A review by mh_doma
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

1.0

Disappointing to say the least. This novella has an attention-grabbing dystopian premise with potential to be steeped with social commentary. However, all that it delivers is poor execution filled with flat characters, disengaging writing, and a focus on shocking readers instead of delivering a meaningful narrative. Horror can be such a powerful genre when written with purpose. While the horror here is related to social issues—racism, misogyny, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, animal cruelty, and much more—it does not accomplish much because it only delves into these social issues on a surface-level and because of its quantity comes off more like torture porn. The protagonist is bland and contradicting in terms of morals chapter to chapter and not in a way that feels narratively satisfying or intentional. He was honestly one of the most poorly written protagonists I have read in a long time, and it is not because he is deeply unlikable. Unlikeable protagonists can be phenomenal—when written well. The writing is meant to be clinical, which could be a compelling writing device to use in such a narrative, but instead it comes off as boring, non-descriptive (except when detailing gruesomeness), and with awkward transitions and unclear indicators of which character is doing/saying what. These issues might be a result of translation, but they might also not be. Most of the time/pacing was wasted on worldbuilding details that were seldom revisited and seemed to exist only to shock/disturb instead of creating any narrative substance. Many characters were never revisited and several subplots were not fulfilled. The narrative itself contains a lot of holes/contradictions too, and there is massive time skip that baffled me beyond belief. There is so much racist and ableist thought that is unchallenged or questioned in the narrative and the treatment of women in the narrative is abysmal and not in a way that feels fully self-aware or intentional, again, lending the narrative more toward torture porn than meaningful social commentary. I could honestly keep going and am avoiding getting too specific because if I do then this review will be longer than I want it to be and there are a lot of phenomenal reviews already out there that point to where this novella failed. While premise contains so much potential for a powerful, thought-provoking narrative, it does not even begin to explore it adequately and instead has readers follow the most mediocre protagonist while cramming in as much disturbing material as possible without purpose or justification. May this be my only 1-star review of the year because I can't let a book let me down like this again anytime soon.