Scan barcode
hsienhsien27's review
4.0
Here is a novella and the author's name may or may not look familiar to you. He's the guy that wrote, It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings, which I read a long while ago. I often confuse him with another Bradley writer in the small press world, Ryan W. Bradley. I'm not sure why, but they're both popular and have the same last name, I guess that's why.
So I found this novella somehow on the internet somewhere, but I don't remember how, all I knew was that I saw the cover and my brain was like "I want, I want." Who wouldn't want this? A novella, short and easy to read, and the cover is just freaking beautiful. I love to say that the small press world tends to have better graphic designers than the big four publishers.
I read this novella in a span of three days, I could've easily read it in one day, but I was tired from other things. The thing about this book was that I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to savor it, but it's so short, I could easily read it in one sitting. You know a short book is super good when you're worried that you're going to finish it too fast.
Highlander and Greek/Roman mythology is a huge theme in this book. The mythology stuff I am familiar with. Highlander was a sci-fi/fantasy show that was around way before I was even a cell. I asked my mom about it and she said she knew what it was,but never watched it. I looked at image stills of the show on Google images, it's all weird and eccentric, people carrying swords, smoke, men with long hair and looking like Conan the Barbarian or something like that. So take that whole image of Highlander and place it in the absurd world of alt. lit, and there you have it.
But Bodies Made of Smoke is a little more than that. It is written in these short little chapters, snippets of dialogue, and scenes. Everything moves fast with a sort of smoky, bloody magic, much like the show. And in the midst of this, there's a very sparse, poetic flair to the prose, much like some of the stories of his short story collection. A pondering and hopeless prose, a type of prose that smiles a little as someone is killed off. There's not much to say, but this novella felt like that crazy, glittery party I never went to, because some Greek god killed everyone and left the corpses there for the parents to see and scream.
I wanted to read this again, because I will admit that I got some of the characters confused. Which was sort of the point, since they switch back and forth to their human selves and their god entities. Like a personality disorder. This little novella felt like a mere epic itself.
By the way, I visited the publisher's website and the sight of Miley Cyrus with a slice of pizza on her face. I don't like her, but come on, that's freaking hilarious.
Rating: 4.5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2014/12/bodies-made-of-smoke-by-j-bradley.html
So I found this novella somehow on the internet somewhere, but I don't remember how, all I knew was that I saw the cover and my brain was like "I want, I want." Who wouldn't want this? A novella, short and easy to read, and the cover is just freaking beautiful. I love to say that the small press world tends to have better graphic designers than the big four publishers.
I read this novella in a span of three days, I could've easily read it in one day, but I was tired from other things. The thing about this book was that I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to savor it, but it's so short, I could easily read it in one sitting. You know a short book is super good when you're worried that you're going to finish it too fast.
Highlander and Greek/Roman mythology is a huge theme in this book. The mythology stuff I am familiar with. Highlander was a sci-fi/fantasy show that was around way before I was even a cell. I asked my mom about it and she said she knew what it was,but never watched it. I looked at image stills of the show on Google images, it's all weird and eccentric, people carrying swords, smoke, men with long hair and looking like Conan the Barbarian or something like that. So take that whole image of Highlander and place it in the absurd world of alt. lit, and there you have it.
But Bodies Made of Smoke is a little more than that. It is written in these short little chapters, snippets of dialogue, and scenes. Everything moves fast with a sort of smoky, bloody magic, much like the show. And in the midst of this, there's a very sparse, poetic flair to the prose, much like some of the stories of his short story collection. A pondering and hopeless prose, a type of prose that smiles a little as someone is killed off. There's not much to say, but this novella felt like that crazy, glittery party I never went to, because some Greek god killed everyone and left the corpses there for the parents to see and scream.
I wanted to read this again, because I will admit that I got some of the characters confused. Which was sort of the point, since they switch back and forth to their human selves and their god entities. Like a personality disorder. This little novella felt like a mere epic itself.
By the way, I visited the publisher's website and the sight of Miley Cyrus with a slice of pizza on her face. I don't like her, but come on, that's freaking hilarious.
Rating: 4.5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2014/12/bodies-made-of-smoke-by-j-bradley.html
More...