Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Die leuchtenden Toten

I liked this well enough, but I was expecting to adore it. So comparatively, I am still disappointed.

On paper, this has everything I love: ruthless women who are also the main characters, a lot of focus on a deep but antagonistic relationship, a creepy atmosphere...
But for some reason it never clicked. Despite the ordeals Gyre had to go through, I never truly did get attached to her. Or to Em.

Now, this isn't a criticism to the author's writing abilities: I simply believe her writing style may not agree with me all the way. That's fine. It happens. It's a shame that this happened to an author who has such compeling ideas.

I will keep an eye on what she writes in the future. I won't read everything, but if one of her books seem compelling enough I will try again.

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kaiju_krispies's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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? Yes

4.0

I told storygraph that I was interested in dark stories involving unreliable narrators, complicated power dynamics between women, in dystopian settings, with a side of horror, grief, and hurt/comfort. Proving that their algorithm fucking works, it suggested The Luminous Dead.

Truthfully, the book suffers a little for want of a slightly more experienced author. The pacing of the overall story comes out all right, but the pacing of individual scenes often isn't. This mostly came through in feeling that a particular scene could very easily have been much scarier or horrifying than it actually was. The theme is set up so well to touch on extremely common fears, yet flies through descriptions of those scenarios so fast that there isn't time to build up those feelings to their full extent. Describe the sensation of being trapped by your own horrific exoskeleton in a fat man squeeze! or the fear of falling and wedging headfirst into a narrow hole! There are so many true stories of actual cavers and cave divers dying in the saddest, scariest ways to have drawn inspiration from; my hands are sweatier from reading the Nutty Putty Cave Wikipedia page than they ever were from The Luminous Dead. It also wouldn't be the worst thing to include a little more exposition for those who don't know much about climbing in general--I do happen to know the difference between a cam and a bolt and the pros/cons of each, but not every reader will, and there's again some benefit in building up tension this way.

The author does get this right with the body horror aspects. So much description of the stomach cannula and the horror of being trapped in goo and unable to even scratch your own nose!

The characters are not completely believable. Their motives feel a little flimsy and tend to change at opportune moments to justify the plot continuing. There are points at which the characters--Gyre especially--act so stupidly that it felt like a letdown.

Starting a fire in the graveyard sump springs to mind, as does purposefully fighting the Tunneler--maybe the Tunneler is just a symptom of the cave's desire to keep Gyre, but the fire felt like recklessness for no reason. Ah and wading through the spores too, and doing the water exchange in moldy water.

All that said, I devoured the book. I looked forward every time to reading more and was genuinely invested in these broken characters, their awful emotions, and their ultimate conclusion. It was an enjoyable, interesting read, and I think this is why some of my criticisms feel harsher than they are meant to. The premise is so good, and the themes so specifically of interest to me in particular, that I wanted it to live up to its fullest potential. It didn't quite, and that's all right! I hope the author has more books left in her, and that they have equally degenerate premises but with the weight of more experience and lessons learned behind them. Linger on the things that make your readers sweat!

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shadowspinner's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

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wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

5.0

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ronniethereader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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millibear's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

To chop up a Tumblr post I made about the book:

The Luminous Dead was a super effective horror novel for me. I had to go sit next to my partner and be patted on the arm while I was getting through the last 10%, lmao.

The limited third-person POV works so, so well in a story where one character’s understanding of her environment starts deteriorating.

Our protagonist Gyre is exploring a deep cave system at the behest of a mysterious corporate concern all by herself. She’s wired into her cave suit, recycling and recirculating waste material in a closed loop, and subsisting off of food delivered straight to her gut because a monster in the caves may be attracted to any trace of humans.

From the second Gyre enters the caves, she’s robbed of connecting to her environment with three of her senses: smell, taste, and touch. She especially laments the last as exploration of the cave wears on her.

All that’s left to her is sight and sound, and it’s not enough as she starts questioning why she's been hired to go down here and whether she's really alone.

While I can think of a logical reading of the novel—Gyre is hallucinating badly because of paranoia and stress from early on, and it only getting worse as things go to shit—the timbre of Gyre’s panic and her constantly rounding back on herself on whether or not she can believe her perceptions color that whole experience. I cannot in good faith just say to somebody, “Oh, she imagined all those things.” Somewhere deep down, I question myself, too. And that’s why “The Luminous Dead” will be on my mind for a long time.

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shiny_'s review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

1.25

This really didn't do it for me. It started out with tons of potential, but then seemed content to settle into a very repetitive structure of bickering dialog and sump diving scenes that blurred together into a muddy, poorly described silt out.

It tried to tease out its most interesting questions until answering them in extremely flat and unsatisfactory ways. The romantic elements have potential at first, but

their relationship dynamic never truly evolves beyond a toxic, back and forth blame game and gives no indication this has changed by the end

.

The most horrifying about things this book were the maturity level of the characters, the continuous bad decision making that stemmed from that, and the absurd gaslighting they put each other through. These are, ostensibly, two professional women in their 20s -

one of whom has been running and innovating a massive business for a decade at this point

- but they act like angsty teens plucked straight out of a YA novel.

It's not a complete wash up, and I'm sure lands better with some people than it did me. But it's far from the same league as The Martian or Annihilation, like the description implies.

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george_tte's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

This was such deeply terrifying horror. It touched every awful thing I’ve ever dreamed up of in the dark. And yet, the characters are so fleshed out, so real. This is also about mothers, cycles, and hurting others. What an intriguing read.

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