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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
hopeful
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
The best book I’ve read this year, if not in a few years. Strong character voice, and very real characters. It felt like everyone was doing their own thing before but fate/the dark gods convened to pull them together for some other purpose. Did a lot of stuff I really love like merging biblical imagery with cosmic horror. Fleshy and intimate just the way I like.
Fascinating - a book so bad that I retroactively added a star to my last one-star rating because, as much as I did not enjoy that book, I know now how much worse it could have been! If anyone has their home page set to display all activity, not just reviews, I am so sorry for the update spam. I spent half of this book violently unimpressed and the other half laughing hysterically, and I had no other outlet for my vacillating emotions.
Anyway, I am not a big horror reader. I'm sensitive to animal cruelty, and horror is not a kind genre to people with that kind of trigger. But I do like reading horror whenever I can manage it. And I love reading body horror, the grosser the better. SMM is, technically, pretty gross. I mean, there's a lot of blood and innards and brain-eating. But none of it is written in a way that actually feels gross. The visualization just ain't there. Part of it is because of how all three POV characters are (under-)written. 'Undeveloped' doesn't cover it, 'robotic' isn't quite it, and to call them 'flat' would be damning with faint praise. They are utterly lifeless. There's some stab at characterization through the 1st-person perspectives, and I appreciated the attempt most in Savannah's chapter, but the writing is just so indelibly flawed that it doesn't matter. And because the POV is so distant, so wretchedly dull and mechanical, the horror and the gore didn't touch me. I might have, like, wrinkled my nose a time or two. Through the rest of it, my internal commentary was a constant loop of: So what?
And cosmic horror this is not. I feel like we're supposed to be intimidated by vague talk of 'the old gods' and Erin's vocabulary suddenly switching to 'thees' and 'thous,' but you cannot expect the memory of Lovecraft stories to do the heavy lifting for you. For multiple reasons, but mostly because that sucks as a horror technique. You're the writer. Do your job.
tl;dr: I'm watching iZombie right now and it's given me more gross-outs, more thoughtful commentary, and better contamination horror in some half-episodes than this book did in 261 pages. And iZombie has Rahul Kohli in it.
Anyway, I am not a big horror reader. I'm sensitive to animal cruelty, and horror is not a kind genre to people with that kind of trigger. But I do like reading horror whenever I can manage it. And I love reading body horror, the grosser the better. SMM is, technically, pretty gross. I mean, there's a lot of blood and innards and brain-eating. But none of it is written in a way that actually feels gross. The visualization just ain't there. Part of it is because of how all three POV characters are (under-)written. 'Undeveloped' doesn't cover it, 'robotic' isn't quite it, and to call them 'flat' would be damning with faint praise. They are utterly lifeless. There's some stab at characterization through the 1st-person perspectives, and I appreciated the attempt most in Savannah's chapter, but the writing is just so indelibly flawed that it doesn't matter. And because the POV is so distant, so wretchedly dull and mechanical, the horror and the gore didn't touch me. I might have, like, wrinkled my nose a time or two. Through the rest of it, my internal commentary was a constant loop of: So what?
And cosmic horror this is not. I feel like we're supposed to be intimidated by vague talk of 'the old gods' and Erin's vocabulary suddenly switching to 'thees' and 'thous,' but you cannot expect the memory of Lovecraft stories to do the heavy lifting for you. For multiple reasons, but mostly because that sucks as a horror technique. You're the writer. Do your job.
tl;dr: I'm watching iZombie right now and it's given me more gross-outs, more thoughtful commentary, and better contamination horror in some half-episodes than this book did in 261 pages. And iZombie has Rahul Kohli in it.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I don’t even know what I just read. Dark and twisted, yet gripping. I could not put this book down, even with all the gore!
4.5 rounded to 5. Excellent story, gory details, and dynamic characters. Knocked off half a star because the segmented nature of the format, even though it all came together, seemed disjointed.
The author did a fantastic job of blending pandemic horror, body horror, cosmic horror, and realistic human/government reactions to these types of situations. While I didn't like all three women by the end, as I'm sure we're definitely not supposed to, I did love them as characters. While this is body horror, and definitely not for the squeamish, it is just the right amount to not see gratuitous.
To be honest, the reason this gets a 4 instead of a 5 from me is because I was left wishing the story (and maybe even the gore) was more fleshed out. There were also some clunky bits that really should have use some smoothing over. Still, very much worth a read.
To be honest, the reason this gets a 4 instead of a 5 from me is because I was left wishing the story (and maybe even the gore) was more fleshed out. There were also some clunky bits that really should have use some smoothing over. Still, very much worth a read.
Not my kind of horror - big surprise, the body horror was too much!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
ох; я не знаю, как эту книгу оценить. начинается она довольно стандартно. новый вирус, пандемия, массовая истерия. проходили, знаем. но затем, довольно быстро, сюжет слетает с катушек, словно авторка внезапно лишилась рассудка. с диким хохотом она пускается в пляс, извергая самые безумные сюжетные повороты из возможных: монстры, демоны, древние боги, пришельцы. лесбийский секс с распитием спиномозговой жидкости. осьминоги, выползающие из опухолей. и еще много-много других незабываемых моментов. хорошая книжка, короче, не пропустите.