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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I would have given this a full five stars if "The Beauty" was the only story included in this short volume. However, the additional story at the end was so confusing (and I would like to claim I'm not easily confused? But maybe I am) and also tedious, that I did take away one star. Still, The Beauty is such a grotesque and beautiful story, I highly recommend fans of Annihilation and Mother! to check out this book
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The Beauty - More accurate rating: 5/10
Setting: a fungal disease infects women's wombs and kills 'em off. An unspecified amount of time later, in a small, isolated community, the remaining men come across shrooms growing out of their female relatives' graves. Shortly after that observation, said shrooms emerge out of the ground, transformed into full blown shroom-women... and start "humming" after the menz, hungry for their "love". Yeah, you read that right.
This is one thousand percent weird fiction but, beyond the weird – not to mention body horror – factor of, ya know, horny shroom-women and:a strange, rather on-the-nose gender (kind of) and reproductive role reversal involving dudes wearing dresses (because reasons, I guess), male "pregnancies", and said males then feeding their shroom babbies from a thigh-teat that the shroom-women also fuck them through (because reasons once again, I guess)... I didn't really get much in terms of deeper world-building or theming. Lots of readers seem to think there's feminist theming here, to do with gender and sexual dynamics... and suure, I guess I can kind of see the, ahem, tentative spores of that. But also not really. There was an interesting – and certainly original – idea here, but also a rather poor, and thus underwhelming execution of said idea.
Peace, Pipe – More accurate rating: 6/10
Setting: a woman is quarantined after a disastrously failed mission involving first contact with sentient beaver- and tree-like alien beings, and starts conversing with what she believes to be a pipe containing a sentient alien water-like being (or something to that general effect, I think) – who is also, presumably, quarantined in the same facility.
I thought this second short story was marginally better than The Beauty, but it wasn't really anything to write home about either. There's some baseline theming on communication, connection and transcending difference... towards a state of un-differentiation? I might be reaching here, but "hive-minding" was definitely a thing in Whiteley's Skyward Inn, which I didn't really like – in part, precisely, because it featured a positive portrayal of ego loss/hive-minding/undifferentiated oneness. And there was just the merest hint of that in The Beauty as well, for that matter. But, overall, I guess Peace, Pipe was just fine, hence the slightly higher rating.
Either way, I think I'm done with Whiteley's writing. Something about her narrative choices, themes of interest, and prose style just doesn't quite work for me. With the latter, specifically, it strangely feels like it should, even that it will until the last minute when it veers into something that just does not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Setting: a fungal disease infects women's wombs and kills 'em off. An unspecified amount of time later, in a small, isolated community, the remaining men come across shrooms growing out of their female relatives' graves. Shortly after that observation, said shrooms emerge out of the ground, transformed into full blown shroom-women... and start "humming" after the menz, hungry for their "love". Yeah, you read that right.
This is one thousand percent weird fiction but, beyond the weird – not to mention body horror – factor of, ya know, horny shroom-women and:
Peace, Pipe – More accurate rating: 6/10
Setting: a woman is quarantined after a disastrously failed mission involving first contact with sentient beaver- and tree-like alien beings, and starts conversing with what she believes to be a pipe containing a sentient alien water-like being (or something to that general effect, I think) – who is also, presumably, quarantined in the same facility.
I thought this second short story was marginally better than The Beauty, but it wasn't really anything to write home about either. There's some baseline theming on communication, connection and transcending difference... towards a state of un-differentiation? I might be reaching here, but "hive-minding" was definitely a thing in Whiteley's Skyward Inn, which I didn't really like – in part, precisely, because it featured a positive portrayal of ego loss/hive-minding/undifferentiated oneness. And there was just the merest hint of that in The Beauty as well, for that matter. But, overall, I guess Peace, Pipe was just fine, hence the slightly higher rating.
Either way, I think I'm done with Whiteley's writing. Something about her narrative choices, themes of interest, and prose style just doesn't quite work for me. With the latter, specifically, it strangely feels like it should, even that it will until the last minute when it veers into something that just does not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Sexual content, Violence, Pregnancy
Moderate: Confinement
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Genocide, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Kinda TERF-y
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Sexual assault, Violence, Pregnancy