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A review by entazis
Saltblood by T.C. Parker
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This book is so good, it gave me the chills reading it! In the world where one wrong sentence on your social media can "intice" rage of enough people, you can get thrown into a very private and very isolated island prison, where you have absolutely no contact with outside world. Cut out like that from the society, put into a giant cage, this "criminals" are left on their own.
The premise is very interesting, thought-provoking, and smart--showing us the worst way current trends in social media, surveillance society, data mining and sharing, invasions of privacy, private prison industrial complex, and outrage culture could end. The scariest parts of our current reality, from acepting all sorts of terms and conditions on phones just to acces things like gallery, to public shaming of people we perceived did something morally questionable, in this book gets completely new and terrifying dimensions. T. C. Parker gives us a bleak and horrifying look into the dystopian world of digital Panopticon, and I haven't even touched on the folklore monster yet.
It's so easy for me to love this book. It's a horror book that plays with some of my favorite elements: folklore (I would definitely call this folk horror, I don't know if it's marketed like that but it has everything: the isolation and loneliness, the closed society with weird rituals and sacrifices to the monsters of folk tales, the power of stories and belief), very relevant topics, evolution of Panopticon theory, criticism of late capitalist society and multinational corporations that feel very old fashion sci-fi (which I had a whole lecture on) but that doesn't make it less true. And it's sapphic!
There's the sense of complete helplessness through whole book and it has nothing to do with supernatural monsters. But it's also a lot of fun to read. And I did read a part of it on a beach, which was a great decision.
The premise is very interesting, thought-provoking, and smart--showing us the worst way current trends in social media, surveillance society, data mining and sharing, invasions of privacy, private prison industrial complex, and outrage culture could end. The scariest parts of our current reality, from acepting all sorts of terms and conditions on phones just to acces things like gallery, to public shaming of people we perceived did something morally questionable, in this book gets completely new and terrifying dimensions. T. C. Parker gives us a bleak and horrifying look into the dystopian world of digital Panopticon, and I haven't even touched on the folklore monster yet.
It's so easy for me to love this book. It's a horror book that plays with some of my favorite elements: folklore (I would definitely call this folk horror, I don't know if it's marketed like that but it has everything: the isolation and loneliness, the closed society with weird rituals and sacrifices to the monsters of folk tales, the power of stories and belief), very relevant topics, evolution of Panopticon theory, criticism of late capitalist society and multinational corporations that feel very old fashion sci-fi (which I had a whole lecture on) but that doesn't make it less true. And it's sapphic!
There's the sense of complete helplessness through whole book and it has nothing to do with supernatural monsters. But it's also a lot of fun to read. And I did read a part of it on a beach, which was a great decision.