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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I admit the cover art of this book by the darkly talented Daniele Serra is what originally drew me to this book. However, this turned in to a truly haunting modern story of change and blame parallel to the witch hunts of Salem MA. A failing town blames its misfortunes, dying and polluted lakes, and the closing of the mill that provides the majority of the population’s income on the bizarre transformation of five girls into the titled Rust Maidens.
Definitely a must read.
Definitely a must read.
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The first half of this book had me hooked. It had so many elements that I love in a book. The writing was eerie and deliciously readable. The premise of girls turning to rust and decay without any good explanation was absolutely riveting...at first. Unfortunately, the second half left me disappointed. It just didn't really go anywhere. I thought for sure from the first half of the read that it would be a 4 or 5 star book and I was disappointed in the second half but not enough to dislike the book entirely.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
It won a Bram Stoker Superior Achievement in a First Novel, but I'm not sure why. It wasn't scary. The characters are all caricatures. I'm not sure of their motivations. I'm told instead of shown their emotions. And I have no idea why the Rust Maidens came to be other than the overwrought symbolism of their representing a dilapidated Cleveland. Several reviewers mentioned the main character's relatability, but she did not even feel real to me (though neither did anyone else in the book). In short, I do not recommend.
" As our lives assumed a new and unwanted rhythm, this became a summer of unlikely lessons. Our fathers learned to stand in unemployment lines. Our mothers learned how to smile through bourbon-soaked tears. And all of us learned that the Rust Maidens were not a fad or a fleeting temper tantrum. It was, we soon realized, entirely possible that they had invented a new way to say goodbye."
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The Rust Maidens is an interesting book. It's hard to categorize; it lies somewhere in the space between horror and speculative, maybe Midwest-Rustbelt Gothic. There's two timelines, Phoebe in modern day and a summer in the 80's when several girls in Cleveland shed their skin for metal and glass to become what became known as a Rust Maiden. The transformation brings in unwanted tourist attention, as people gawk at the inhuman state of decay. There are fingers pointed within the suburban blocks the girls used to call home. Kiste is a fantastic writer. She has a way of putting specific emotions into words so succinctly, it's a little scary!
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The ending fell a little flat for me, but other than that this was amazing! I have Kiste's short story collection on my Kindle and I am very much looking forward to picking that up now that I know what a talented storyteller and wordsmith she is. Recommend.
.
The Rust Maidens is an interesting book. It's hard to categorize; it lies somewhere in the space between horror and speculative, maybe Midwest-Rustbelt Gothic. There's two timelines, Phoebe in modern day and a summer in the 80's when several girls in Cleveland shed their skin for metal and glass to become what became known as a Rust Maiden. The transformation brings in unwanted tourist attention, as people gawk at the inhuman state of decay. There are fingers pointed within the suburban blocks the girls used to call home. Kiste is a fantastic writer. She has a way of putting specific emotions into words so succinctly, it's a little scary!
.
The ending fell a little flat for me, but other than that this was amazing! I have Kiste's short story collection on my Kindle and I am very much looking forward to picking that up now that I know what a talented storyteller and wordsmith she is. Recommend.
I’m interested in exploring and finding more horror novels, and this one was listed on the Bram Stoker Awards first novel list of books to read for 2018. As I just finished this yesterday, it was also announced to be on the final ballot for Outstanding First Novel, which is pretty exciting.
This is Gwendolyn Kiste’s first novel, but she has previously published a short story collection, and a novella which I’m interested in reading now that I have read The Rust Maidens.
This is classed as a horror novel, and some of the descriptions in this book were really well done to the point where I felt as though I could feel what the character was describing and it was just so gross, but in a good way. There’s also a sort of mystery element to this book because you don’t know what is happening to the Rust Maidens, or what is going to happen to them as the book progresses.
The main character is Phoebe and the book starts with her returning to her childhood home and the street where all of the problems with the rust maidens occurred, the book also goes back in time to when the events were unfolding. I really liked Phoebe as a character, she was strong-willed, and she just wanted to help everyone. I also loved that she just did not care what other people thought of her.
I feel like the story itself was interesting. Initially when I looked at the cover I thought it might have been a novel about fae creatures, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was about Phoebe who has just graduated high school and her and her best friend Jacqueline are getting excited about getting out of the place they live and living better lives. Unfortunately, some of the girls in the street they live on end up getting this mysterious illness that makes them transform. Nobody knows what this illness is, or if there’s a cure or what’s going to happen to these girls. I thought it was a unique and fascinating idea and it was so good.
Parts of the book are set in the early 80s and it definitely has that feel to it. All of the females are repressed by everyone in the town and there’s these expectations of them to be well-behaved girls. I hated that everyone treated the rust maidens as if they had bought this illness on themselves, and that everything was their fault. The rest of the book is set 28 years later, and Phoebe is returning and trying to sort out how she feels about everything that transpired.
The entirety of the story takes place in one neighbourhood, and I thought that worked well. All the characters knew each other and had known each other for a long time so I feel like that made the story even more impactful.
The book had this sad feel to it, and the entire time I was reading this book I really felt the sadness of everything that was happening. There was just this feeling of desolation that stayed there throughout the novel. I definitely felt like the author did a really good job at describing everything in such a way to give me that sense of sadness.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Rust Maidens. It was so atmospheric, and it just kept me reading right up until the very end. I felt like the reveal was a little anticlimactic, but I didn’t really mind that too much. The Rust Maidens is a book that I am definitely going to be recommending to people.
This is Gwendolyn Kiste’s first novel, but she has previously published a short story collection, and a novella which I’m interested in reading now that I have read The Rust Maidens.
This is classed as a horror novel, and some of the descriptions in this book were really well done to the point where I felt as though I could feel what the character was describing and it was just so gross, but in a good way. There’s also a sort of mystery element to this book because you don’t know what is happening to the Rust Maidens, or what is going to happen to them as the book progresses.
The main character is Phoebe and the book starts with her returning to her childhood home and the street where all of the problems with the rust maidens occurred, the book also goes back in time to when the events were unfolding. I really liked Phoebe as a character, she was strong-willed, and she just wanted to help everyone. I also loved that she just did not care what other people thought of her.
I feel like the story itself was interesting. Initially when I looked at the cover I thought it might have been a novel about fae creatures, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was about Phoebe who has just graduated high school and her and her best friend Jacqueline are getting excited about getting out of the place they live and living better lives. Unfortunately, some of the girls in the street they live on end up getting this mysterious illness that makes them transform. Nobody knows what this illness is, or if there’s a cure or what’s going to happen to these girls. I thought it was a unique and fascinating idea and it was so good.
Parts of the book are set in the early 80s and it definitely has that feel to it. All of the females are repressed by everyone in the town and there’s these expectations of them to be well-behaved girls. I hated that everyone treated the rust maidens as if they had bought this illness on themselves, and that everything was their fault. The rest of the book is set 28 years later, and Phoebe is returning and trying to sort out how she feels about everything that transpired.
The entirety of the story takes place in one neighbourhood, and I thought that worked well. All the characters knew each other and had known each other for a long time so I feel like that made the story even more impactful.
The book had this sad feel to it, and the entire time I was reading this book I really felt the sadness of everything that was happening. There was just this feeling of desolation that stayed there throughout the novel. I definitely felt like the author did a really good job at describing everything in such a way to give me that sense of sadness.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Rust Maidens. It was so atmospheric, and it just kept me reading right up until the very end. I felt like the reveal was a little anticlimactic, but I didn’t really mind that too much. The Rust Maidens is a book that I am definitely going to be recommending to people.
Warning: Mild Spoilers
Gwendolyn Kiste’s Bram Stoker award-winning debut novel The Rust Maidens (published by Trepidatio Publishing) is a book, at its core, about life, stubbornness, blame, growth and acceptance, weaved in a such a wonderful way that it’s more than what it truly is: an amazing, engrossing weird fiction story.
Phoebe has returned to Cleveland after nearly two decades to help her mother pack, before her dilapidated childhood home is demolished. The street she grew up on is not what it was when he left. Houses are being torn down, machines and workers destroying the past that she fought desperately to forget as though the wood they were made from were paper in a history book.
The people she knew are gone and moved or grown, still in-town, and are now filling the dreary roles their parents occupied twenty years ago, save for the steel mill workers — men couldn’t be those anymore, for the rusted mill still stood empty, abandoned, lifeless. But, it’s just the history Phoebe wants to forget, it’s not the old, rotted houses, or the friends she never had, or the adults who were convinced she was the reason for the mill’s closing. What she wanted to forget the most of all was the girls who had shed their flesh to reveal their true, rusted, glassy form, the Rust Maidens.
Like most readers, I’m certain, I found the adults in the story to be the most aggravating, because I, like I’m sure a lot of you have, have met people who speak and think and act they way they did. The way they blamed the Maidens from the beginning and believed that they were the cause of everyone’s problem, despite no inkling anywhere that the girls asked, wanted, or even desired what happened to them or the town itself. What person would want that anyway?
The adults reminded me of people who blame victims for things out of their control. It’s like when people accuse rape victims of wanting it by wearing certain clothes or talking a certain way. No one wants that to happen to them or anyone they know ever, and only an insane person would believe they would bring it upon themselves.
For someone or a group to say or believe such a thing is infuriating and repulsive, to say the least.
In closing, The Rust Maidens is a fantastic novel, and I highly suggest you purchasing it. I look forward to what Kiste has in store for us in the future.
Gwendolyn Kiste’s Bram Stoker award-winning debut novel The Rust Maidens (published by Trepidatio Publishing) is a book, at its core, about life, stubbornness, blame, growth and acceptance, weaved in a such a wonderful way that it’s more than what it truly is: an amazing, engrossing weird fiction story.
Phoebe has returned to Cleveland after nearly two decades to help her mother pack, before her dilapidated childhood home is demolished. The street she grew up on is not what it was when he left. Houses are being torn down, machines and workers destroying the past that she fought desperately to forget as though the wood they were made from were paper in a history book.
The people she knew are gone and moved or grown, still in-town, and are now filling the dreary roles their parents occupied twenty years ago, save for the steel mill workers — men couldn’t be those anymore, for the rusted mill still stood empty, abandoned, lifeless. But, it’s just the history Phoebe wants to forget, it’s not the old, rotted houses, or the friends she never had, or the adults who were convinced she was the reason for the mill’s closing. What she wanted to forget the most of all was the girls who had shed their flesh to reveal their true, rusted, glassy form, the Rust Maidens.
Like most readers, I’m certain, I found the adults in the story to be the most aggravating, because I, like I’m sure a lot of you have, have met people who speak and think and act they way they did. The way they blamed the Maidens from the beginning and believed that they were the cause of everyone’s problem, despite no inkling anywhere that the girls asked, wanted, or even desired what happened to them or the town itself. What person would want that anyway?
The adults reminded me of people who blame victims for things out of their control. It’s like when people accuse rape victims of wanting it by wearing certain clothes or talking a certain way. No one wants that to happen to them or anyone they know ever, and only an insane person would believe they would bring it upon themselves.
For someone or a group to say or believe such a thing is infuriating and repulsive, to say the least.
In closing, The Rust Maidens is a fantastic novel, and I highly suggest you purchasing it. I look forward to what Kiste has in store for us in the future.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste is an incredibly atmospheric Cleveland set horror fantasy. The way the author explores decay in its many forms is fascinating as is the transformation from girl to woman and even other. I'm going to have to read more from this fellow Ohioan in the future.
This was a massive surprise! I can't say if I've ever read a horror novel before, and I had a great time. Strong feminist and unionist themes, with a really well constructed plot and clearly defined perspectives as you move back and forward between 1980 and late 00s. Definitely a bit melodramatic at points, but they're teenagers and it's horror, so it worked.