A review by augmentedaugust
The Afterlife by Ksenia Anske

4.0

I feel like you can't review each book individually as it is really one continuous story, so I will review them all in one.

Ksenia Anske writes with her guts and her heart. The way she describes emotions is both poetic and stunningly accurate. She manages to convey how messy and confusing they are; how we can simultaneously experience profound loathing and profound love.

The characters are real. They have dimension. There is so much buried in this book it was delightful to construct in my head ideas of what Ksenia could have been trying to say, and revelling in my power as a reader to create my own reality.

The metaphor of sirens and siren hunters, the issues of gender so transparent in their roles in the book... It made my belly feel wriggly with intrigue and intelligence.

It was just so face slappingly great to see fiction that still has a fairly low blender level, but still creates a beautifully rich alternate world.

Death. Family. Men. Women. Abuse. Love. So much going on in three excellent books.

The ending was, admittedly, contrived, but was entirely and completely appropriate.

Highly recommend this series.