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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
This was a fast-paced, intriguing story. Every time Molly bleeds, a clone of her appears—and eventually tries to kill her. She spends her childhood and teen years fighting off other Molly's. She keeps having to kill them and they keep coming back. We don't really get a lot of answers about why, although it might be related to an experimental drug her mother injected herself with years before she was born.
Molly finds out about this from a letter she locates after her parents' death. By this time she's an adult, and it seems really weird to me that at no point before then did she ever ask her parents, "Why the hell am I like this?" I mean, if I had a murderous clone appear whenever I bled, I'd want to know why.
I got this through Tor's free ebook program and didn't realize it was only a novella, so I was pretty disappointed when I got to the end of like, chapter five, and found out...that was the END end. I understand there's a sequel, which makes me wonder, you know, why this couldn't just have been a whole book.
Still, a great story and I will be eager to read the next one.
Molly finds out about this from a letter she locates after her parents' death. By this time she's an adult, and it seems really weird to me that at no point before then did she ever ask her parents, "Why the hell am I like this?" I mean, if I had a murderous clone appear whenever I bled, I'd want to know why.
I got this through Tor's free ebook program and didn't realize it was only a novella, so I was pretty disappointed when I got to the end of like, chapter five, and found out...that was the END end. I understand there's a sequel, which makes me wonder, you know, why this couldn't just have been a whole book.
Still, a great story and I will be eager to read the next one.
I do not know how this book wound up on my kindle. I got on a plane and turned my kindle on, thinking I'd carry on reading the science tome I've been muddling through for the past couple months, only to discover I'd failed to download it. Failed to download pretty much anything, actually. I could reread a classic I finished earlier in the year, or read a cookbook I'd downloaded optimistically when I thought I was going to do a bunch of meal prep this spring. Blah.
And then I saw this book in the New Items list. I don't know why it's there. I don't know how it managed to be the only other thing downloaded on my Kindle, particularly when it doesn't even show up in the Books tab. Very mysterious. So I started reading, because what else was I going to do?
Something about the very first few pages made me think it might be an independently published work. I still don't know if it is, but whatever gave me that impression in the first few pages faded away quickly. The writing is engaging and clean enough. The premise is fascinating - any time Molly Southbourne sheds blood, a new copy of herself is created. The copy starts out harmless enough, but after a few days it goes mad and tries to kill her. From an early age, she and her parents learn to take care of all the extra mollys, by avoiding all harm to Molly as much as possible, but then killing the mollys when bleeding can't be avoided. The whole setup is horrifying but intriguing enough to keep me turning pages.
I was even on the verge of giving this short little bite of weird fiction five stars, until I got nearly to the end. Two things happened that don't seem to be at all supported by the novella's internal logic, and I can't quite forgive the author for it:
Second, it is explicitly stated that ALL mollys go bad. For, what, twenty five years? Molly has been coping with them, and not a single one out of what must be tens of thousands of mollys has ever not gone bad. Except that the one at the end doesn't? For no obvious reason? Except that the author needed a way to wrap things up? I would have accepted this if any allowance had been made earlier in the story that some mollys might be less evil than others, even if no direct explanation was provided.
I read the whole thing on the plane ride from South Dakota to Chicago. It was engaging the whole way through, and made the trip disappear. I can't complain about the entertainment factor, even if I quibble a bit about the details.
So... if I had this because someone recommended it to me or sent it to me... thanks!
And then I saw this book in the New Items list. I don't know why it's there. I don't know how it managed to be the only other thing downloaded on my Kindle, particularly when it doesn't even show up in the Books tab. Very mysterious. So I started reading, because what else was I going to do?
Something about the very first few pages made me think it might be an independently published work. I still don't know if it is, but whatever gave me that impression in the first few pages faded away quickly. The writing is engaging and clean enough. The premise is fascinating - any time Molly Southbourne sheds blood, a new copy of herself is created. The copy starts out harmless enough, but after a few days it goes mad and tries to kill her. From an early age, she and her parents learn to take care of all the extra mollys, by avoiding all harm to Molly as much as possible, but then killing the mollys when bleeding can't be avoided. The whole setup is horrifying but intriguing enough to keep me turning pages.
I was even on the verge of giving this short little bite of weird fiction five stars, until I got nearly to the end. Two things happened that don't seem to be at all supported by the novella's internal logic, and I can't quite forgive the author for it:
Spoiler
First, Molly's parents are killed by a molly that turns out to have been buried in a cistern at the back of their property five or more years ago. The molly is easily dispatched by Molly, when she returns to the house, since the molly is old and very weak. And yet the molly somehow managed to overpower two parents who were more skilled than Molly herself in combat and who are said to have put up an incredible fight? They needed to die to move the plot forward, and I would have accepted this if the molly had snuck up on them and killed them in their sleep, but the weak little molly could not have bested these people in the fight they apparently had.Second, it is explicitly stated that ALL mollys go bad. For, what, twenty five years? Molly has been coping with them, and not a single one out of what must be tens of thousands of mollys has ever not gone bad. Except that the one at the end doesn't? For no obvious reason? Except that the author needed a way to wrap things up? I would have accepted this if any allowance had been made earlier in the story that some mollys might be less evil than others, even if no direct explanation was provided.
I read the whole thing on the plane ride from South Dakota to Chicago. It was engaging the whole way through, and made the trip disappear. I can't complain about the entertainment factor, even if I quibble a bit about the details.
So... if I had this because someone recommended it to me or sent it to me... thanks!
I really enjoyed this short novella. It was engrossing and I was hooked on the story within the first couple of pages. This story is about Molly Southbourne who has to fight clones of herself everytime she bleeds. This is what initially drew me to the story because it is such an intriguing and original story. I am definitely going to be checking out the sequel to this.
The Murders of Molly Southbourne is a tightly written, nasty (in all the good ways) unsettling novella.
As I’ve come to expect Thompson’s prose is bold and visual, he doesn’t waste words, but he also doesn’t mind pushing the graphic content up a few notches when it’s appropriate to the scene. The gorier moments often involve Molly bludgeoning to death her duplicates which makes it all the more disturbing. As for Molly, Thompson does a terrific job in portraying her as socially awkward but also forthright and competent. Personally, I’d be a gibbering mess if I knew one drop of my blood could create a homicidal facsimile of me, but Molly – after some adjustment as a child – takes it in her stride.
While the ending is a tad predictable, this is still a very satisfying novella that would make one hell of a feature film.
As I’ve come to expect Thompson’s prose is bold and visual, he doesn’t waste words, but he also doesn’t mind pushing the graphic content up a few notches when it’s appropriate to the scene. The gorier moments often involve Molly bludgeoning to death her duplicates which makes it all the more disturbing. As for Molly, Thompson does a terrific job in portraying her as socially awkward but also forthright and competent. Personally, I’d be a gibbering mess if I knew one drop of my blood could create a homicidal facsimile of me, but Molly – after some adjustment as a child – takes it in her stride.
While the ending is a tad predictable, this is still a very satisfying novella that would make one hell of a feature film.
Sort of confusing, but I enjoyed the twist at the end. I wish more detail about what exactly is going on with Molly could have been included, but since there's a sequel coming, maybe it answers those questions.
3.5 stars. A strange little girl grows up under strict rules, because every time she bleeds she spawns a copy of herself who eventually tries to kill her. This has a first person frame narrative with a decent function but a bland voice. But the central narrative, third person, cold and almost clinical in tone, high-concept brutal action in content, is a hell of a ride. It's grim sometimes to excess and wraps up too many elements too neatly in the fourth act, but it's aggressively strange, pushing the speculative elements just that extra bit further particularly re: what it means to "bleed," how limited or ineffectual are the rules. And the brutality is contrasted by slivers of broken intimacy between the protagonist and her doubles. Those indefinable, secret spaces and unanswered questions about personhood are almost but not quite overshadowed by the violence, and they're what make this work for me. It's not flawless, I don't love the sequel, but this is well worth the single-sitting read.
Started off great. Then just got weird. Not because of the gore, but Molly is just odd. The ending was fine, but left me with so many questions.