularly sad considering that I'd added it to the shortlist, after it was cited by an article from which other recommendations have been fun. But this one did not work for me, in ways that actively put me off.

I think I'm probably prejudiced against it by the physical book being so poorly printed that it's more work to read. There are no margins, meaning that starts and ends of lines disappear into the centre fold. And even within that it's aligned so poorly that a number of pages have a last line more than half of which is off the page. These are not the reasons I'm bouncing, but they definitely made me less patient.

What put me off the most is a weird imbalance between the book doing a lot of 'splaining …