Reviews with content warning for Grief - Everything the Darkness Eats

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

30 reviews

kaiyakaiyo's review

dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Tw// this book contains a pretty detailed rape and hate crime sequence, along with pervasive homophobia. a dash of internalized ableism (?) peruse at your own risk

For the first 170 pages I would have said this book, while very very very much not my cup of tea, was at least written okay. The last 30 or so pages completely wrecked that with the handwaviest retcon ending I think I’ve ever seen. I closed the book and made a sound I can only textually describe as ????????? any amount of mounting unknowable horror became completely absurd and ruined an already pretty wobbly narrative

I disliked reading this book a lot, and the ending was shit, but I can’t say it was bad per se… I just liked absolutely nothing about it personally

the characters feel dropped into their own universe, and they make very little sense in the context of their town or each other. The neighborhood apparently hired homophobic hicks to beat the daylights out of a gay couple that moved in months ago in broad daylight, one of which is a cop, but the extremely flamboyant rich recluse just kites around town in a rolls royce? said gay couple is trying to adopt a child and “blend in” in HateCrime, USA for completely unexplained reasons? ghost … he just felt like an OC someone made and didn’t flesh out on tumblr? the fucking evil ferret thing?? what goes on. Very much short book syndrome, none of the characters or settings feel complete
the “cosmic horror” fell pretty flat for me; there’s only so many times you read about a floating orb before it wears off. its power show at the end was frankly laughable, though i cheered @ the couple making it out alive! nothing about the rituals or kidnappings (weirdly blasé compared to the truly violent bits) spooked me even a little. the only horrifying parts of this book were the violent homophobic home invasion and graphic gang rape and stabbing. those are pretty real life horrors though, so this read didn’t really feel like I was reading a horror book, just a really awful Twitter thread about world events with a weird spiritual ad in the middle. I don’t mean to cheapen the deeply traumatic and trigger events here; they were heartbreaking to read. my point is that these were the only events in the book to evoke any sort of reaction from me, and that reaction was a pretty familiar mix of dread/sadness/nausea that comes with hearing about bad things happen to fellow queer people. not exactly the fun spine-tingler read I was after. I HAVE to start checking storygraph warnings before grabbing books that sound vaguely interesting
the weird aside into the raging homophobic rapist and killer’s child molestation backstory… it added virtually nothing to the book. if we were going to get into “nuance” about why this town is full of vicious bigots, more pages should have been spent actually showing other townspeople. we met like 4. as it stands, it felt very random juxtaposed with the brutal stabbing that followed it. There’s some muddled point about trauma begetting trauma, but we just didn’t spend enough time on the moment for it to evoke any more thought than an SVU episode plot point compared to the other events of the novel. why include it at all ?
the writing style… it moved quickly, that was nice, but frankly each sentence felt like it relished in the violence being conveyed. gross, almost greasy language, too many similes, major overuse of the words “monster” and “guilt”, overall not fun on the eyes to make up for the lackluster content. the pages were also distractingly ugly. why the background. why. is this a 2009 MS word book report?

Not a good read, and I should’ve guessed that by how much time was spent making the book itself pretty. do in fact judge overly stylized books by their cover!

maybe people more wigged by cosmic horror would like this? people who dig social violence horror (is that a thing?) idk. adding this author to my do not read list bc frankly nothing about this made me even slightly curious about other work. chop

Content Warnings

jerusha's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

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annathechaoticreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I am in absolute awe of this book. It has all of the things I love: literary prose, interesting characters, grief-filled religious themes, queerness, and horrifying & grotesque content. It's one of the most poignant horror novels I've read in a very long time and one that I will be thinking about for a long while. It is absolutely brilliant and I'm just so floored by it, absolutely recommend.

"For Ghost, his body was nothing more than a compost heap - a crude patchwork of abused anatomy that even the most impulsive surrealist wouldn't dare commemorate on canvas. Ghost knew well he was a monster, a horrible mutation handmade by grief." page 19

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2busyreading's review

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dark medium-paced

3.5

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deshanejt's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

Eric LaRocca's writing is intense. He's very good!

However, I can't for the life of me figure out the plot, the point, or the message in this story.

What started in the beginning of the book, and what transpired throughout, LOOSELY connected to what happened in the end- IMO.

I understand there's not always justice for victims of SA and hate-crimes, but it would have been nice to understand how being a witness to that brutality tied into the story.

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autumnrevisited's review

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

This is genuinely one of the worst books I have read from an "established," published author. The writing in the book was incredibly clunky with metaphors that not only didn't make sense, but felt like they were written solely for the sake of shock. There were also moments in the book where descriptions and explanations seemed to be entirely missing, with settings and situations coming out of nowhere. The story itself was lackluster, with the secondary main character only contributing the most minor presence in the following "climax." So much of Ghost's character and set up was shallow and unexplained, relying on supernatural nonsense to get the point across.

While I disliked the writing, what bothered me the most about this book was how LaRocca treated their characters. The book claims to be a queer horror novel, but the only part of it that seems genuinely queer is the secondary main character who services only as a conduit for violence. There is not a moment where Malik is happy, only witnessing his husband's hate crime, being kidnapped, sexually and brutally assaulted, and almost murdered. All for being gay. There is no other development to his character other than to have slurs thrown at him and have violence done unto him. Also, the "bad guys" in the story both are also queer or have experienced similar violence. I find it unacceptable and disgusting that LaRocca would take a character that does extreme sexual and physical violence to one of the only POC characters in the book and make their motivation be a past assault from another gay character. Furthermore, giving the main villain AIDS (at least hinting at it) for no reason other than to mention it adds to the image that people with AIDS are violent and dirty.

LaRocca also completely ignores his female characters. They are either stupid, pathetic, or fridged. There is not a moment with a female character where they have any real agency. They are dead to move the male main character's story forward or placed as a helpless damsel in distress in order to be protected.

I purchased and read this book because I heard many good things about LaRocca's other works and the horror they have created. However, after reading this book, I refuse to read anything else LaRocca has written or may write in the future.

Content Warnings