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readingpicnic's review against another edition
2.0
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Titan Books for providing me with a digital ARC of this book.
Firstly, the plant and mushroom descriptions in this book were so incredibly interesting. Seeing the way that the main character built a body with plants that react in different ways to touch was very cool. I love fungal horror books, and I think the premise of this story was very creative and interesting. Although I understand why this book is compared to Mexican Gothic, I think that their similarities end with them both including fungal horror due to some weird racialized comments that I mention later in my review. Mexican Gothic engages with race, eugenics, and colonialism in such a deep and interesting way, whereas this book…does not.
I did have a lot of issues with this book, mainly with the characters’ actions not making sense to me, or their characters just being inconsistent with how they thought and acted. There were many times when Simon or Gregor would just take a complete 180 in how they view Chloe, and it never made sense to me why their minds had changed so suddenly. The characters also felt pretty flat to me unfortunately, so I felt a disconnect between myself and the story while I was reading, which definitely tamped down my enjoyment. I got the impression while reading that the author wasn’t taking the story that seriously while writing it because it felt so jokey most of the time while I was reading it, even in scenes where that didn’t seem appropriate for the moment. He was also noticeably overusing the word “queer” in a derogatory way, probably as a nod to the queerness in the story, but he did it too much to the point where I got annoyed. The scenes between Chloe and Jennifer were pretty great, and I liked their tension and chemistry, especially in that final scene with them! On the other hand, I sensed no chemistry between Simon and Gregor and their relationship didn’t make much sense to me (which was maybe the point?)
There were also some Orientalist undertones throughout this story with Gregor, a white guy, going to Sumatra to “discover” the magical/sentient fungus that he takes home by tricking a sultan into thinking it’s hallucinogenic (and implying that the sultan may have consumed it and died so that Gregor could steal it)?? He then goes on to exoticize the fungus and Chloe for the remainder of the story, referring to it as the “oriental fungus” and “grotesque arabesque.” There was also a scene where Chloe was trying to sing and he said “her notes were a long way away from Gregor’s Western diatonic major scale. Her warble was heavily ornamented with chromatic grace notes and weird resonances, more at home in an exotic call-to-prayer than in a bel canto singing lesson.” Like…huh? I couldn’t tell if this Orientalism and exoticization was intentional because Gregor is an unlikeable main character, or if the author was just unconsciously including weird colonialist attitudes. Either way, it felt gross to read these types of phrases as the story didn’t seem critical of their use.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Gore, Murder, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, and Animal cruelty
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