Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Tender is the Flesh

Fun. Gory fun. Wicked and fucked up fun. This could be real and it would be so fucked up fun. The ending slapped me in the face even though I instinctively saw it coming fun.
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emybagshaw's review against another edition

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4.5

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faeriequeenlauren's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

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

1.0

Ugh. What can I say about this?

The writing was basic, rudimentary at best. There were times I felt like the book was written pretty well and conveyed its attempt at social commentary somewhat decently, but for the most part this just fell flat for me. The writing was bland and apathetic towards the subject matter, which diminished the emotional impact of the majority of what was happening for me. After reading this for a bit, everything just felt one-note and indifferent where it could have evoked more emotion had it also been disgusted and disturbed by what was going on.

Gratuitous gore and rape throughout does not make this book a good horror book, it simply makes it horrifying and not fun to read. In particular, I found the violent r*pe scene in the middle of the book, as well as the drawn out scene with the puppies extremely unnecessary and borderline exploitative, as neither one had any lasting impact on the overall plot and/or any of the characters involved. I really disliked that these scenes felt like they were included not to add depth to the story or characters, but rather to elicit certain emotions from the reader, which is lazy writing at best, and bad writing, at its worst.

The ending was somewhat okay for me, as it felt realistic for the story and it invoked questions about the gloom and disturbing nature of this new version of the world, though it still does not raise this rating from 1 star.

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rlgreen91's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

Well, this book was...a lot. Which I expected it to be - how could you not based on the synopsis? And a bit of gore doesn't generally bother me, so long as it's not gratuitous just for the sake of it. But this was a lot, like, supercharged. It just hit you, from the start, paragraph after paragraph, page after page.

But this one of the many things that endeared me to the book. The novel reminds me a lot of the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia E. Butler. Although that trilogy goes in a different direction firmly rooted in fantasy, there's still this central premise of what does it mean to be human, and what are we willing to do in the name of protecting our humanity? I also feel like Bazterrica's approach has shades of Butler - a very blunt and naked description of the real problems we face and asking what we are going to do about them.

I also really enjoyed how the novel shows the ways in which our systems and institutions shape us and are shaped by us. It can often feel like people think systems, institutions, and societal norms just appear out of thin air one day, fully formed, and that they're unmalleable like laws of nature. But that's not true at all! Our systems, institutions, and societal norms are created and shaped by our collective actions, and while those same things also shape our behaviors, it does mean that we can change them if we're, you know, actually intentional about it. Reading this actually reminded me quite a bit of Toni Morrison's A Mercy - very similar themes about systems and cultural norms and the ways in which we can try to subvert and change them.

Of course, I also loved how the novel highlights the importance of language and the dangers that come from "sanitizing" our language to better sanitize the reality of the world around us. Language shapes thought and thought shapes language, and you can't help but realize that there is something insidious about reducing people to just "male" and "female". I read this novel for a book club, and interestingly enough, there was a bit of a meta discussion about how so many of the words and phrases we use in general stem from the practice of animal husbandry. It reminded me of the poem "Old Glory" by Ocean Vuong, which shows just how violent so many of our common metaphors are.

As you can probably tell, overall I really enjoyed this novel. I would probably not read it in 2 weeks in a re-read, but I would re-read it nonetheless. There's really only one thing I didn't care for: it was a bit confusing to me how exactly some people became head.

I know that the reader is expected to just suspend their disbelief and imagine that in general terms, people that were poor, marginalized, and just generally undesirable became head. But if you look at examples of bigotry in real life, like racism or xenophobia, there's a set of real or created shared characteristics that supposedly justify the "us vs them" mindset and dehumanization of others - and we didn't get that here. We do see some instances where, for certain crimes, you could become head by being sent to the Municipal Slaughterhouse. But then we also see the Scavengers, who seem like they should qualify for that if enough people complain.

It was just an inconsistency that took me out of the novel a bit.

Still, a fantastic novel, and a social horror that to me is along the same lines as Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor. I'm sure I'll do a re-read at some point, maybe even in Spanish one day if I ever get that far in study. 4.5 stars.

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joscelynhe's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I don’t remember the last time a book made me physically nauseous/sick, if ever, but this story was so captivating that I had to see it though. Very intense, but worth the stomach-drop of an ending.

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rosesofthespring's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No

1.0

In a world where humans are sharply divided into two classes: people and livestock, there is one man brave enough to be briefly kind of uncomfortable with the situation.

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