Reviews with content warning for Blood - Walking Practice

This is not a book for most people.

It is violent and sexual and strange, inviting you to listen to a people-eating alien tell you their most intimate thoughts and actions while hiding and surviving on planet earth.

The experience should be alienating--and sometimes it is. Sometimes you have to reckon with the fact that you're talking to someone with 3 legs and almost 30 genitals who is unapologetic about who they are. But I also found myself connecting so closely with the narrator. They embodied so much of my fear and anger as an invisibly disabled person trying to live in a world where my physical body will always hold me down.

The end of this novella is sudden. It made me think and think and rethink.

This book shows you the monstrous in yourself and how you have been a monster to others. If you can handle the content, this is one I highly recommend.

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ra22ouille's review

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dark emotional funny reflective fast-paced

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

4.0

Wowow what a visceral exploration of queerness, ability, sex, gender, and monstrosity. Dolki Min crafted a horrific, disgusting alien that is also tender, beautiful, sexy, emotional, and made me feel such empathy and kindness towards the character. I really loved the limited first person POV and the depth of emotion that the text was able to probe with that perspective. The character was so complex and being in it's head was profound. It not only showed me how they were alienated in our world, but it also alienated me from the society I am home to. The kinship I felt with the alien forced me further outside of humanity and I pondered questions of homogeneity, queer and disabled assimilation, and solopsism in a world where you not only feel alone but are truly alone. Or, at least when you believe that you can only possibly be alone, until perhaps you aren't. How does that challenge your solitude, the solipsistic beliefs that propel your choices and your interior lofe? Truly, truly spectacular.

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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

buying this in print both because it was lovely and because my ereader did not do the art justice!

wow! what can i say. such a fresh premise, the narrative voice was so refreshing, i don’t think I’ve ever read a book anything like this. if you have, PLEASE recommend! favorite book this year i think

unapologetically queer and making very interesting points about who this world is designed for both physically and in a more abstract sense. definitely graphic and gory but that takes a surprising backseat to the emotions of the main char. idk this book was just great and a lovely opener for Halloween month.

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danielles_reads's review against another edition

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dark funny fast-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? Yes

4.0

I wondered how it was even possible to divide something with so many visible variants into just two groups [men and women]. But humans keep bringing up their criteria and judge me by it. In the subway, in the street, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in parks . . . their expressions and words that question my humanity irrespective of where I am made me tear myself apart and rebuild myself piece by piece. I’ve invested close to ten years of my time figuring out what exactly their criteria are. My conclusion is that there are no such criteria.

This book is sooo weird lol. I knew it would be weird going in, but somehow it ended up being even weirder than I thought. There is a huge focus on sex, with explicit sexual content combined with blood and gore in a way that I’m sure will turn off a lot of readers. There are also a few fatphobic descriptions that felt entirely unnecessary to the story.

I’m always a fan of stories about aliens observing humanity from the point of view of an outsider, so I liked this book from that standpoint. It had a lot to say about humanity’s rules and expectations for how people should act, especially in terms of gender roles, and how isolating that can be.

This book doesn’t have much of a plot, and is mostly just the day-to-day life of the main character. It did start feeling a little repetitive in the second half (so many complaints about stairs lol), but then the book ended. The ending was pretty sudden and kind of bittersweet, but I think it worked well for the story.

Mumu (cute!) is finally taken down by someone of their own kind.

The real highlight of the book is the character’s extremely sardonic way of speaking directly to the reader. This really differentiates the book from other alien characters, and is strengthened even more by the audiobook narrator, who did a fantastic job bringing this strange character to life. There were also some cool sound effects that enabled the listener to feel as disoriented as the MC does. The ebook also made tons of interesting stylistic choices to convey the alien’s shifting mindset, so I was glad I had a copy of it along with the audio.

There is not much world building in this book, which I think was fine for the story the author wanted to tell. We got a tiny bit of the alien’s backstory, but the story mostly leaned into the weird aspects of the alien’s physical body and lifestyle on Earth. Really this book feels more like horror than science fiction.

Overall, I think Dolki Min wrote a very unique story, and Victoria Caudle’s translation was very effective. I’d definitely be interested in reading more from them.

To tell the truth, having someone not reply and treat me as a nonentity is a teeth-chatteringly frightening experience. There are so many people who ignore someone as naturally as eating. […] Answering human leeches like her is almost like a reflex for me, probably because the violence of going unanswered has cut me to my core.

Honestly, relatable

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lbelow's review against another edition

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medium-paced

4.0

If not for the fatphobia, (it is one thing to have an unlikeable main character

compare a fat female-coded character they see as prey to large mammals, and quite another for said character to be unbathed in such a way as to be described as being covered in sweat and shit that transfers to the main character during sex)

, I would have given this book 5 stars. For one thing, it is really f***king weird and I love that. For another, the themes of gender performativity and transness are top notch. And so many passages make my little disabled heart glad. I related SO MUCH to this journey of invisible disability, chronic pain, and an uncooperative body. For these reasons, I consider it well worth the read (though check the content warnings).

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jayisreading's review against another edition

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dark funny reflective medium-paced

4.5

This was a fun and short book to read, though I should add that it's rather gory and violent (i.e., "fun" is subjective here). The protagonist, Mumu, is an alien who disguises themself as a human (sometimes a woman, sometimes a man) in an attempt to get by and be accepted in the human world. This is explored through dating/sex, though this usually leads to a grisly end for the human, considering that they are "hunted" in order for Mumu to survive—

Mumu serves as an allegory of sorts for queer people (particularly trans people), expressing their fears of society and the harm that they might face, but also desiring acceptance. Mumu is doing what they can to "pass," and if it's not appearance, then it's how they carry themself (e.g., struggling with walking on two feet). I thought the author did a wonderful job showcasing the range of emotions, from grief to love, as Mumu went from one date to the next.

Most interesting about Walking Practice is the language and typesetting. I'd be curious to see the original, just to see what got lost in translation (e.g., onomatopoeia, which is rich in the Korean language). I also thought the typesetting was absolutely fascinating in some places, where the text expanded and contracted to show the constant shifting happening for Mumu (not only bodily but also mentally). In addition to the language, the act of seeing these shifts add so much dimension.

If you can stomach body horror and violence, this book is worth picking up.

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