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heroicfrenzies's reviews
4 reviews
Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Maria Dong's debut Liar, Dreamer, Thief is one of those books that demand a review. I always intend to write reviews, but putting aside other priorities to write a review requires much more effort than simply gushing about books privately or giving recommendations as a librarian. But this book is special and I hope to see Dong's name on as many shelves as Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami – people whose work Liar, Dreamer, Thief brings to mind for its twisting mystery and the dream-like quality of the main character’s world.
Let me start off by saying that as a debut, it’s a great novel to get that big push into bookstores and libraries. While Dong has published fiction elsewhere, this is her grand entrance, and very few authors debut with a book with as much heart that lies at the center of Liar, Dreamer, Thief.
It’s easy to talk about books chronologically by mapping out plot and character development, but Liar, Dreamer, Thief, despite the mystery plot, builds not only chronologically as we follow one clue to the next, but also along a Z-axis. It builds outwardly and has readers interacting with the story as presented through interwoven layers of mental illness and the experiences of a struggling, working class second-gen Korean American lesbian. Two things though; first: I don’t recall if Katrina Kim, our main character, explicitly says she’s a lesbian, but her sexuality is at least predominately sapphic; and second: I’m very much an outsider reading about a Korean American character with intersecting identities, struggling with mental health, academic and professional expectations, and shame – so while I’m aware that these are huge themes of the novel, I don’t feel qualified to engage with it extensively or on this platform. I will say, though, that the novel does heavily explore with these themes but they are not the driving force behind the plot of the book, but rather an underlying reality that colors the relationship the character has with her sense of self and her estranged family.
Now, I mention mental illness, and Katrina does clearly exhibit symptoms of various mental illnesses, but in addition to that, she interacts with her world through a lens largely informed by a children’s book that spoke to her when she was young. Due to this, her apartment often changes into a forest setting and those people that she regularly interacts with have anthropomorphic analogs in her imaginings. Despite talking about this from this very objective, pragmatic point-of-view, this imagined world is no less real, either for Katrina or for the novel itself.
It’s this world, in fact, that allows her to navigate the more grounded physical world of Grand Station, IL, and it’s this world, too, that allows readers to meet Katrina half-way when it comes to her paranoia, her assumptions, and what could otherwise be seen as unfounded conclusions.
There are some aspects of the book that feel so real that it’s uncomfortable. The fractal third parties used by private healthcare companies in a Brazil-style machine of bureaucratic monotony, the masked joy of work-filtered friendships, the innate disconnect between people in a regimented work environment where the work itself is easy but the implications of the work being done is what’s crushing soul after soul. It’s this discomfort, though, that makes me yearn for Katrina’s Kitchen Door World, because while I haven’t worked this job (though I have a friend that has worked this exact fucking job), I get it. We weren’t made for this, and we all have our routines in place to make it more bearable. And for some people the “this” and the “it” in that last sentence are jobs, sometimes they’re simply the world we’ve been abandoned in, often without the resources and skills to thrive.
The one complaint I have about the book is hardly a complaint: I desperately wish that there was a companion Mi-Hee and the Mirror-Man book. But maybe “Wow, I wish this book had another book” is too much to ask.
I mentioned Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami, but I would also recommend this to fans of Seanan McGuire’s work, especially the more fantastical Wayward Children series. The fantastical elements really bring the novel to life, and tell so much more about the characters than how they interact in their more mundane world.
This was just a great book that I highly recommend. It was a quick read with a memorable central character, and truly feels like a novel both for and about those adults whose real, private worlds are just a little more fantastical than others.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Death, and Mental illness
Moderate: Ableism and Stalking
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Cancer, and Medical content
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
This book is about a teenager coming to terms with a traumatic event from her past the only way she knows how. The event itself isn’t directly acknowledged of her own volition though, instead she’s accosted by a few people who truly have her well-being at heart, and this itself is nothing but another attack, forcing her to make herself vulnerable in circumstances that they do not allow her to control.
The implication, however, that people can read a letter or essays, such as in this book, and just be able to obviously tell that somebody had been sexually assaulted is flawed. Can things be inferred based on topics, approaches, and perspectives? Sure, but what the initial character does – alerting authorities based on her intuition and nothing else, not once speaking to Jade – is harmful. Accidental, thoughtless harm, sure, but harm nevertheless. I think this exchange in the book, as uncomfortable and heartbreaking as it was to read, was amazing writing. It’s also morally complicated. Everybody involved was trying their hardest to do their best by Jade, and in the moment only presented her with a hostile, untrustworthy environment. And, in the process, it also puts the reader in an uncomfortable position. Do we choose to read Jade as this cool, slasher-obsessed teenager? This hurting, traumatized teenager? Do we read her as a victim? It may seem silly to talk about characters being able to give readers consent, but how do we, as readers, look over a character’s shoulder, peer into their brain, and then categorize them against their genre-savvy will, into a position of forced vulnerability?
I don’t know! Maybe that’s a question for another day.
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I didn’t read Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw until April 2022, 7 months after release. I know exactly how I spent those 7 months – I read some amazing books within that time! – but do I wish I squished this in there with them? Eh, yes and no.
It was released on August 31st, amongst the waning yawns of summer, like attending those first days of school when the hallways still smell stale, anticipating all things Fall, Autumn, and Halloween. I could say this absolutely fits as a Halloween read, but honestly, reading it in the cool, muddy spring felt right. For some people, slashers and horror and weird are a year-long way of life, not a seasonal tradition toasted with pumpkin spice lattes, punch, or brewskies at lazily-costumed Halloween parties.
I don’t know what it is about Halloween, autumn, and the like that monopolizes horror in the public consciousness. We have our seasonal stand-out exceptions, don’t get me wrong, but they are, notably, exceptions.
So, despite loving this book as much as I did, why don’t I wish that I read it sooner? Glad you asked me, me, a few reasons:
- If I did, I probably wouldn’t fully appreciate each book I’ve read individually, I like taking my time with my reads, even the rereads.
- This book deals with some heavy shit, as can be inferred by the list of content warnings. And some people get a seasonal boost to their regular ol’ depression and sometimes heavy shit just feels a whole lot heavier.
- It’s just a kind of book that’s really complemented by a muddy Michigan, I don’t know what to tell you, it just feels like it was the right time to read it.
If My Heart Is a Chainsaw is ever adapted into a film (and fuck, do I wish it was), it would be a summer horror flick. The novel reaches its climax on the 4th of July and yet the summer within the book isn’t a hot, beachy summer, it’s a summer with cool nights and some frigid waters. This realistic Idaho summer is seemingly just as out of place for the genre as our protagonist main character, Jade.
Jade would be hard-pressed to call herself a protagonist, she doesn’t see herself as the ‘final girl’ in her beloved slasher flicks, and that leads to her driving motivation: to help prepare the new girl, the real ‘final girl’-to-be, for the slasher film currently taking place in the small Idaho town of Proofrock.
Whereas most final girls are the intuitive, reserved type who get good grades and live in the perfectly manufactured safety of middle-class suburbia, Jade is a half-Native teen (and even that is presented as ‘imperfect’ because she doesn’t have ties to her Native family, she’s not enrolled, and she’s not even quite sure what tribe, band, or nation she’s from) obsessed with slashers. She has very badly dyed hair and instead of modest skirts or practical jeans, she mostly just wears her work overalls and big-ass combat boots. She’s a greasy horror girl that almost definitely has some kind of infected facial piercing, maybe a self-pierced lip ring. [So, while muddy spring was a great time to read this, I think a better time would have been like, 15 years ago when I was a 17-year-old, mixed-race, teenage horror freak in the suburbs of Detroit, but it’s okay, Mr. Jones, this one’s for the next gen of teenage weirdos, I forgive you, promise].
The point is, is that she doesn’t fit in – not with the kids at school, not with any locals, not with her family – what family she has. She’s a loner and what she has, and has a lot of, is movies. I’m almost embarrassed by how much I identify with this fictional character. Even right down to the fact that the movies are on tape. [At work, when we get donations of VHS tapes, everybody knows to save them for me, I always say, no, horror movies must be watched on tape, it MATTERS, it’s just the right VIBE, dude.]
To be honest, I’m having a difficult time reviewing this, are there issues with it? Sure, if you’re a certain kind of reader.
As somebody who’s never read Ernie Cline (but may or may not know of him from his spoken word days), I’ve seen some reviews that complain about the frequent references to slashers in this book, drawing comparisons between it and Cline’s work. But even though I recognized most of the references, those references are part of the storytelling. Even if you’re not familiar with a specific reference, there’s enough context in the book, especially with the frequent short essay chapters about specific slasher tropes. The references complement the story while also acting as a form of characterization for our main character. The references are what give the story framework if you’re unfamiliar with the genre. I will say, though, that I was glad to find a list of the referenced movies online.
Now, this is where we get into some spoiler-ish territory:
There’s a problem in fiction, especially thrillers generally, where girls and women are sexually assaulted to plot-up the book. Does a man need motivation? Let’s assault his wife/daughter/sister. Does a woman need to be a badass? Well, we can’t have that without some incident that brings out her inner badassdom. And there’s a difference between sexual assault as a cheaply rendered plot device, and a book that is about sexual assault.
This book is about sexual assault.
In the meantime, however, I highly recommend this book. I don’t think any specific movies are required watching to be able to get a handle on the subject or what the book is doing. If you wanted just a single title to get you familiar with the genre, I’d go with Scream (1996). It’s also a self-aware slasher, but it’s accessible, digestible, and also just fun as hell.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Child death, Pedophilia, Deadnaming, Alcohol, Blood, Colonisation, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gore, Murder, Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Classism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Death
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: Rape, Incest, Vomit, and Sexual assault
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
emotional
reflective
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
5.0
Isaac Fellman’s February 22nd release Dead Collections is, at its core, a novel about being a trans man. There are archives, vampires, and movie theaters, but there’s also complicated romance, questions about queer futurity, and misplaced packers.
The descriptions of this book allude to something mysterious happening at the archives where the trans main character, Sol, works (and lives [well, resides]). And while that mysterious something is present in the book, the novel is not a long-lost-tome style academic mystery. This story is present, but the novel itself isn’t about that at all.
Similarly, Elsie, the love interest, is the widow of a writer known for writing a sci-fi television show. When we meet Elsie, she’s donating her late wife’s collection of unpublished writings and correspondences. Sol and Elsie have a fast-paced, steamy romance, but again, this isn’t a dark broody vampire meets a lonely widow romance. That story is also present, but again, not what the novel is about.
The archival mystery and the steamy romance are the more explicit plots that weave through the story, but Dead Collections is ultimately an exploration of trans identity. It maps out the intersectional struggles brought on by being a trans man as well as a vampire, and how they complicate such things as holding down a job, pursuing relationships, and simply maintaining the meat we are all obligated to lug around. The book focuses on the small, practical concerns that Sol faces, and the emphasis on the practical feels real in the same way that many marginalized people are never not aware of their bodies, and how much space those bodies take up. (As something of an aside, Sol refers to his vampirism as an illness, and the comparison here is very apt considering the awareness he has of his condition and the ways in which it drastically impacts him trying to achieve even the most mundane of tasks.) Sol, it seems, is exhausted by simply trying to maintain his life.
In addition to being discriminated against for a myriad of reasons, Sol either has previously found solutions for, or is actively trying to find solutions for medical care, shelter, income, and transportation, with a few of these being problems that arise within the book itself. And, on top of all of this, Sol is then made aware of strange incidents happening to the collections at the archive, and the last third of the book is him trying to solve that problem.
There are things I loved about this book that outweigh most of the criticisms that I have, but for the sake of transparency I do want to touch on those criticisms:
1. I want to note that I really wish this book was longer and spent more time with the mystery aspect, perhaps building it up slower. It’s present earlier in the book, but it doesn’t escalate smoothly. The book feels as if it was cut down to a word count, and so much of the novel was so lovingly rendered that the few clunky bits stand out. (That being said, I’m also a complete slut for the gothic novel, so maybe this is me trying to force it into an unrelated narrative framework)
2.Any other criticisms I have are largely with the character’s way of thinking rather than with the book itself. And that’s not a fault of the book or the author, but a part of the personality of the character himself. In fact, Fellman wrote around Sol’s shortcomings in a delicate and very deliberate way that made reading it feel authentic in its cognitive dissonance. The way Sol finds himself objectifying people and equating body parts (and blood with specific hormone levels) with gender, for example, are uncomfortable to read, but Sol seems to understand these shortcomings.
There are two specific moments that I can recall where this way of thinking made me question Sol’s view of non-medically transitioning trans people (whether by choice or by necessity) and how people present their gender identity. One occurs a couple of times, and it refers to the blood he prefers when he’s at the vampire clinic. Sol prefers men’s blood for the testosterone levels, but this direct correlation between men and testosterone levels is deeply problematic for a slew of obvious reasons. The other incident was a sex scene where, because Sol is gay, he has to imagine facial hair on the person he’s having sex with to be able to imagine them as a man. These thoughts and obstacles can be common for trans people, especially binary trans people who have a somewhat binary sexuality. These thoughts are also uncomfortable because it can be difficult to navigate the overlap of one’s gender and sexuality and how they interact or refuse to complement each other.
Unfortunately, the preference for men’s blood is never interrogated within the book – and is in fact justified when he drinks “women’s” blood and the hormonal shifts that happen because of it – but he at least allows his sexuality to develop in a way that is inclusive of not only cis men. But as I said, these are Sol’s shortcomings as a character; Fellman, as far as I can tell, has not verified that Sol’s assumptions about the hormones in the blood are sound within this universe. If that has been verified elsewhere and I haven’t seen it, however, I will have to return to this review.
One thing that this book demonstrates is that we, trans people, also need to understand that gender is not simply the sum of our various parts, no matter where we are in our transition – which is so often a fallacy shared by cisgender people. Sol’s journey throughout this book bolsters this point and the way he views himself and that character’s gender develops with Sol’s growing self-assurance and confidence.
A short list of things that I love about this book:
• The love interest is big (Fellman doesn’t use the word fat, but Elsie would probably be considered if not fat, then at least overweight);
• Elsie and Sol are both around 40 years old (this is including Sol’s years as a vampire);
• Sol is Jewish (we don’t get nearly enough Jewish vampires, but I can understand why);
• The details given about archival work (gush);
• Exploring trans identity and fandom;
• The specificity of the sex acts (I love how casually the book talks about sex, as well as the conversations involved and how those conversations can take place between people who have gender dysphoria);
• The communication! (The clear setting of boundaries, the respect of those boundaries, the articulation of explicit wants and needs – it was all very refreshing and a great example of how these conversations can happen in real life);
• That cover? *chef’s kiss*
The book is written in a quick, concise style but the internal moments we share with Sol are a bit more languid with denser prose.
I would recommend this book for anybody who has an interest in fandom. Feet of Clay, the fictional television show featured in the book, plays a pretty big part. A lot of YA books have come out in recent years about being in fandom, but there haven’t been nearly as many adult books about fandom that have been traditionally published, especially ones that take place after characters have left fandom spaces.
I would recommend this book to almost every trans man or trans masc person I know, as well as their partners. While the feelings generally associated with being trans or trans masc specifically are far from universal, having so many of those feelings explicitly voiced within a book, with a trans main character who falls in love, is refreshing. There can be so much alienation involved with being trans, and reading a book where the character is always aware of his body feels very very real. Many of the feelings shared in this book are hard to articulate, especially to loved ones who truly want the best for us. But being able to hand somebody the book, and just say “This, this is what it feels like,” is truly a gift.
I think that’s what makes this book so special: in addition to Sol being an archivist, his vampire body also exists as an archive, freezing his transition in a specific moment of time. The thing about archives though, is that the collection is only one part of the story, and Fellman has given us a character who’s struggling to change his context, to reorient himself, to redefine what life could ultimately mean.
The descriptions of this book allude to something mysterious happening at the archives where the trans main character, Sol, works (and lives [well, resides]). And while that mysterious something is present in the book, the novel is not a long-lost-tome style academic mystery. This story is present, but the novel itself isn’t about that at all.
Similarly, Elsie, the love interest, is the widow of a writer known for writing a sci-fi television show. When we meet Elsie, she’s donating her late wife’s collection of unpublished writings and correspondences. Sol and Elsie have a fast-paced, steamy romance, but again, this isn’t a dark broody vampire meets a lonely widow romance. That story is also present, but again, not what the novel is about.
The archival mystery and the steamy romance are the more explicit plots that weave through the story, but Dead Collections is ultimately an exploration of trans identity. It maps out the intersectional struggles brought on by being a trans man as well as a vampire, and how they complicate such things as holding down a job, pursuing relationships, and simply maintaining the meat we are all obligated to lug around. The book focuses on the small, practical concerns that Sol faces, and the emphasis on the practical feels real in the same way that many marginalized people are never not aware of their bodies, and how much space those bodies take up. (As something of an aside, Sol refers to his vampirism as an illness, and the comparison here is very apt considering the awareness he has of his condition and the ways in which it drastically impacts him trying to achieve even the most mundane of tasks.) Sol, it seems, is exhausted by simply trying to maintain his life.
In addition to being discriminated against for a myriad of reasons, Sol either has previously found solutions for, or is actively trying to find solutions for medical care, shelter, income, and transportation, with a few of these being problems that arise within the book itself. And, on top of all of this, Sol is then made aware of strange incidents happening to the collections at the archive, and the last third of the book is him trying to solve that problem.
There are things I loved about this book that outweigh most of the criticisms that I have, but for the sake of transparency I do want to touch on those criticisms:
1. I want to note that I really wish this book was longer and spent more time with the mystery aspect, perhaps building it up slower. It’s present earlier in the book, but it doesn’t escalate smoothly. The book feels as if it was cut down to a word count, and so much of the novel was so lovingly rendered that the few clunky bits stand out. (That being said, I’m also a complete slut for the gothic novel, so maybe this is me trying to force it into an unrelated narrative framework)
2.
There are two specific moments that I can recall where this way of thinking made me question Sol’s view of non-medically transitioning trans people (whether by choice or by necessity) and how people present their gender identity. One occurs a couple of times, and it refers to the blood he prefers when he’s at the vampire clinic. Sol prefers men’s blood for the testosterone levels, but this direct correlation between men and testosterone levels is deeply problematic for a slew of obvious reasons. The other incident was a sex scene where, because Sol is gay, he has to imagine facial hair on the person he’s having sex with to be able to imagine them as a man. These thoughts and obstacles can be common for trans people, especially binary trans people who have a somewhat binary sexuality. These thoughts are also uncomfortable because it can be difficult to navigate the overlap of one’s gender and sexuality and how they interact or refuse to complement each other.
Unfortunately, the preference for men’s blood is never interrogated within the book – and is in fact justified when he drinks “women’s” blood and the hormonal shifts that happen because of it – but he at least allows his sexuality to develop in a way that is inclusive of not only cis men. But as I said, these are Sol’s shortcomings as a character; Fellman, as far as I can tell, has not verified that Sol’s assumptions about the hormones in the blood are sound within this universe. If that has been verified elsewhere and I haven’t seen it, however, I will have to return to this review.
One thing that this book demonstrates is that we, trans people, also need to understand that gender is not simply the sum of our various parts, no matter where we are in our transition – which is so often a fallacy shared by cisgender people. Sol’s journey throughout this book bolsters this point and the way he views himself and that character’s gender develops with Sol’s growing self-assurance and confidence.
A short list of things that I love about this book:
• The love interest is big (Fellman doesn’t use the word fat, but Elsie would probably be considered if not fat, then at least overweight);
• Elsie and Sol are both around 40 years old (this is including Sol’s years as a vampire);
• Sol is Jewish (we don’t get nearly enough Jewish vampires, but I can understand why);
• The details given about archival work (gush);
• Exploring trans identity and fandom;
• The specificity of the sex acts (I love how casually the book talks about sex, as well as the conversations involved and how those conversations can take place between people who have gender dysphoria);
• The communication! (The clear setting of boundaries, the respect of those boundaries, the articulation of explicit wants and needs – it was all very refreshing and a great example of how these conversations can happen in real life);
• That cover? *chef’s kiss*
The book is written in a quick, concise style but the internal moments we share with Sol are a bit more languid with denser prose.
I would recommend this book for anybody who has an interest in fandom. Feet of Clay, the fictional television show featured in the book, plays a pretty big part. A lot of YA books have come out in recent years about being in fandom, but there haven’t been nearly as many adult books about fandom that have been traditionally published, especially ones that take place after characters have left fandom spaces.
I would recommend this book to almost every trans man or trans masc person I know, as well as their partners. While the feelings generally associated with being trans or trans masc specifically are far from universal, having so many of those feelings explicitly voiced within a book, with a trans main character who falls in love, is refreshing. There can be so much alienation involved with being trans, and reading a book where the character is always aware of his body feels very very real. Many of the feelings shared in this book are hard to articulate, especially to loved ones who truly want the best for us. But being able to hand somebody the book, and just say “This, this is what it feels like,” is truly a gift.
I think that’s what makes this book so special: in addition to Sol being an archivist, his vampire body also exists as an archive, freezing his transition in a specific moment of time. The thing about archives though, is that the collection is only one part of the story, and Fellman has given us a character who’s struggling to change his context, to reorient himself, to redefine what life could ultimately mean.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Dysphoria, and Sexual content
Moderate: Medical trauma and Blood
Minor: Car accident and Transphobia
Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
5.0
I’ve read every Wayward Children book thus far and I think this may be my new favorite (until we get our much-awaited Kade book, that is).
To talk personally for a moment, this series means the world to me. Despite being in my thirties, I often feel trapped by the world at large, by expectations, by definitions, by limitations. And I think if I was younger, I may have overlooked this series because I was oooh, super serious tm tm tm, but I’ve grown up, and now that I’ve grown up I can let myself enjoy childish things.
Regarding the series as a whole, the books feel like fairy tales themselves. McGuire’s style in this series, as I’ve described to my friends, is like listening to somebody Tell A Story. It’s a pretty close third person perspective but the language used feels like she sat me down and is sitting across from me, telling me this story over tea or coffee or diet Dr Pepper. Seanan McGuire trusts her readers and with this series she just decided to tell us these sometimes heartbreaking fairy tales about children who find where they may truly belong and get ripped out of those worlds. In some ways, no more, and no less. But the clarity of the writing leaves gaps where the readers’ minds can fill out the world, involving our own creativity with the worlds McGuire creates. These feel like literary coloring books.
Now, for Where the Drowned Girls Go, specifically. This was an amazing book, full stop.
We follow Cora as she tries to heal from trauma that occurred in a previous book the only way she knows how. While this book is also more of an ensemble book, similar to Come Tumbling Down and Beneath the Sugar Sky, we have much more of Cora’s experience and interiority. All of the protagonists, in their respective books, have their own relationships with their doors and where they travelled to, but Cora’s history is a little bit darker.
The writing, like the other books in the series, has that storytelling aspect that really makes the story come alive, and the book is full of quotable lines.
Also, I think we may have come across a series-spanning antagonist? Maybe?
To talk personally for a moment, this series means the world to me. Despite being in my thirties, I often feel trapped by the world at large, by expectations, by definitions, by limitations. And I think if I was younger, I may have overlooked this series because I was oooh, super serious tm tm tm, but I’ve grown up, and now that I’ve grown up I can let myself enjoy childish things.
Regarding the series as a whole, the books feel like fairy tales themselves. McGuire’s style in this series, as I’ve described to my friends, is like listening to somebody Tell A Story. It’s a pretty close third person perspective but the language used feels like she sat me down and is sitting across from me, telling me this story over tea or coffee or diet Dr Pepper. Seanan McGuire trusts her readers and with this series she just decided to tell us these sometimes heartbreaking fairy tales about children who find where they may truly belong and get ripped out of those worlds. In some ways, no more, and no less. But the clarity of the writing leaves gaps where the readers’ minds can fill out the world, involving our own creativity with the worlds McGuire creates. These feel like literary coloring books.
Now, for Where the Drowned Girls Go, specifically. This was an amazing book, full stop.
We follow Cora as she tries to heal from trauma that occurred in a previous book the only way she knows how. While this book is also more of an ensemble book, similar to Come Tumbling Down and Beneath the Sugar Sky, we have much more of Cora’s experience and interiority. All of the protagonists, in their respective books, have their own relationships with their doors and where they travelled to, but Cora’s history is a little bit darker.
The writing, like the other books in the series, has that storytelling aspect that really makes the story come alive, and the book is full of quotable lines.
Also, I think we may have come across a series-spanning antagonist? Maybe?
More...