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A review by gorgonine
The Broken Room by Peter Clines
5.0
31 October 2022
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars. Look, I would not re-read this and that's what it generally takes to get the full five stars, but there's nothing wrong with it and it's really good you guys go read it.
CW: human experimentation, child abuse, gore, body horror, mindfuck horror, terrible border crossings, human tragedies galore, plenty of murder but it's cathartic honestly
1. Girl escaping from military research facility finds retired special ops badass to help her stay out of the clutches of the retrieval squad. Retired badass is weirded out because the guy who's marker she's calling in was supposed to have died years ago, but he goes along with it. On the way, he discovers more about how fubar the whole situation is (and it's pretty fubar), has to deal with whole-ass squads of security experts, and a fair amount of sci-fi horror. (Hector's having a pretty terrible week, y'all, and Natalie's situation is somehow worse.)
2. This book was really good. And I say this as a person who's only mostly fond of horror and not at all fond of thrillers. (It's a sci-fi horror-thriller.) A lot of horrible things happen to a lot of innocent people (mostly kids, but there's plenty of misery to go around) and there are plenty of evil scientists. I say evil, but I mean more banal evil than mustache-twirly evil. People who have a higher purpose (◔_◔) doing things while are horrific in the more immediate sense. Add in some really horrible race-coded dehumanization. Suffice to say, the book needed to end with a massacre in order for us to have a satisfying story.
3. Idk what it is about badass girldads that get to me. it was true for Spy x Family, it's true for this one. Combine parenthood with a person who would not be the ideal image of a parent and a child who is far from normal and yo get like- the best found family narratives. Found family is the best.
4. Hector is just. Such a dad. I mean yes, badass Special Ops guy etc etc, but this is someone in a very tense situation who is stressed and has been depressed for years and is saddled with a very strange girl dragging along a lot of problems in her wake. But the way he interacts with Natalie, and the way you can slowly see her reliance on him going from being based on desperation to being based on trust is just. Gah. It gets to me. It kills me every time when people thrust into parental roles end up doing their best because there's a kid in front of them and taking care of that kid is what you do.
5. That ending scene was a biiit huhwhat to me because I think but I was sniffling too much to pay much attention to that. Story themes matter more than exact sci fi mechanics and all that. Plus, the last conversation between Tm and Natalie was heartbreaking.
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars. Look, I would not re-read this and that's what it generally takes to get the full five stars, but there's nothing wrong with it and it's really good you guys go read it.
CW: human experimentation, child abuse, gore, body horror, mindfuck horror, terrible border crossings, human tragedies galore, plenty of murder but it's cathartic honestly
1. Girl escaping from military research facility finds retired special ops badass to help her stay out of the clutches of the retrieval squad. Retired badass is weirded out because the guy who's marker she's calling in was supposed to have died years ago, but he goes along with it. On the way, he discovers more about how fubar the whole situation is (and it's pretty fubar), has to deal with whole-ass squads of security experts, and a fair amount of sci-fi horror. (Hector's having a pretty terrible week, y'all, and Natalie's situation is somehow worse.)
2. This book was really good. And I say this as a person who's only mostly fond of horror and not at all fond of thrillers. (It's a sci-fi horror-thriller.) A lot of horrible things happen to a lot of innocent people (mostly kids, but there's plenty of misery to go around) and there are plenty of evil scientists. I say evil, but I mean more banal evil than mustache-twirly evil. People who have a higher purpose (◔_◔) doing things while are horrific in the more immediate sense. Add in some really horrible race-coded dehumanization. Suffice to say, the book needed to end with a massacre in order for us to have a satisfying story.
3. Idk what it is about badass girldads that get to me. it was true for Spy x Family, it's true for this one. Combine parenthood with a person who would not be the ideal image of a parent and a child who is far from normal and yo get like- the best found family narratives. Found family is the best.
4. Hector is just. Such a dad. I mean yes, badass Special Ops guy etc etc, but this is someone in a very tense situation who is stressed and has been depressed for years and is saddled with a very strange girl dragging along a lot of problems in her wake. But the way he interacts with Natalie, and the way you can slowly see her reliance on him going from being based on desperation to being based on trust is just. Gah. It gets to me. It kills me every time when people thrust into parental roles end up doing their best because there's a kid in front of them and taking care of that kid is what you do.
5. That ending scene was a biiit huhwhat to me because I think