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effingunicorns's reviews
373 reviews
Sleep No More by Seanan McGuire
3.5
Honestly it was refreshing to have story circumstances necessitate skipping the recap. The bonus novella at the end killed my momentum, though, or I would have posted this sooner.
Welcome to Dead House by R.L. Stine
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
Decided to go for a nostalgic reread since I'm apparently so invested in horror and horror-adjacent stories this year, and the first thing that struck me was how short it is??? I guess it suddenly makes sense that R.L. Stine was able to churn these out so fast. The actual story is still pretty solid, hitting classic horror beats softly enough that I can see how it must've been perfect for a recovering scaredy-cat like I was when I read the series as a kid. I've got the next couple books in the original series order queued up, so we'll see if that quality persists.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
A part of me is gnashing my teeth over certain deliberate uncertainties that persist through to the end, but the core answers are solid enough, and I enjoyed the way some of the smaller ones proved pretty banal in the moment, only made tragic or poignant through time or the reader's perspective.
Also there's giant, horrifying abominations, so that's cool.
Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
dark
mysterious
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Honestly, if I'd known I was going to be this engrossed, I would've skipped straight to the omnibus.
Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I didn't find this book scary so much as three parts fun to one part bullshit--sort of like how sometimes Stephen King adds an unnecessary secondary twist to whatever evil thing is menacing the protagonist of a given book. If you've ever watched cable ghost-hunting shows with any dedication, it's easy to settle in right from the start, because DiLouie's got the personality types down pat, and that stays true even as things veer more and more into "it's three in the morning and I'm listening to LSD-fueled occult conspiracy theories on AM radio" territory. I think I would've enjoyed it more if the premise had been played a little straighter, but ultimately it was still weird and enjoyable, which is all I can really ask.
Cackle by Rachel Harrison
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Honestly, since watching the first season of Mayfair Witches I've been jonesing for witches whose powers actually do something while belonging wholly to them, and this book scratched that itch admirably. I've been conditioned by horror to feel leery about the context around Annie ultimately embracing her power, but really, when in the course of the book did she or Sophie do anything irreversibly horrible? When did they do anything unreasonable? The circumstances Lynn decides to dislike Annie over feel really specifically like writing off a neurodiverse person because they're being a little Too Weird, too, which kills my sympathy for her. I'd pick Ralph any day.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol
White Horse by Erika T. Wurth
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I'm honestly still trying to wrap my head around how I feel about this book, but it was definitely a solid read. A lot of harsh realities intersect to form the playing field, and the mysticism is down to earth while still feeling real and consequential, as opposed to "oh, this is all just a hallucinatory framework for people to deal with their immense grief/trauma, and also I am very clever!" (Yes, I'm still bitter about The Midnight Club.)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, Alcohol, and Pedophilia
Minor: Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, and Drug abuse
The Husky & His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 2 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou
2.75
This volume just barely skims over what I feel is some pretty important character development in favor of indulging in a fanfic trope that's frankly jarring, given the story's overall tone, but it actually feels like we've moved forward by the end, and I'm curious to see if my suspicions about the villain's identity are correct or if we've been deliberately misled. Also: ✨emotional vulnerability✨
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Anne Rice is two for two in telling a story with a strong first half that collapses into utter boredom for the rest of the book. The blatant setup for Queen of the Damned near the end did pick things up again, but it was about two hundred pages too late to save the story it was actually a part of. It was also interesting to see all the positive-sounding talk of godlessness, given Rice's veering hard into Christianity later in life.
I'm sure as a teenager I adored the whole "actually Lestat was (mostly) a good guy the entire time" thing, but as an adult I've read the exact same fanfic too many times to consider this a particularly good execution. It does make me appreciate the IWTV show writers more, that they read all this and then still kept Lestat so horrible, but presented as-is it feels kind of like a narcissist trying to convince you that he's only ever been a victim here and it's the rest of the world that's wrong.
Ultimately, I'm super glad I only committed to reading the first three books instead of giving in to the urge to buy the whole series--I don't think I could take a gajillion more pages of this guy telling his own story.
I'm sure as a teenager I adored the whole "actually Lestat was (mostly) a good guy the entire time" thing, but as an adult I've read the exact same fanfic too many times to consider this a particularly good execution. It does make me appreciate the IWTV show writers more, that they read all this and then still kept Lestat so horrible, but presented as-is it feels kind of like a narcissist trying to convince you that he's only ever been a victim here and it's the rest of the world that's wrong.
Ultimately, I'm super glad I only committed to reading the first three books instead of giving in to the urge to buy the whole series--I don't think I could take a gajillion more pages of this guy telling his own story.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Incest