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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oof massive potential. Creepy in parts. Good metaphor. Well written. Good atmosphere.
But. I loathed the narrator. She was A LOT of whine and it hurt me how nasty treated the little baby and and her as a teen. I just wanted to hold and love, and because of that I resented the main character for running away and leaving her so thoroughly alone.
But. I loathed the narrator. She was A LOT of whine and it hurt me how nasty treated the little baby and and her as a teen. I just wanted to hold and love, and because of that I resented the main character for running away and leaving her so thoroughly alone.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Haunting, devastating, and incredibly beautiful. This is easily one of my favorites now. Tough to read through the curtain of salt water escaping my eyeballs. Will definitely be buying this so I can read it again and again.
Searching for another book in the horror genre I came across The Rust Maidens which seemed like it would be a unique and strange tale. Though very unique, the book turned out to be nothing like I expected. I guess it does fall into the genre of modern gothic horror, but I found the story only mildly interesting. I would say unlike creepy horror this story is more like a modern dark fantasy fairy tale. After twenty eight years the main character, Phoebe Shaw, comes back to visit her mother at the place she grew up, on Denton Street in Cleveland, Ohio. She left soon after her graduation in 1980 and after the strange events that occurred there that summer. Her best friend and cousin Jacqueline, along with four other neighborhood girls, began to metamorphose; their flesh withering and falling away to reveal rusted metal instead of bones, gray water pouring out of the wounds and finger nails turning to shards of glass. What happens to these girls is symbolic of the Cleveland environment they are living in. The main employment for the fathers on Denton Street is the local steel mill. The summer of 1980 sees an impending strike about to take place; a strike that will lead to the closing of the mill and a foreshadowing of Cleveland becoming another rust belt city. The eighteen-year-old Phoebe is an angst filled wild hair that longs to escape with her best friend Jacqueline a desolate Cleveland future. Their plans are foiled when Jacqueline begins to change and Phoebe tries desperately to find a way to stop the metamorphosis, even though the adult inhabitants of the street seem to have little empathy for the girls, including the girls' parents. After the story of the Rust Maidens is published by the reporter sister of one of the girls, government agents arrive and gawking tourists flock to the street. It will take the now forty-six-year-old Phoebe to unwind the full story and fate of the Rust Maidens as all the houses on Denton Street are methodically being demolished to make way for new condos. And, when she meets an eighteen-year-old girl, Quinn, still living along the barren and decaying Denton Street she will be confronted with the fact that what occurred twenty eight years ago is happening again.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Personifying the downfall of Cleveland in the 1980s through the industrial metamorphoses (okay, she's a poet!) of five teenage girls... great story, lots of oozy gruesome body horror and tons of heart!
It's hard to put thoughts into words for this - there's a lot that captures your attention and holds it, from the way that the setting is basically a character itself to all the ways that decay and change appear and how people address and blame almost anything else rather than the actual issue, but also a lot that slips through. The main piece of it - the rust maidens, who even if they don't get to leave, at least get to choose their fate for once - is powerful and thought-provoking, even if the framing (that Phoebe returns 28 years later to a similar cycle) isn't quite solid enough to hold it. The time-jumping is interesting in a sort of "the more things change the more things stay the same" way, where the cycles of industry and capitalism crushing those trapped within them just appear in different forms.