Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - All the White Spaces

Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

9 reviews

ezwolf's review against another edition

I really really really wanted to like this. I love queer horror and this seemed like exactly what I’ve been trying to read. But oh my gosh I was so incredibly bored. I kept thinking “okay once I hit 20% the pace will pick up”. It did not. The plot is probably about to actually start but I just can’t make myself keep going.

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tamarant4's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

..my brothers would never see Antarctica. Never know a clear day on the South Atlantic, or the jewelled ice of the floes. Their dreams had come to nothing, but I was the last Morgan sibling, and I knew where I’d find them. I knew where I had to go. [p. 8]

Jonathan Morgan stows away on the Fortitude to join the (fictional) 1920 British Coats Land Expedition, bound for Antarctica. Morgan's elder brothers Rufus and Francis both died in the Great War, before they could join explorer James Randall's expedition: Jonathan is still young enough to believe in heroism and desperate to prove himself as much of a man as his brothers. He is helped by Harry Cooper, an old friend of the family, but is of course discovered, some days into the voyage south. Expedition leader James 'Australis' Randall decides to let him stay, and Jonathan (having proved his worth by saving a crew member from going overboard) shares the peril of the crew as disaster strikes and they're stranded on the ice, with the southern winter closing in. The men are whispering about ghosts, about half-heard familiar voices, about vivid hallucinations of the War. And Jonathan begins to believe that he's glimpsed the ghost of his brother Francis.

This is an alternate history: instead of Shackleton's heroic efforts to save the Endurance expedition, Wilkes gives us Randall, damaged and flawed, unwilling to admit that he could ever make the wrong call when it comes to polar exploration. All the White Spaces explores ideas of masculinity: Randall, bluff and tough; Tarlington, the expedition's scientist, a former conscientious objector who's ostracised by the rest of the crew; Harry Cooper, who continually behaves as though Jonathan is a girl disguised as a boy; and Jonathan himself, self-made into the man he always knew he was, desperate to belong to 'the place I’d won by the fire, in that circle of men'.

Wilkes writes beautifully of Antarctica's stark beauty ('Tiny cracks marbled the furthest ice, thin and dark as the veins on an old woman’s hand. Everything else was glittering, sharp—dead white.') and imbues the crackling aurora australis, flickering red and green overhead, with dread. The aurora seems to herald visitations by something that Jonathan calls 'the nightwatchman'; blizzards come out of nowhere; a previous, German, expedition has vanished without trace. If All the White Spaces was a simple horror novel, it would be an accomplished example of its kind. The interactions between Jonathan, Cooper, Tarlington and Randall add a dimension that I found compelling and fascinating. Looking forward to reading Wilkes' second novel, Where the Dead Wait, which seems to riff off the Franklin expedition...

"We’ve dropped down a ... hole in the cloth of the world. Been sucked into one of the white spaces on the map.”

Fulfils the ‘grieving characters’ rubric of the 52 books in 2024 challenge: Jonathan and Harry are grieving the Morgan brothers, Randall is grieving his son, many of the crew have lost friends and relations to the War.

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gen_wolfhailstorm's review against another edition

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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.

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layzuli's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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ofbooksandechos's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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sdsmith80's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

I've heard so much about this book in the last few months that I was both eager to get my hands on it, and afraid it wouldn't live up to the hype. I'm very glad to say that it very much did. The detail that the author puts into this world, with descriptions of the scenery, or lack thereof, the clothing, the accommodations, just everything, was so lush and encompassing that I actually found myself feeling chilled while reading. The characters are interesting and are fully fleshed out, so when something happens to even a side character, I care about them. Jonathan's growth, emotionally and physically, was rewarding as well, and I hope for a brighter future for all of them.

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anniereads221's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

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abbeyhuffine94's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I'm obsessed with Antarctica so I snatched a spooky book set there right up! This was extremely eerie and unsettling due to the completely desolate atmosphere. I found the sheer isolation and desperation of the setting even eerier than the supernatural elements of the novel. The supernatural aspect was done so well because it was left so ambiguous that, as a non-believer, I could read it as the psychological affects of the environment on the characters.
WWI is a constant in the background of the novel. While I typically don't find war interesting, I think it was such a genius time setting for our protagonist. He is a trans man and the time period meant he couldn't live as himself without severe persecution. He had to deal with the trauma of his older brothers going off to be war heroes while he was left behind. He was able to live as himself among the exploration crew and carry out a dream of his and his brothers that he was previously excluded from - exploration of Antarctica. I think the time period was very interesting for the protagonist and furthered his development - why was traveling to remote, unknown, deadly Antarctica so important to him? The war, the time, his identity and family dynamics, make it so important for him.
Also I thought the characters were full of depth and nuance and very real people in all their challenges, imperfections, and impossible situations.
4.5 out of 5

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blklagoon's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-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? It's complicated

5.0

I haven’t been this engrossed in a book in a long time. The descriptions truly chilled me to my bones, I understood the cold. Spooky and mysterious to the end, with just a touch of gore. And a trans protagonist in horror? Where his gender was a minor detail and there was actual plot not relating to gender? Incredible.

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