Reviews tagging 'Death'

Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

5 reviews

destryhawk's review

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.75

More than anything, it made me very intrigued to read more of his work.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Body horror, Animal cruelty, and Violence

Moderate: Suicide, Gore, Animal death, and Death

Minor: Sexual content

unboxedjack's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Body horror, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and Toxic friendship

foldingthepage_kayleigh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

2.0

I requested to review this book because I loved Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. That series was so atmospheric, filled with dread on every page, and one of those unusual trilogies where the second book is the best.  I’m not really a sci-fi person, but I thought this book would be different, since I enjoyed the apocalyptic, ecological horror style of VanderMeer’s work in the past. But I hate to say it, but I did not like this one 😬

A lot of this book was either incomprehensible to me or contained content that I have a particularly hard time with. I struggle with body horror elements in books, and this one had such a heavy focus on medical content, with grotesque, gory descriptions of genetic engineering into “living arts” just had me skimming over large swaths of the story. 

Also, I think this book was just too smart for me. There’s this exploration of language, narrative structure, and biblical references (I think?) that went way over my head, and not in a way that I could appreciate. I would say that reading the new foreword by Charles Yu helped lay out the strong points of this novel, and the different themes to pull out from it, and I did like that. I think reading this foreword is really required reading for those planning to pick up this book.

Overall, I think that this was a well-written book that was a case of just not for me. I think this book is still worth picking up if you like: 

• Medical sci-fi
• Experiments with writing styles and different ways of communicating 
• Futuristic, dystopian world-building

Thanks Penguin Randomhouse Canada for this gifted copy, I’m sorry I didn’t like this one more 🫣

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Medical trauma, Death, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Murder, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Grief, Blood, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual content

chimera999's review

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Animal death

sunnybopeep's review

5.0

An infernal masterpiece.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, War, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Cursing, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Suicide, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

Minor: Drug abuse