Reviews and Comments

I wonder what the 1990s occultists have to offer

What the doctor ordered

Like the first one this is easy, guilty pleasure sci-fi and frankly just what is needed for me currently!

Let's see if the nerds are right

I don't think I'm going to finish this. I'll try again another time.

Strugatsky time! :D

Well that was very satisfying! I really enjoy the worlds that Miéville conjures, and I've already started making Besźel/Ul Qoma jokes in my everyday. The setting reminded me very much of Disco Elysium. The conspiracy rang true but I didn't guess in advance, which was nice. I can see myself reading this again knowing what I know now!

I think we're at the point where US writers are just having a lacklustre wank and idly fantasising about the end of the world. Leave The World Behind sets itself up for some interpersonal drama mixed with race and class politics but then doesn't do much with it. It's mundane, what appears to be a deliberate choice, and with the barest of efforts concludes that society is a myth and having faith in institutions is naïve. So you better go fend for yourselves, kiddies.

I suppose in this sense this book is very much of its time, at least if you're from the US. So bored with being "the leader of the free world" or whatever nonsense and can't be stuffed trying anymore. May as well participate in (and let's be real, cause) an apocalyptic war?

Time to avoid US authors and eschatological themes for a while I reckon!

It's a fun, slightly trashy vampyre novel set in Mexico. I enjoyed it.

Time for something light-hearted

Paul Tremblay writes emotional horror. Cabin is eschatological, excruciating, terrifying and hard to predict. As usual Tremblay is sincere and fearless in his writing. Violent, upsetting, but ultimately kind of beautiful.

I like Cassandra Khaw. Their other book I read was a little bit fantasy in terms of world-building but this one gives us characters inhabiting the same world we do. It's an intensely visual book, which is often an approach I struggle to connect with, but it this case it really worked for me. The visuals are all about the mansion, its contents and the motifs on its surfaces. The horror is folkloric, the story pretty simple but played out effectively. Khaw writes so well, poetic and deliberate. I'd love to read a full length novel of theirs at some point.

SGJ wrote I Was A Teenage Slasher while he was supposed to be writing a different book. So it has no right to be this good. Like his other books, the characters jump out of the pages. It's a well executed concept, it's funny and it's sad.

I really enjoyed the first half or so for the interesting backdrop of the Cultural Revolution as told by a Chinese author and the lively dialogue and general good humour. Later on, however, so much of it is recounted rather than played out through the characters which was disappointing and felt like lazy storytelling. I wasn't super interested in the long departures into physics, but that's down to taste more than anything. I'd still recommend this, though.

Well that didn't take long