Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Woods All Black

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

24 reviews

rachelgreenreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

I didn’t know I had a southern gothic trans horror romance hole in my heart until this book filled it. I think I could read this book a hundred times and not get sick of it.

The prose was lush and poetic, while still feeling grounded and deeply personal. The social horror was impeccable. Mandelo uses parallel themes of one person poisoning a whole community: the villain believes such of our main character, that his queerness will spread sin and evil through the holler. While in reality and alongside this narrative, the pastor, relatively new to town, has poisoned the community with his hatred and suspicion. A community that was once “a decent place as any for a child to be strange.”

Mandelo also captures the intense and unique way in which queer people find and support each other, and the many small and large resistances we’ve embodied throughout history.

If you support trans rights, and also trans wrongs, I highly recommend this book.

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poisoned_icecream's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is really great. There's queer and trans monster sex and the death of a bigoted piece of shit preacher. :)

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fran's review

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

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naomidanae's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

The writing in this book is immediately engaging. Mandelo knows how to paint a picture. I felt unsettled from the start, too. Spar Creek, as is true of many settings in stories that I love, is a character of its own. The human characters in this story are cast in the strange light of the town itself, and there's a seething queer rage at the heart of this story.

I wasn't expecting sexual explicitness in this novella, and I do think those scenes have a place, but the juxtaposition of that with everything else that happens in the book is a bit off-putting. Being a survivor of sexual assault is not incongruous with still having desire by any means, but these scenes happened so quickly and suddenly that I wondered if they could have been handled a little more carefully or with a bit more nuance instead.

Some quotes:
"The forest whispered around him with a thousand holy mouths. As Woolf had written, Everything, in fact, was something else."
"He'd been a raw-blooded young thing once, and he understood the sweetness—the genuine security—of revenge. He even understood the desire to keep one's hometown, but the thing was, he also understood how dangerous Stevie's path of resistance would be. Sometimes survival meant ripping loose those domestic roots."

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meagan123's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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blacksphinx's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

This is the second time I've read a horror novella from Lee Mandelo that I didn't think qualified as horror. I guess it does because it is a rape-revenge story, but it's mainly a historical queer empowerment novella about monsterfucking. Normally I'd love such a thing but our protagonist is so useless though, and 95% of the story would have shaken out the same way if he wasn't there at all.

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courtneys_shelves's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

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

4.0

NOTE: REVIEW BASED ON AN UNCORRECTED DIGITAL GALLEY

This book is not for everyone. But it is for some very specific people who will cherish it.

The book is graphic, both sexually and with regards to violence. It is a dark, dark novella. It begins slowly, but when it picks up, it REALLY picks up, and I didn’t want to put it down.

Leslie is a trans man serving in the Frontier Nursing Service in rural Appalachia in 1929. When he is assigned a post in a small, religiously zealous town, he struggles not only achieve the medical ends he wants to achieve to help the people of Spar Creek, but also to find ways to help Stevie, a young man with whom Leslie thinks he may have much in common. As trouble between Leslie and the town grows, so does the sense that something supernatural is afoot.

If you you can stomach the intensity, this book has much to say about belonging, revenge, and religious zealotry.

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