Reviews with content warning for Deadnaming - Thirteen Storeys

Reviews tagging 'Deadnaming'

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

27 reviews

rainbowalcremie1995's review

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dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

tldr; The real ghosts were the

capitalism

we met along the way.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this book. I definitely liked it overall, but it took me a while to finish it. I bought the book a few months back, read the first few chapters, put it down for a bit when the pacing got a bit slow, and finally started over and finished the book over the last few weeks.

The fact that the novel consists of twelve different characters’ separate stories that all tie into an overall narrative that concludes in the thirteenth chapter is, in my opinion, both a strength and a weakness. When I was first reading the book, I had a lot of fun getting into the heads of different characters leading vastly different lives from each other. However, since the characters are largely separate from each other until the climax, it also felt like some revelations kept happening over and over. The book is not at all subtle with its anti-capitalist themes, and for certain characters, I felt like their chapters consisted more of reiterating those themes than focusing on the personal story of the character. The middle chapters struggled most with this balance, and was around where I’d taken a break from reading the first time I read this book. However, I feel that the chapters at the beginning and end of the book did a better job of giving its point of view character an actual arc in addition to contributing to the overall plot.

I have two chapters I would consider my favorites. The first is Carter’s chapter, which works as a great standalone story about an awful, awful person becoming a victim to something he created. Something I love about that chapter is that

Donna is basically working as intended and taking over his life, creating someone to be a better person in his place if he won’t do it himself

. I feel like the chapter is even more timely in 2023 than it was in 2020, with ChatGPT and AI generated art being such hot topics. My other favorite chapter is Janek’s. His is closer to the end of the book, so it's more tied to the main plot. I love the imagery of him

breaking into the middle of the building, seeing the pipes inside, and deciding to join the bodies he’d been following

. Another part of the reason I like this chapter is that Janek feels more personally connected to the harm Tobias Fell has caused than some of the other characters.

Janek went through a traumatic work place accident similar to the ones the ghosts he’s following were victims of, and I found that to be a stronger character motivation than the vague concept of people suffering somewhere else.

I feel like the ending of the book wrapped things up a little neatly, but I didn’t mind. I loved the scenes of all these different characters we’ve been in the heads of getting to interact with each other in a strange setting. It might have been sort of anticlimactic and convenient to

have the characters just use the ghosts they’ve been haunted by to each thematically beat Tobias to death, but it was still pretty fun

. As a note, I was reading the ebook version and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I’d purchased both together, but the audiobook’s thirteenth chapter was different than the ebook in that the audiobook was told in present tense instead of past tense, and each character’s narration was in first person. I’m not sure if that change is strictly for the audiobook version or if there’s another ebook edition that also uses those changes. There were a few words and sentences added and subtracted in addition to the tense and POV changes, but overall, there weren’t any story changes, so you won’t be missing anything important regardless of which version you decide to read/listen to.

As a last aside, I (like everyone else) listened to the Magnus Archives podcast sometime before reading this book. I liked the podcast, but I never considered myself a huge fan of it, and I fell behind and never finished it, either. If you’re a big fan of the podcast, though, I will say this book is pretty similar in tone and themes, with both using the real world horrors of capitalism and class divides in addition to the supernatural elements.

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gracecrandall's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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evelphysicist's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

A tense and intriguing read. I really enjoyed the style of this book.

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erakkorapu's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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hannanni41's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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ambers's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

I'm a big fan of this author's brand of horror, so while I admit the slow pace and the whole "the real horror is capitalism" underpinning

(with a deeply cathartic finale in regards to our rich bitch landlord)

may not work for everyone, I LOVED this book. I should also add I listened to the audiobook version, which really added a lot to it. For example - a trans character who is, I believe, voiced by a trans actor!

Each chapter is both self contained and connected to the main plot/the other chapters, which is a lot of fun to engage with. The characters are all unique and well-written, although I did have my favorites. I actually kept some notes on my phone while I listened too, which helped a lot for recall. This book also made me talk out loud to myself, multiple times - sometimes because something horrified me, and sometimes, as strange as it sounds, because something delighted me (maybe I'm easy to win over, but I was THRILLED to have a character mention his binder, and I distinctly recall reacting out loud to that one).

I do see some comments saying there were parts that were difficult to get through, and while I see where they're coming from, I don't personally agree. I loved the slow burn to the ending, and I found it suitably creepy throughout. I would definitely recommend this to horror fans, especially if they enjoy blatant leftie theory in their horror (I certainly do).

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eliza_flamingo1's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

I loved the horror in this book, I suppose my only complaint is that I could have gone for more time getting to know the characters. It’s still very good as is but sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all of the different characters.

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