Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Dead Collections

Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

12 reviews

c_alexander's review against another edition

Found the writing style to be a little too repetitive, and the characters didn’t feel fully fleshed out. Got told details about the protagonist without ever experiencing them. The actual plot was also a bit vague sometimes in favour of the protagonists inner world - eg it wasn’t even clear at the start that it was the two character’s first time meeting which is an important detail

The description of women, physically, in general was a little uncomfortable. Some parts
parts also read like the author just found out about the word “dyke” and was excited to show it off, yet despite that there wasn’t really exploration into the experience or even existence of transmasc lesbians? Which seemed a bit antithetical

Also struggled with the reliance on fanfiction + ao3 as a plot device. It’s clear this was written by an archivist who has a deep passion for the craft, but the particular way fandom was used to explore this really fell flat. The TV show the protagonist is involved in the fandom of also had a LOT of excerpts and long descriptions of what happened in it - it felt very much like that was a seperate story the author also wanted to tell, but it didn’t run parallel to the story of Dead Collections, we just got random chunks of it

It definitely read like the love interest was going to realise they’re genderqueer and the joking/hinting about this was really stale/stunted/awkward

Usually love work that is queer in structure/form/style as well as in storytelling, and the autobiographical feel of the narrative was interesting, but found I was forcing myself to get through each chapter of this

Content Warnings

catch__up's review

Go to review page

hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

Content Warnings

gabefish's review

Go to review page

dark funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

Using vampirism and fandom as a lens to view queer, trans, and disabled bodies.

Content Warnings

amy_reading_23's review

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.75

This book is an interesting one, and it definitley got me thinking. It doesn't have much of a plot but is more like a slice of life. Its about a trans vampire archivist falling in love with another queer person whilst also working through depression and questioning the liminality between life and death.

It reads more like experimental literary fiction than fantasy - the vampirism is used as a metaphor for chronic illness, living in a trans body, and being othered. If you are questioning your gender or identity then there are definitley bits of this books that can feel quite affirming. Overall it is quite a challenging book though, I wouldn't read it just for fun, but there were elements I liked.

Content Warnings

pobi's review

Go to review page

dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

A very good book, but a bit too sad and existential (and romancey) for my taste tbh. I liked the way it played with form, and it's nice to read a book about trans masc people!

Content Warnings

audreyxine's review

Go to review page

dark funny medium-paced

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

2.0

I could never really get into this one. I liked the characters, but they seemed to lack chemistry to me. I would have liked to delve more into the themes of grief for some of the other characters. My biggest criticism is the Feet of Clay bits were very boring to me and distracted me from the plot. They seemed unnecessary and disrupted the flow of the story. I enjoyed the dark, mundane, dusty world that Fellman created but I would have liked to see more unfold.

Content Warnings