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aakhil's review
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt and Gore
adancewithbooks's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Ever since its release I'd heard a slight buzz around this novella. I wasn't quite sure if this was going to be one for me as dystopia so very often can be a miss for me. But I was pleasantly surprised and I ended up really liking it.
We meet Reid just as she has received her invite to a further education, a mission. She lives in an old university with her mom and a whole community. This invite means she has to leave everyone behind. There is even the question if it is even real. It is a hard decision, and where some congratulate her, others show their dislike.
What I loved about this book was how it showed how the community worked, the explanations and the idea behind the ending of our known world. And in a way it makes a lot of sense. The resources of our planet isn't going to last forever and we certainly don't have a solution for that yet. Then there is the CAD which adds a whole other dimension to their troubles. Its not bad enough that they might starve or not have enough water or the sand storms. The CAD can kill them.
But mostly what I really liked about this book were the feels. The conflict Reid had about whether or not to go. The grief for her fathers loss, the grief for having the disease of CAD, the duty she feels towards her mother and the community. The guilt that this decision brings with it. It is a very well written story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, and Suicide
Moderate: Gore
Animal Huntinglucystolethesky's review against another edition
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Abandonment, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Vomit, Animal cruelty, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, Blood, Gore, and Gaslighting
talonsontypewriters's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Theoretically super interesting setting and contemplation on more mundane post-apocalyptic life and bodily autonomy, but unfortunately pretty underdeveloped in practice -- definitely feel like the concepts would fit better in a longer work with more fleshed out characters and relationships.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, and Animal death
Moderate: Blood, Medical content, Violence, Gore, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Pedophilia, Ableism, Colonisation, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Abortion, and Suicide
Parasitic infection.foremmarightnow's review
dark
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gore and Suicide attempt
josiewrites's review
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gore and Violence
Minor: Vomit
mossybean's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is a hard book to rate for me, because there were parts I really didn't like just as much as there were parts I loved. I liked the two main characters a lot. Most of the characters had interesting stories attached to them, though I thought there were too many, especially for such a short book! For example, Nadiya meant a lot to the two main characters, but nothing to the reader as I didn't know anything about her. And again, when they went on the pig hunt there were so many characters that were introduced all at once that I knew nothing about and didn't have an attachment to either.
I loved the idea of Cad, the maybe-intelligent parasitical fungus. I got really invested in the outcome of Reid's struggle with Cad, as she finds it worsening over the course of this novella. I also loved the idea of this community that functioned off everyone's equal participation in working, but that wasn't a focus of the book sadly.
I think there were a lot of different ideas that could have been expanded into a longer novel, and in some ways I felt cheated that there wasn't more. Reid is struggling with a decision- whether or not to leave her community, her family, to go to this university in the Domes. Most of the book though, the consensus remains equally divided on whether or not this university is even real, and this contention isn't really resoved by the end.There was tension built there, I was excited about learning about the Domes and the university and what might happen there, but you never find out. It ends in Reid deciding to go, but we still don't know towards what.
I really disliked this one chapter,where suddenly there's a sexual interest added between the two main characters. There was nothing hinting at them being more than friends, and they didn't have that kind of relationship you could expect would go that way. I imagined them as like brother and sister, so it was gross! I also wasn't a fan of the hunt, where there seemed to be a lot of gore and violence with not enough reason for it.
I loved the idea of Cad, the maybe-intelligent parasitical fungus. I got really invested in the outcome of Reid's struggle with Cad, as she finds it worsening over the course of this novella. I also loved the idea of this community that functioned off everyone's equal participation in working, but that wasn't a focus of the book sadly.
I think there were a lot of different ideas that could have been expanded into a longer novel, and in some ways I felt cheated that there wasn't more. Reid is struggling with a decision- whether or not to leave her community, her family, to go to this university in the Domes. Most of the book though, the consensus remains equally divided on whether or not this university is even real, and this contention isn't really resoved by the end.
I really disliked this one chapter,
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death and Gore
brogan7's review
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
3.0
This is a strange little book, a gem of ideas but perhaps not as fully realized as it could have been.
Set in the indefinite future, the book depicts a colony of humans, a girl who is accepted to "university" in a part of the city that has sheltered itself from the ravages of climate change and poverty. She has a hereditary disease that is increasingly more common and that has odd, variable effects, some of them psychological.
The story rollicks along, there is always something happening, but sometimes the action changes are so fast, it's hard to keep up with the rhythm of it.
The disease is supposed to kill people very painfully in some cases, and the author describes one of the effects being that people lose their voice from screaming in pain. I thought this was a really strange description, actually, because it doesn't seem like a likely symptom, or the part that one would worry about. It sounds more like an author trying to be superlative about a situation she's just barely imagining--she's trying to make it sound bad--but it comes off as not believable.
I wonder why the narrative was so rushed (just a slim little book--it could have taken more room to find suitable pacing) and why some ideas were just grafted on there (like the sexual interest between the two main characters, which feels tacked on and then just not...on point, emotionally).
In the end I was disappointed in this book, which skirted around some interesting issues (loyalty, separation, dreams, what "away" can bring that "here" cannot, and what the privileged have done to insulate themselves from the consequences of their choices and privilege)--but she doesn't actually go there... So while the book makes gestures towards what it wants to say about privilege and oppression, it doesn't actually show anything about that, other than that it's a notion, that there are some fictional "haves" to the "have-nots"...but in fact we don't know at all what the "have" world could offer the "have-not."
Strangely, it feels like the more awful things happen in this book, without any feeling of actual danger or caring that the outcome could truly be terrible for individual characters, the more the book tells of another kind of privilege: the privilege of not knowing suffering, not understanding loss, wanting to be entertained by it as "action" as opposed to...open emotionally to it. (What was the POINT of the whole animal hunt scene?)
Set in the indefinite future, the book depicts a colony of humans, a girl who is accepted to "university" in a part of the city that has sheltered itself from the ravages of climate change and poverty. She has a hereditary disease that is increasingly more common and that has odd, variable effects, some of them psychological.
The story rollicks along, there is always something happening, but sometimes the action changes are so fast, it's hard to keep up with the rhythm of it.
The disease is supposed to kill people very painfully in some cases, and the author describes one of the effects being that people lose their voice from screaming in pain. I thought this was a really strange description, actually, because it doesn't seem like a likely symptom, or the part that one would worry about. It sounds more like an author trying to be superlative about a situation she's just barely imagining--she's trying to make it sound bad--but it comes off as not believable.
I wonder why the narrative was so rushed (just a slim little book--it could have taken more room to find suitable pacing) and why some ideas were just grafted on there (like the sexual interest between the two main characters, which feels tacked on and then just not...on point, emotionally).
In the end I was disappointed in this book, which skirted around some interesting issues (loyalty, separation, dreams, what "away" can bring that "here" cannot, and what the privileged have done to insulate themselves from the consequences of their choices and privilege)--but she doesn't actually go there... So while the book makes gestures towards what it wants to say about privilege and oppression, it doesn't actually show anything about that, other than that it's a notion, that there are some fictional "haves" to the "have-nots"...but in fact we don't know at all what the "have" world could offer the "have-not."
Strangely, it feels like the more awful things happen in this book, without any feeling of actual danger or caring that the outcome could truly be terrible for individual characters, the more the book tells of another kind of privilege: the privilege of not knowing suffering, not understanding loss, wanting to be entertained by it as "action" as opposed to...open emotionally to it. (What was the POINT of the whole animal hunt scene?)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore
Animal hunt2treads's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
–A lie is worse than a rust, they say. Powdery-soft, stealing from leaf to leaf till the whole field is crumbling and rotten. We have to trust each other to survive. Trust each other to work, and to tell the truth– Reid
Mohamed writes with engaging ease that captures the mind and heart, for this work begs the reader to delve into not just the destruction and degradation of our planet and the resulting ramifications, it prompts us to ask of ourselves, in a community that survives through collaboration and support, how do you choose yourself?
This narrative really focuses on Reid and the role she plays in her community, the strength she must project for her mother and the love she has for friend and the family that has been built through cooperation.
Mohamed writes with engaging ease that captures the mind and heart, for this work begs the reader to delve into not just the destruction and degradation of our planet and the resulting ramifications, it prompts us to ask of ourselves, in a community that survives through collaboration and support, how do you choose yourself?
This narrative really focuses on Reid and the role she plays in her community, the strength she must project for her mother and the love she has for friend and the family that has been built through cooperation.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Blood and Gore
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