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A review by c_alexander
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
Did not finish book. Stopped at 39%.
Found the writing style to be a little too repetitive, and the characters didn’t feel fully fleshed out. Got told details about the protagonist without ever experiencing them. The actual plot was also a bit vague sometimes in favour of the protagonists inner world - eg it wasn’t even clear at the start that it was the two character’s first time meeting which is an important detail
The description of women, physically, in general was a little uncomfortable. Some parts
parts also read like the author just found out about the word “dyke” and was excited to show it off, yet despite that there wasn’t really exploration into the experience or even existence of transmasc lesbians? Which seemed a bit antithetical
Also struggled with the reliance on fanfiction + ao3 as a plot device. It’s clear this was written by an archivist who has a deep passion for the craft, but the particular way fandom was used to explore this really fell flat. The TV show the protagonist is involved in the fandom of also had a LOT of excerpts and long descriptions of what happened in it - it felt very much like that was a seperate story the author also wanted to tell, but it didn’t run parallel to the story of Dead Collections, we just got random chunks of it
It definitely read like the love interest was going to realise they’re genderqueer and the joking/hinting about this was really stale/stunted/awkward
Usually love work that is queer in structure/form/style as well as in storytelling, and the autobiographical feel of the narrative was interesting, but found I was forcing myself to get through each chapter of this
The description of women, physically, in general was a little uncomfortable. Some parts
parts also read like the author just found out about the word “dyke” and was excited to show it off, yet despite that there wasn’t really exploration into the experience or even existence of transmasc lesbians? Which seemed a bit antithetical
Also struggled with the reliance on fanfiction + ao3 as a plot device. It’s clear this was written by an archivist who has a deep passion for the craft, but the particular way fandom was used to explore this really fell flat. The TV show the protagonist is involved in the fandom of also had a LOT of excerpts and long descriptions of what happened in it - it felt very much like that was a seperate story the author also wanted to tell, but it didn’t run parallel to the story of Dead Collections, we just got random chunks of it
It definitely read like the love interest was going to realise they’re genderqueer and the joking/hinting about this was really stale/stunted/awkward
Usually love work that is queer in structure/form/style as well as in storytelling, and the autobiographical feel of the narrative was interesting, but found I was forcing myself to get through each chapter of this
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Death, Transphobia, and Injury/Injury detail