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gothhotel's reviews
224 reviews
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
4.0
Exhausting. Dull at first, then utterly vital from about 40% to the end. Baru’s brilliance is at times overblown and the early part of the book feels like watching a board game unfold. Then it turns - around Radaszic’s letter, iykyk - and, oh, oh. You know where it’s going and you have to watch it go there, heart in throat, hoping against hope until you sink. The style is epic poetry but the spirit is historical materialism. Basically this book is like getting the shit beaten out of you. Respect, but not sure I recommend. The next book has mixed reviews and I am tired, so may or may not continue.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
5.0
Essential reading. A grind, for the most part, but not by any fault of the author. Predictably, the story of eviction is brutal, bleak, unrelenting. Here it’s laid out in sharp detail, backed by strong research and presented without sensationalization or sanctimony. The writing is clear and effective, with a few minor exceptions (“the sky was the color of a flat beer”? really?). It works. And it works on you: I had to take multiple breaks just to breathe and get away from the constant parade of systems designed to fail. Hostile bureaucracy, tight-fisted “welfare” programs, the impossible and unending calculus of staying afloat, and simple shit luck, just when you find a rhythm they cut your hours and you’re back out. Desmond puts the blame where it belongs, but the policy arguments don’t come out much until the end: the stories say it all.
Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen
2.0
I came for a fun, dark queer romp about a violent she-ape and got half an okay book that devolved into smug nonsense with a weirdly ecofascist undertone. The writing is choppy, less than half the jokes land, every beat gets dragged out too long, and looking back it feels stapled together. The moralizing logic of the 80s slasher is alive and well here. As a gross hairy queer myself I thought I’d like Patricia but she gets so little development compared to her kills that by the end I was like, they should’ve shot that god damn ape.
Two stars for the concept and for the heart it showed in about the first half - and in some very sweet love letters - before its mean streak took over. And because it was quick.
Also: don’t be led astray by reviewers acting like this is super zany. There’s one crazy surreal thing in here and it’s on the cover. Which is cool, but like, I was expecting a lot weirder from the reviews.
Two stars for the concept and for the heart it showed in about the first half - and in some very sweet love letters - before its mean streak took over. And because it was quick.
Also: don’t be led astray by reviewers acting like this is super zany. There’s one crazy surreal thing in here and it’s on the cover. Which is cool, but like, I was expecting a lot weirder from the reviews.