Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller

5 reviews

the_broadway_slasher's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Blade Between is a MASTERPIECE of literature and an instant favorite. Wow, hats off to Sam J. Miller who created a rich and vibrant world of complex characters that all felt relatable at one point or another, despite some of the horrors waiting to be unleashed. I found myself panicking as I felt myself getting to the big finale because I just wanted to live in this version of the Hudson Valley forever.
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saltygizmo99's review against another edition

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dark 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? Yes

0.5

Overall actually not a huge fan of this book at all (obviously) the themes in this book are important but the way they are captured just aren’t it. The characherization is weird and it’s just overall Dosent make any sense.
So many side charachters it’s hard to understand them or remember them and so many charachters none of them are fully fleshed out!
All charachters suck and are bad charachters the ending was the best part maybe because I was finaly releived it was over. Insane book not a fan! Wick best charachter tho he only lasts like four chapters tho
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parasolcrafter's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • 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

pain. pain and agony and suffering
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antimony's review against another edition

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dark mysterious
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

first of all i would like to say. that some of the reviews saying there were too many whales had me anticipating WAY more whales than there were. rather disappointed in the lack of whales, if we're being honest.

i liked sam j miller's writing, and the characters were good as well! the setting was also ...cool is the wrong word, and i don't want to repeat good again, but it was ..maybe strong is the right word? immersive? 
 
the story was sometimes rather confusing — im not really sure what anyone's plan ever was, and im not sure what was ever up with the ghosts either, like how did they work? and for this being in the horror section at the bookstore it was disappointingly not very Horror. i thought. but i enjoyed it enough anyway! i like blackfish city better but this was still good
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flying_monkey's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Hudson is a small town that was once made rich through the whaling industry. Hundreds of magnificent animals ended their long lives here, flensed and gutted, their fat rendered for lamp oil, their bones destined for corsetry and their flesh - well unlike in Japan, Americans didn't even eat it, so it was burried in massive pits all around the town. The end of the whaling industry saw a precipitous decline into poverty and irrelevence until recently, New York City property prices started to drive New Yorkers to Hudson, leading to new investment and highly controversial gentrification. 

This much is fact, however Sam Miller, author of excellent cli-fi / neo-cyberpunk novel, Black Fish City, uses these facts as the basis for a much wilder take on what's really going on in this town. It's a novel in which Hudson is haunted by the spirits of being that may or may not be the long-dead whales, where seawater seems to be seeping into basements and people's lungs, and where the arguments over gentrification get vicious and violent. The novel starts with the return to the town of Ronan Szepessy, a hip gay NYC photographer who fled homophobic Hudson years before, leaving behind his butcher father and the friend he loved in high school. Now he's back and he's not entirely sure why. Maybe it's to see his father, maybe it's to see his old friend Dom and his wife Attalah and disrupt their marriage, maybe it's to hook up with a guy named Katch, although the only problem with that is he seems to be dead. 

Ronan's arrival seems to precipitate something. A simmering anti-gentrification movement, supporting the evicted and the marginal long-term and particularly black residents of  Hudson, suddenly gets jet-fueled, the drugs get better, and fake Grindr and Tindr handles created by Ronan to troll pro-gentrification inhabitants suddenly seem to have lives and appetites and politics of their own. Soon there are gangs of whale-masked vigilantes with harpoons roaming the streets, people are making plans and making bombs, and the (also gay) head honcho of the multi-million dollar arts company, Penelope's Quilt, which no-one quite understands, is framed for a disgusting crime.

Quite a few reviews have praised this work, and its fusion of literary novel with elements of SF and horror, but I found that not only were the politics of the novel unclear and sometimes pretty nasty, even when it comes to queer issues (and I believe Miller is gay himself), but that the novel seemed constantly on the verge of spiraling out of control. There is just too much that Miller tries to cram into the work; it's like the book has ADHD.   
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