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lolajh's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
A confusing and beautiful mess! Adolescent women in a post-apocalyptic world? Love it!!! And the variety in the perspectives, with Kora being right in the thick of the flu whilst also being a descendant of the person who caused it and Kirilow being so far away from it in the beginning with a mutated species of humans that directly rely on each other to survive, are only female and reproduce by parthenogenesis!!! Honestly the Grist sisters in whole were just so interesting, I would’ve loved for it to delve into gender and how it would be experienced so different with the complete absence of men, but honestly I get why the author didn’t; the nonchalantness of women being so predominant in their species had such a wonderful effect in itself.
I don’t know if I’m fully satisfied with the endingwith it being so open and will-they-won’t-they regarding Persephone’s state and what was going on, if they were all in their uploaded states or this was their actual being (maybe it was obvious but I didn’t understand a clear answer to that lol) but the journey to get there was enjoyable enough to not worry about it too much. I love how the plot never had a straight and predictable path and always twisted and turned every single chapter, I’m so sad this isn’t a series 😫 In love with this world.
I don’t know if I’m fully satisfied with the ending
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Animal death, Gore, Death, Body horror, and Drug use
Minor: Sexual harassment
keenanmaree's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Excrement, Genocide, Kidnapping, and Violence
booksthatburn's review
adventurous
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
The Tiger Flu is a cyberpunk fever dream built on family, sisterhood, desperation, and blood. Visceral and evocative, capturing the way dreams taken too far become everyone's nightmare.
There are two MCs, one of which is trying to do the best thing for her family even though they're basically all dying or dead; going through the motions because even the motions still matter, damn it. The other is in a holding pattern, repulsed by thoughts of the past in a way that denies the reader knowledge of it as well. The combination of their alternating perspectives helped to clarify details which are unique to the setting, since there was often one perspective from which the thing was new and therefore we'd get a bit more of an explanation than from the character for whom that details was commonplace and unremarkable.
I care a lot about how books feel to read, if you follow my reviews you probably already know that. I love the way this book uses words which are just enough like modern words for the meaning to be apparent, but far enough away that it feels like you’re being thrown into a space that’s very far away from current reality. I caught at least some of the references, but I'm sure there's even more that I missed, they're woven into the lexicon of the world in a way that feels familiar without needing to be understood as referential. The language felt visceral in a way where it just felt so good to read, even when what was happening was frequently full of gore and sometimes drenched in death. The book expected me to keep up but also made it generally easy to do so without resorting to infodumping. The world is described through the way the characters interact with it, forming itself by coming into focus as they move through it, this style allowed it to establish a fantastic and detailed setting without every quite pausing to explain. I couldn't tell you what most of the places actually looked like, but I was pulled in by how they felt as spaces in which the MCs exist.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that if you like Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir you'll probably love The Tiger Flu. They're very different stories, but they share a lot of the things that make them both engaging and fantastic in how they're told. I don't know if that recommendation works in the other direction, because in Gideon The Ninth you're really not supposed to get what's going on for a large part of the book and that's not a thing in The Tiger Flu.
There are two MCs, one of which is trying to do the best thing for her family even though they're basically all dying or dead; going through the motions because even the motions still matter, damn it. The other is in a holding pattern, repulsed by thoughts of the past in a way that denies the reader knowledge of it as well. The combination of their alternating perspectives helped to clarify details which are unique to the setting, since there was often one perspective from which the thing was new and therefore we'd get a bit more of an explanation than from the character for whom that details was commonplace and unremarkable.
I care a lot about how books feel to read, if you follow my reviews you probably already know that. I love the way this book uses words which are just enough like modern words for the meaning to be apparent, but far enough away that it feels like you’re being thrown into a space that’s very far away from current reality. I caught at least some of the references, but I'm sure there's even more that I missed, they're woven into the lexicon of the world in a way that feels familiar without needing to be understood as referential. The language felt visceral in a way where it just felt so good to read, even when what was happening was frequently full of gore and sometimes drenched in death. The book expected me to keep up but also made it generally easy to do so without resorting to infodumping. The world is described through the way the characters interact with it, forming itself by coming into focus as they move through it, this style allowed it to establish a fantastic and detailed setting without every quite pausing to explain. I couldn't tell you what most of the places actually looked like, but I was pulled in by how they felt as spaces in which the MCs exist.
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that if you like Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir you'll probably love The Tiger Flu. They're very different stories, but they share a lot of the things that make them both engaging and fantastic in how they're told. I don't know if that recommendation works in the other direction, because in Gideon The Ninth you're really not supposed to get what's going on for a large part of the book and that's not a thing in The Tiger Flu.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Death
Moderate: Cannibalism, Sexual assault, Violence, Kidnapping, and Bullying
Minor: Animal death, Sexism, and Homophobia
CW for sexism, sexual assault, animal death (not depicted), surgery, amputation, gore, cannibalism, violence, kidnapping, bullying, homophobia, vomit, plague, major character death, death.
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