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gen_wolfhailstorm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Set in the 1920s, an Antartic expedition adventure quickly becomes deadly and frightening, when the crew become stranded and begin to see spectral apparitions.
I went into this thinking it was going to be horror from the start and was turned off when that wasn't the case and felt very heavy on the historical fiction, but I'm so glad I carried on, because I quickly ate this up whenever I picked it up.
It felt like like I was there with the expedition, feeling bone cold with the men and dogs out on the great expanse of ice and snow. I began to agree with their paranoia, thinking one or more of the crew had intentionally sabotaged the expedition, but to what ends and I grew insistently more anxious as to what supernatural forces were at play; why were the dogs going mad? Where was the German expedition? How longer would Jonathan be able to keep his privacy and will Harry, in a fit of rage, out him? How would they make it back home? ... If they ever would...
I adored this for the trans rep. I wasn't expecting it and to be in the head space of Jonathan, trying to navigate how he's always felt, whilst hiding on a ship he shouldn't be on, and trying to keep his body a secret when discovered was such a different experience. A perspective I thought was well explored (coming from a cis female).
This was such a great story. It felt pretty slow burn and psychological but when others confirmed sightings of ... <i> something </i>... it made me spiral as to how corporal these phantoms were and what they could do to the living.
A well written, well researched tale of isolation, desperation, identity and hope.
I went into this thinking it was going to be horror from the start and was turned off when that wasn't the case and felt very heavy on the historical fiction, but I'm so glad I carried on, because I quickly ate this up whenever I picked it up.
It felt like like I was there with the expedition, feeling bone cold with the men and dogs out on the great expanse of ice and snow. I began to agree with their paranoia, thinking one or more of the crew had intentionally sabotaged the expedition, but to what ends and I grew insistently more anxious as to what supernatural forces were at play; why were the dogs going mad? Where was the German expedition? How longer would Jonathan be able to keep his privacy and will Harry, in a fit of rage, out him? How would they make it back home? ... If they ever would...
I adored this for the trans rep. I wasn't expecting it and to be in the head space of Jonathan, trying to navigate how he's always felt, whilst hiding on a ship he shouldn't be on, and trying to keep his body a secret when discovered was such a different experience. A perspective I thought was well explored (coming from a cis female).
This was such a great story. It felt pretty slow burn and psychological but when others confirmed sightings of ... <i> something </i>... it made me spiral as to how corporal these phantoms were and what they could do to the living.
A well written, well researched tale of isolation, desperation, identity and hope.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Stalking, Torture, Toxic friendship, Homophobia, Deadnaming, Death, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Gore, Suicide attempt, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Grief, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Outing, Violence, War, Vomit, and Transphobia
billie_budd's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.5
I really, really wanted to love this book—on paper it has all the elements I want in a book right now, all at once (polar exploration, interwar period, trans protagonist). And others who are interested in some combination of those elements would probably find this well worth the read! But there was a lot that didn’t quite come together for me.
There’s about 50-75 pages in the middle where everything felt disjointed (in what I can only read as an unintentional way); quotidian things were happening but I could barely tell what they were, or if they were important, because they were interspersed so heavily with flashbacks and memories. Past that part there’s less of this muddled feeling, but it was a struggle to get past the middle of the book.
I also really missed relationships in this book, especially because there’s so much down-time plot-wise, on the ship, on the ice. But I didn’t feel that really any relationships between any characters were developed in any real way, even though they all spent so much time in exceedingly close quarters and enduring events that could have changed or strengthened their relationships in really significant ways, and several of them knew each other pre-plot. (An exception to this is the Randall/Clarke dynamic, which I felt was complex and genuine and changed compellingly over time.) I was frustrated by how much of the time I really wanted to be reading a conversation and instead was just watching someone hammer in some nail, lost in thought.
Some of the horror elements were genuinely spooky but I did feel that they could have been carried off better if the tension in the book as a whole had been carried better instead of feeling as flat as it did, and weighed down by various chores and memories—if the protagonist had ever felt present enough in his surroundings to show that tension.
All that said, I found the narrative of the protagonist’s transness and struggles with family transphobia very well done, and very well integrated with the plot’s main conflicts. This was a great read just to get to hang out with him (and in high-adventure places and scenarios typically considered all-cis-male-only, no less), even if by the end I wished I had been given a view of him and his expedition comrades that was somehow more personal.
There’s about 50-75 pages in the middle where everything felt disjointed (in what I can only read as an unintentional way); quotidian things were happening but I could barely tell what they were, or if they were important, because they were interspersed so heavily with flashbacks and memories. Past that part there’s less of this muddled feeling, but it was a struggle to get past the middle of the book.
I also really missed relationships in this book, especially because there’s so much down-time plot-wise, on the ship, on the ice. But I didn’t feel that really any relationships between any characters were developed in any real way, even though they all spent so much time in exceedingly close quarters and enduring events that could have changed or strengthened their relationships in really significant ways, and several of them knew each other pre-plot. (An exception to this is the Randall/Clarke dynamic, which I felt was complex and genuine and changed compellingly over time.) I was frustrated by how much of the time I really wanted to be reading a conversation and instead was just watching someone hammer in some nail, lost in thought.
Some of the horror elements were genuinely spooky but I did feel that they could have been carried off better if the tension in the book as a whole had been carried better instead of feeling as flat as it did, and weighed down by various chores and memories—if the protagonist had ever felt present enough in his surroundings to show that tension.
All that said, I found the narrative of the protagonist’s transness and struggles with family transphobia very well done, and very well integrated with the plot’s main conflicts. This was a great read just to get to hang out with him (and in high-adventure places and scenarios typically considered all-cis-male-only, no less), even if by the end I wished I had been given a view of him and his expedition comrades that was somehow more personal.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia, Suicide, Transphobia, and Dysphoria
anniereads221's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Blood, Grief, Homophobia, Murder, Misogyny, War, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Transphobia, Abandonment, Body horror, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Gun violence, and Suicide
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