Reviews

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu

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glitterpricked's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

these stories were so interesting! i generally stick to short stories that are literary fiction, but one of my favourite reads of last year was spirits abroad, which was also a fantasy collection. short stories are actually such a great way to capture the strange and magical: they allow reflections of human nature through a mysterious and intriguing lens, with much less need to explain why certain things are happening. worldbuilding does not matter so much as the themes on the page. as with a lot of collections, it's difficult to give this a higher rating, but 3.5* is good for short stories in my opinion! i would definitely recommend this.

(disclaimer: i skipped the story june bug because the descriptions of bugs were triggering my anxiety. i got 11/37 pages into it. to make it fair, i did not take it into account in my rating.)

megangour's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

3.0

hiitsmecassie's review against another edition

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2.0

book_darner's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

ezrasupremacy's review against another edition

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3.0

finally finished.

i think i would’ve probably enjoyed this much more if i wasn’t in a massive reading slump, since stuff like this is right up my alley, but i unfortunately didn’t get to enjoy this as much as i probably could’ve.

i can’t think of any of these short stories that particularly stood out to me, apart perhaps from the very first one, even tho conceptually a lot of them were very interesting. i think the execution just didn’t fully land for me, but again, i cannot judge how objective that judgement is given my current state.