Reviews

The Descent of Monsters by Neon Yang

mary_soon_lee's review

4.0

This is the third of Yang's Tensorate novellas, which I would classify as silkpunk science fantasy, if I had to pin a label on them. It's very well written. Yang succeeded fully at making me care about their characters, and this despite the fact that the story is largely conveyed via official reports, interview transcripts, and diary entries.

Spoiler

The voice of the piece is clear and damning, menace building as we gradually learn more and more. It reminded me of the feeling I had as a child when I read "The Hound of the Baskervilles" -- something about the combination of the precise diction with a sense of dread. Although the novella avoids wallowing in the unfolding horror, it is grim. I didn't precisely enjoy it, but

I found it compelling, intelligent, distinctive, and original.

About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).

blindforest's review against another edition

4.5

this one is definitely the best so far, neon yang i beg you for more sanao twin + rider stories they are so dear to me

martha_13's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

bluestjuice's review

4.0

I liked this the best of the Tensorate books so far, probably because I felt that the novella format (and the journal/reports/documents format) really worked best here. With both of the previous books, there was so much story included that the novella format felt too brief, like I was being cheated out of an immersion in the fascinating world and characters that Yang has spun. Here, the focus is an investigation on one particular incident, and the scope of the story is sufficiently limited to really allow the writing to shine. It's clever and creative writing, to be sure - there is an entire report that consists of 75% marked out sections! The primary character is also a new one, which worked as well despite us not having a great deal of time to get to know them very deeply. A work of fiction this short works more like a long short story in many ways than a novel, and I felt that we were able to get sufficient glimpses to keep our interest, while also having small revelations and pleasing moments with longer-established characters from elsewhere in the series. It seems that Yang's purpose in this series is not necessarily to fill out a particular narrative arc - I don't get the sense that there is an enormous metastory that is being rolled out in snippets, episode by episode. Rather, I think their purpose seems to be to explore the world and dynamics that they have written into place, and each book may simply capture a slice of what is happening in the ongoing drama of the Protectorate and the lives of Mokoya and Akeha. That can work for me.

yvkhan's review

3.0

Mid bc idgaf about Rider, the first recollection of Rider’s was dumb, speaker’s death was entirely avoidable, buildup of tension @ caverns was ultimately whelming — in the absence of real monstrous horror, emotional horror is required, and the novella lacked both imo. bc as a fan of the blacked out lines but perhaps not the discovery of the original documents.

connie__'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

ruxandra_grr's review

3.0

Really enjoyed this third entry in the Tensorate series. I liked the piecing-together-from-different-sources style of storytelling and the world continues to be fascinating and rich. But there's a part of me that feels like this isn't necessarily a complete story? I mean it is, for the main character, the rogue hardboiled detective tensor. But it feels more like a set-up for the next part than anything. It was good to be back with Mokoya, Rider, and even Akeha, even if they were more background characters than anything else. But once again, I feel like something was incomplete here and I'm not sure what.

boggremlin's review

4.0

My favorite so far--this series is excellent. I second Psyche's description of this installment as an X-Files episode.

sjov's review against another edition

4.0

“Did those who worked here have more time to evacuate than those who worked on the surface? I wonder what they wrote on these desks. I wonder what they kept on those multitudes of shelves.”

mksultra's review against another edition

4.0

The best in the series so far!! Focused on a shorter time period, and I really cared about the narrator in a way I hadn't before. Rider is cool as always, and Akeha is going by 'they' now! Neato neato, good for them, and a nice callback to the first book where they noted that 'him' didn't quite fit, but fit better than 'she'. Still wish I got more Akeha.