Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Manhunt

This book wouldn’t know subtlety if it was beat over the head with it. The concept was solid so I stuck through it in hopes that maybe it would get better but I really should’ve called it quits after the first 20 pages.

There’s such a reliance on shock value that in the end nothing is shocking because you’re just numb to everything going on. A cycle of one gruesome thing happening and moving on to the next while waiting for some semblance of a plot to appear and it never does. Simultaneously the book thinks it’s so clever with its inclusion of modern gender politics into its post-apocalyptic dystopia but you can’t be clever when everything is presented at face value, no nuance to any characters, no depth, just a shallow portrayal of gender in which the villains of the book are caricatured in how one-dimensional their ideals are (there seriously wasn’t anything more creative to call them than TERFs? That is what they are but cmon, you had free rein to unleash creativity, call them anything, anything at all, and you chose the default option, in this a fictional world in which internet-origin lingo is gonna stick out like a sore thumb as feeling incredibly out of place).

There’s no commentary of value added by the author on the themes (if we can even call surface-level discussion that) she chose to include so it serves only as a preach to the choir instead of allowing any delving into what we could understand about our society’s treatment of trans people and gender identity as a whole through the lens of this world she created. An opportunity to say something of value absolutely wasted.

The blurb labels it horror while the acknowledgements labels it splattercore. It fails at horror given the thematics are so surface-level and shock-value driven with the same cheap shocks cycled over and over that it’s impossible to feel anything but bored. Despite the prevalence of violence it fails to be splattercore either because, again, I feel nothing. It’s like the author thinks just including various traumas inherently creates horror or dread but completely forgets how important it is to add a coherent story to the mix so that readers actually have something to care about. “This thing happened and then this thing happened” is not a compelling story.

There is no development to any character, and we learn very little about any of them. And yet instead of a plot we spend the whole time following random events involving these characters we don’t know enough about to care for, often in a confusing fashion of sudden perspective changes without proper indication of who we’re following now. All wrapped up in run on sentences and cluttered paragraphs that often make it a chore to parse what’s being written.

I spent 20¢ on this book secondhand and that was still too much.

Content Warnings

brynalexa's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Full disclosure: I don’t generally read horror.

This book was disgusting, perfect, challenging, and relatable, unfortunately. Not for the faint of heart but absolutely worth it if you can get through the gore 🏳️‍⚧️

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katreena's review against another edition

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2.5

I feel like the story was very loose and not well put together. Also my my genre so maybe in bias.

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f18's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I figured this would be the best bet for a ~~gender~~ ~~chromosome~~ hormone apocalypse depiction that I could get behind, and it did address all the stuff that irks me about other versions (discusses how it affects trans people ofc, but also things like pcos). Unfortunately I didn't really find myself immersed in the writing but I'm not 100% sure why. I guess the style didn't click with me or maybe because it didn't focus as much on aspects of the genre I most connect to, like body horror.

I constantly kept losing track of which POV the story was in at any time. I attributed this to the narrator not pausing long enough between scene breaks, but I see that has come up in reviews of the physical book as well. I think the character voices (not the narrator's but the author's ) blurred together.

There's just something about the metaphor of

trans women surviving by eating cis men's testes

that is just so interesting but yeah... the book was okay, but I didn't love it like I was hoping for.

I've seen some very good critiques of this by trans readers as well. I think this book was the final nail in the coffin for me with this subgenre... but I'll probably torture myself and watch the show anyway.

Content Warnings

hakaysha's review

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dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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jocelynmwagner's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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

3.75

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