A review by fearsickness
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

i have several bones to pick with this book, but my biggest issues are:

1. the writing is just endless, often nonsensical, similes. everything is compared to something else, with no break to fully process the imagery and take in what you're reading. it feels like khaw got too caught up in trying to be witty and evocative that they forgot to actually add substance to their prose. at a point it becomes monotonous.
2. the attempt at tongue-in-cheek meta commentary on horror conventions just felt wildly out of place. it wasn't very funny, and nothing was subverted.
   everyone you think is going to die dies,
   and it's all given away about midway through the story. the tropes being commented on also do not mesh well against the backdrop of japanese "horror", and what i would argue is a big mishandling/misunderstanding of youkai folklore. doesn't help that the tropes are also somewhat outdated, and the narrative plays into tropes worse than the ones characters comment on.

overall, i'm sure there are people who will enjoy this. it has the feel of a ghost story for a reader who is just making their first foray into the horror genre. i really wanted to enjoy this, because i love and appreciate horror authors of color, but it just fell very flat for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Mental illness, Blood, and Death

i think it kind of sucks that one of the side characters is a darker skinned woman of color who is painted as an airheaded mean girl, and that the one white man in the group

gets to die as something of a martyr.

as stated in my review, khaw plays into many tropes that are just as bad as, if not worse than, the ones characters comment on out loud in the narrative.