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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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:
Yes
adventurous
dark
funny
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
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:
Yes
"You can adapt to almost anything," is said at least a couple times in this story. At one point, it's absolutely chilling, traumatic, and bleak, but at another point it's life-affirming, hopeful, something that helps to wrap this epic up and rationalize what the actual fuck just happened.
Right off the bat, this book is really emotionally heavy, dire, and violent. The melancholic, neurodivergent arrogance of Caroline transforms with each new piece of context, transforms into something I felt almost too frightened to continue reading about. It's just so vulnerable and terrible, but utterly compelling. Is she a monster? Yes. Is she justified for what she planned? Uh yeah. Has she the capacity for better plans and a warmer soul? Yes, and that's why she's our protagonist.
This blew me away with how creative and succinct it is; fitting this much book in only 400 pages is so impressive. It's tidy in the sense that there are certain details that really just don't matter once you've bought into the whole thing, but even so, Hawkins gives us more convention-defying, imaginative worldbuilding and exposition than is necessary, while never once straying away from the core unraveling plan.
You can be undoubtedly composed of the alleged benevolence of your "betters" and a lacquered armor of fear, but the sum of our past violence and trauma is not us, it just weighs us down and makes us less human. The next day, and our qualities to make it a good day, is all that matters.
Right off the bat, this book is really emotionally heavy, dire, and violent. The melancholic, neurodivergent arrogance of Caroline transforms with each new piece of context, transforms into something I felt almost too frightened to continue reading about. It's just so vulnerable and terrible, but utterly compelling. Is she a monster? Yes. Is she justified for what she planned? Uh yeah. Has she the capacity for better plans and a warmer soul? Yes, and that's why she's our protagonist.
This blew me away with how creative and succinct it is; fitting this much book in only 400 pages is so impressive. It's tidy in the sense that there are certain details that really just don't matter once you've bought into the whole thing, but even so, Hawkins gives us more convention-defying, imaginative worldbuilding and exposition than is necessary, while never once straying away from the core unraveling plan.
You can be undoubtedly composed of the alleged benevolence of your "betters" and a lacquered armor of fear, but the sum of our past violence and trauma is not us, it just weighs us down and makes us less human. The next day, and our qualities to make it a good day, is all that matters.
adventurous
challenging
dark
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:
Yes
I rented this from the library and I didn’t finish it in time. The first 20% of the book that I did read was very compelling, mysterious and entertaining. I will pick it up again in the future when I get the loan back from the library or purchase it.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This story was quite the ride. Very creepy, quite gory, twists and turns galore. I can’t say it’s my favorite genre by any means, but it was fun to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Kidnapping, Car accident, Alcohol
4.5*. The way it deals with characters, their pasts, their reactions to the others, their losses and their consequences, is just so rich and alive, it's unlike most other SFF books that way. It is also wonderfully written, extremely disturbing, brutal, brilliant and extremely strange all at once, and I think it would improve with every subsequent read. With some things I'm still not really sure about how they were handled, but how alien this feels explains a lot of that. I'd just like to say, wow. Hats off. The normalised weirdness is done spectacularly and also it's hilarious at so many points.
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-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:
Yes
This generally wouldn’t be my cup of tea. Initially, I wasn’t a fan of the interludes and the jumps between time and perspective; I found it very confusing. However, I was impressed with how it all came together in the end and the plot really captured my attention. The characters were completely unique and the concept was pretty cool.
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes