Reviews tagging 'War'

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott

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starrysteph's review

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective 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

4.5

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart does indeed live up to the title: these stories will tag along behind you like ghosts, altering you ever so slightly as they tuck themselves into your ribcage.

They’re delightfully bizarre. These are tales you would hear in an old tavern or whispered down a chain of cleverly cruel young girls (with a hint of witchiness) or hidden in the pages of a dusty old book found at the back of your grandmother’s shelf. They feel familiar - like old bits of folklore - but are also devastatingly new.

Each story investigates our contradictions, slipping into the surreal to make sense of our present reality. They’re about loss and love, and monstrosity, and sacrifice, and rage. 

The prose is delicious. And the tone between stories shifts in an always-intriguing way. Sometimes it’s witty, aloof and winking at you with knowledge of the future. Sometimes it’s serious, agonizing over the fates of the characters. Many times it lingers between the two.

The stories include a warning of magically violent young women and their initiation of the new girl, an epistolary tale involving a friend’s betrayal and a peculiar sheepskin, a young woman who hollows herself out for a man and reshapes herself to his liking, and the titular bestiary which has a lot going on beneath its initial descriptions. 

There were one or two stories that didn’t grasp me in quite the same way, but that’s how collections always go for me. And the bulk of this grimoire (it feels like a grimoire, doesn’t it?) will sit with me for a very long time. 

CW: child death, murder, animal cruelty/death, war, body horror, blood, gore, self harm, bestiality, infidelity, drugs, vomit

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
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