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misophorism's reviews
34 reviews
The Misophorism Trilogy by Adam Washington
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Yes, this is my book. So, I left a review in jest on this that just said "terrible!" and I think that's true for the first edition. Yeah, not good. I rewrote the entire thing for a never-realized Flenser release and ended up just releasing myself.
So a few things about this book. I initially had this as a numbered list, so if it seems disjointed, that's why.
One review [on Goodreads] (I was told about, I don't read reviews, so it's entirely possible the review was much more fair than the secondhand source made it seem, though I have no earthly idea why they thought I wanted to hear a negative review in the first place) claimed that the book was oppressively dark and one-note. Yes. It is. That's why it says it's a "polemic on life" on the back. If you're expecting a nuanced discourse on the pros and cons of life, this isn't that book. The Stranger is more what you're looking for. The Misophorism Trilogy is a depressive assault on life from every angle imaginable. If that's not something you want to read, that's understandable, but it's something I find cool, personally (obviously, I wrote it), so this kind of thing appeals to me.
The book, especially the second book, and not at all the last one, somewhat the first one, draws heavily on the works of Dan Barrett. The second book in the first edition was borderline plagiarism. In the second edition, a lot of the work was rewriting it with an authorial voice, actually decent prose, and lessening this influence so it stood on its own. However, as I said in my TSOD review, I didn't want to strip out what returning fans recognized from it to the point where it seemed like an entirely different book. So I left a lot of it in, even if I would've preferred to remove it. This was a creative decision all the same, and it takes down the mark of the book in my view. Influence is cool, too much of it makes the writer seem like they're afraid their ideas aren't good enough. If you've read TSOD, that wasn't my problem, obviously, haha, it was more that I didn't know of many works that tackled the style I wanted. Still inexcusable, though in the latter version, THN has this considerably lessened. TLMB less so.
And the prose in the first edition is godawful. Yeah, I know. That's one of the main reasons I rewrote it. For all intents and purposes, from here on out, assume I'm talking about the second edition.
So, decent to good prose (great, sometimes, I hope). Influence on my sleeve is still there, much less intense but still there in The Last Man Blinks. I've given this three stars, so it's not all bad. Well, I'd probably give it a 7/10 nowadays, but the influence is really too much for my tastes, so it's on the lower end of that 7. The gore and graphic imagery doesn't bother me. I don't think it's excessive either. It's just kind of there. Maybe because I wrote it, it has no impact on me, but I can understand how that would either harm or enhance it depending on the reader's tastes.
The characters are really just agents for a point; it's a short, allegedly non-fiction work and therefore the characters don't need to be as fully realized as, say, a 300 page novel I'm working on, so they don't serve the purpose they would in other works of the same sort (notably House of Leaves, where Navidson and Truant are fully developed as people). You spend about 40 pages with Pyrrhus, 20 with Lafon. You spend about 60 pages with Louis Meyer, and another 60 with the Lazarus Society, (who are doing some slight trolling, a miniscule amount of chicanery up in New England). The concepts carry The Misophorism Trilogy, and I think it mostly works, it's only when you know how much I'm pulling from Giles Corey that can put a damper on things in TLMB. The parts where I'm writing as and about myself work. The parts where I'm writing about the Meyer's Method, meh.
The overall message of TMT (spoilers) is twofold:
1. If you're a depressive, you read it and go, "I feel seen; I understand what it's like, it can hurt to read but someone understands." And to also show how this sort of depressive thinking can lead to disaster.
2. If you're a normie you read it and reflect on what you've done.
To put that second point more accurately, it's telling people who said, "Depression is all in your head," or "Manifesting is real; if you think negative thoughts then you're causing your own pain," or "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "you're depressed because you're weak-minded" to go fuck themselves. It's saying to all of those people: "If depression is in my head, explain the suffering of the world?" it's saying to those people, "I too believe in magical thinking, in fact, I think God is real, and He wants us to all suffer," saying, "I did pull myself by my bootstraps, check out this cool four-step Method I developed in a suspicious shantytown with about sixty friends," saying, "Can a weak-minded person really betray their body's natural impulses and thrust a knife through their throat?"
But, let's be real. Normies are never going to even pick up TMT. They're going to look at the cover once and say, "No, thanks." So that message will fall on deaf ears, if fall on them at all.
Do I think the message works, years later, and even years after the second edition? I think it still does. Reader mileage may vary. I don't plan on reviewing all of my works, or even any after this, as that may be too asinine, even for someone pretentious enough to write a "non-fiction" book. But I have a lot of thoughts about these two works (TMT and TSOD) and wanted to put them somewhere. I like The Misophorism Trilogy. When anyone near me dies, recently my sister, I return to Handwritten Eulogies.
"Death looms but it does not wait."
That's true for us all, in one way or another.
6.7/10.
So a few things about this book. I initially had this as a numbered list, so if it seems disjointed, that's why.
One review [on Goodreads] (I was told about, I don't read reviews, so it's entirely possible the review was much more fair than the secondhand source made it seem, though I have no earthly idea why they thought I wanted to hear a negative review in the first place) claimed that the book was oppressively dark and one-note. Yes. It is. That's why it says it's a "polemic on life" on the back. If you're expecting a nuanced discourse on the pros and cons of life, this isn't that book. The Stranger is more what you're looking for. The Misophorism Trilogy is a depressive assault on life from every angle imaginable. If that's not something you want to read, that's understandable, but it's something I find cool, personally (obviously, I wrote it), so this kind of thing appeals to me.
The book, especially the second book, and not at all the last one, somewhat the first one, draws heavily on the works of Dan Barrett. The second book in the first edition was borderline plagiarism. In the second edition, a lot of the work was rewriting it with an authorial voice, actually decent prose, and lessening this influence so it stood on its own. However, as I said in my TSOD review, I didn't want to strip out what returning fans recognized from it to the point where it seemed like an entirely different book. So I left a lot of it in, even if I would've preferred to remove it. This was a creative decision all the same, and it takes down the mark of the book in my view. Influence is cool, too much of it makes the writer seem like they're afraid their ideas aren't good enough. If you've read TSOD, that wasn't my problem, obviously, haha, it was more that I didn't know of many works that tackled the style I wanted. Still inexcusable, though in the latter version, THN has this considerably lessened. TLMB less so.
And the prose in the first edition is godawful. Yeah, I know. That's one of the main reasons I rewrote it. For all intents and purposes, from here on out, assume I'm talking about the second edition.
So, decent to good prose (great, sometimes, I hope). Influence on my sleeve is still there, much less intense but still there in The Last Man Blinks. I've given this three stars, so it's not all bad. Well, I'd probably give it a 7/10 nowadays, but the influence is really too much for my tastes, so it's on the lower end of that 7. The gore and graphic imagery doesn't bother me. I don't think it's excessive either. It's just kind of there. Maybe because I wrote it, it has no impact on me, but I can understand how that would either harm or enhance it depending on the reader's tastes.
The characters are really just agents for a point; it's a short, allegedly non-fiction work and therefore the characters don't need to be as fully realized as, say, a 300 page novel I'm working on, so they don't serve the purpose they would in other works of the same sort (notably House of Leaves, where Navidson and Truant are fully developed as people). You spend about 40 pages with Pyrrhus, 20 with Lafon. You spend about 60 pages with Louis Meyer, and another 60 with the Lazarus Society, (who are doing some slight trolling, a miniscule amount of chicanery up in New England). The concepts carry The Misophorism Trilogy, and I think it mostly works, it's only when you know how much I'm pulling from Giles Corey that can put a damper on things in TLMB. The parts where I'm writing as and about myself work. The parts where I'm writing about the Meyer's Method, meh.
The overall message of TMT (spoilers) is twofold:
1. If you're a depressive, you read it and go, "I feel seen; I understand what it's like, it can hurt to read but someone understands." And to also show how this sort of depressive thinking can lead to disaster.
2. If you're a normie you read it and reflect on what you've done.
To put that second point more accurately, it's telling people who said, "Depression is all in your head," or "Manifesting is real; if you think negative thoughts then you're causing your own pain," or "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "you're depressed because you're weak-minded" to go fuck themselves. It's saying to all of those people: "If depression is in my head, explain the suffering of the world?" it's saying to those people, "I too believe in magical thinking, in fact, I think God is real, and He wants us to all suffer," saying, "I did pull myself by my bootstraps, check out this cool four-step Method I developed in a suspicious shantytown with about sixty friends," saying, "Can a weak-minded person really betray their body's natural impulses and thrust a knife through their throat?"
But, let's be real. Normies are never going to even pick up TMT. They're going to look at the cover once and say, "No, thanks." So that message will fall on deaf ears, if fall on them at all.
Do I think the message works, years later, and even years after the second edition? I think it still does. Reader mileage may vary. I don't plan on reviewing all of my works, or even any after this, as that may be too asinine, even for someone pretentious enough to write a "non-fiction" book. But I have a lot of thoughts about these two works (TMT and TSOD) and wanted to put them somewhere. I like The Misophorism Trilogy. When anyone near me dies, recently my sister, I return to Handwritten Eulogies.
"Death looms but it does not wait."
That's true for us all, in one way or another.
6.7/10.
To Sing of Damnation by Adam Washington
challenging
dark
funny
fast-paced
1.0
Yeah, this is my book.
Good ideas. The concept is pretty cool. However it's executed horribly. The reason for this is primarily that To Sing of Damnation was my second novel after transitioning from screenplays. The Misophorism Trilogy is in a non-fiction style, easier to adapt to, but TSOD is entirely fiction and presented as fiction. The prose is awful. The pacing is way too fast. The concepts aren't executed well. The characters do not exist. It's an all around disaster, and the only saving grace is that the concepts themselves are pretty cool.
You know, a criticism that annoyed me around the release date was people saying Jordan was melodramatic. "How could he be melodramatic? He's literally in the middle of a theological conflict over existence. Ekotl will destroy everything if he doesn't do what He wants, and he goes into a Church and is literally kicked out by God spiritually. How could he be?"
The pacing, Adam. The pacing is how. Every fucking 20-30 pages Jordan's mentioning suicide, punching something, breaking something, *whining!* You know, I could probably keep in all of that if they were spaced out by maybe 100 more pages. But the book is 160 pages long. That's way too much. Unlike TMT where the characters committing suicide is normal and expected given the content, we're literally stuck inside Jordan's head until, Ekotl be praised, we get a goddamn break from him with Temptatio Aeirias. And what do you know, in Part 2, Aeyar isn't nearly as annoying as Jordan. That's how.
TMT's issue was it drew too heavily on other works. My influence was on my sleeve. In the rewrite I made it stand more on its own, but I didn't want to change too much for returning readers. I would have had to strip a lot of its most recognizable qualities out, and I didn't want to do that for people who were already fans. TSOD, however, I would have to completely rewrite from the ground up to make anything decent.
I've had people tell me they really enjoyed TSOD, and if you did, I don't want to take that away from you. But I certainly hate it. It's a waste of good paper. If I had never published this, as I wisely chose to do with my next couple of books, then it would be sitting on a hard drive and with my current experience and awakened love for prose and novel writing, as opposed to just doing it because I was tired of scripts that are circuitous to share (you have to tell someone how to read a script; multiple people asked me what "beat" means, which isn't a stupid question, to be clear—people just never ask what "she paused" means, because everyone already knows), I could turn this into something that's actually decent. But it's already out there, and it's too late. Oh well. Lessons learned.
1/5.
Good ideas. The concept is pretty cool. However it's executed horribly. The reason for this is primarily that To Sing of Damnation was my second novel after transitioning from screenplays. The Misophorism Trilogy is in a non-fiction style, easier to adapt to, but TSOD is entirely fiction and presented as fiction. The prose is awful. The pacing is way too fast. The concepts aren't executed well. The characters do not exist. It's an all around disaster, and the only saving grace is that the concepts themselves are pretty cool.
You know, a criticism that annoyed me around the release date was people saying Jordan was melodramatic. "How could he be melodramatic? He's literally in the middle of a theological conflict over existence. Ekotl will destroy everything if he doesn't do what He wants, and he goes into a Church and is literally kicked out by God spiritually. How could he be?"
The pacing, Adam. The pacing is how. Every fucking 20-30 pages Jordan's mentioning suicide, punching something, breaking something, *whining!* You know, I could probably keep in all of that if they were spaced out by maybe 100 more pages. But the book is 160 pages long. That's way too much. Unlike TMT where the characters committing suicide is normal and expected given the content, we're literally stuck inside Jordan's head until, Ekotl be praised, we get a goddamn break from him with Temptatio Aeirias. And what do you know, in Part 2, Aeyar isn't nearly as annoying as Jordan. That's how.
TMT's issue was it drew too heavily on other works. My influence was on my sleeve. In the rewrite I made it stand more on its own, but I didn't want to change too much for returning readers. I would have had to strip a lot of its most recognizable qualities out, and I didn't want to do that for people who were already fans. TSOD, however, I would have to completely rewrite from the ground up to make anything decent.
I've had people tell me they really enjoyed TSOD, and if you did, I don't want to take that away from you. But I certainly hate it. It's a waste of good paper. If I had never published this, as I wisely chose to do with my next couple of books, then it would be sitting on a hard drive and with my current experience and awakened love for prose and novel writing, as opposed to just doing it because I was tired of scripts that are circuitous to share (you have to tell someone how to read a script; multiple people asked me what "beat" means, which isn't a stupid question, to be clear—people just never ask what "she paused" means, because everyone already knows), I could turn this into something that's actually decent. But it's already out there, and it's too late. Oh well. Lessons learned.
1/5.
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
I can't really put my thoughts about this into words without spoilers. Broad strokes: Catriona Ward is a very talented writer with excellent prose and a perfect grasp of structure and pacing. If you are looking for a dark thriller, you should check it out. My issues with this book in no way reflect on her literary talent, which is obviously immense, but rather personal preference.
Spoilers:
I do not like the twist, which is the reason for my mid-score rating. Before I arrived at the twist, I would've likely given this book 4/4.25 stars. The memories were engaging, the tension between Dee and Ted was skull-shattering, and the pace was perfect. I found the prose in Olivia's sections somewhat grating at first, a bit too quirky for my liking, but it was easily forgiven. But the twist in this book is twofold: one, Dee is much more responsible for Lulu's death than the first half intimates, and two, Ted has not killed anyone, and was the victim the entire time. After spending so long in his head, with very unsettling narration that does heavily hint that he has harmed someone, it is hard for me to be satisfied with that twist. Looking back over the book, I think the Dee twist works much better, but at the same time, I'm not crazy about that one either.
This is why I said it comes down to my personal preferences: the twist in this instance is one I don't think I would like in a story no matter how well it was written or who wrote it. This type of story element just isn't my style. I was immensely invested when I believed that Lauren was Lulu, who had been kidnapped and developed D.I.D. herself and that Dee was on her way to save her, but instead Dee dies and Ted is the victim the entire time. And while this is, when looking at the memories of his mother leading up to that reveal, quite believable, it's hard for me to countenance as a reader solely because I just plain don't like it as a twist. A review at the beginning of the book said that Shirley Jackson, my personal favorite novelist, may have to concede to this book, and unfortunately, I have to disagree here.
In a technical/mechanical sense, this book is flawless. My gripes have more to do with me than it. Nevertheless, I'm eager to read more of Catriona's work.
Spoilers:
In a technical/mechanical sense, this book is flawless. My gripes have more to do with me than it. Nevertheless, I'm eager to read more of Catriona's work.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Vomit