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nostoat's reviews
823 reviews
Fyneshade by Kate Griffin
Did not finish book. Stopped at 18%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 18%.
Found a real unlikable protagonist to me, at last. I cannot stand her lack of class solidarity and general snobbery. Also the general air of ableism.
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
5.0
Autistic women scientists having strange relationships stay winning!!
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon
4.5
You might think this is a book about magical girls, and it is; it's also a book about climate change, justice, and two girls quietly falling in love. It's a quiet message about collectivism at a time when we need it most. A powerful little book I'm glad to have read.
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott
5.0
Somehow nearly every one of these short stories hits perfectly and beautifully. The title is from one story, but also captures the idea of the whole collection: here are a variety of beasts and girls and boys to break your heart. All kinds of magics small and large, to slip into your soul and tingle at the corners of your eyes threatening tears. Nethercott writes (and I suspect more essentially edits) short stories with an incredibly deft hand. Each story is told in exactly as many words, sentences, metaphors, ideas as it needs and not a single one more. Many of them ended before I felt satisfied but unlike with the typical short story that ends "abruptly", after a moment, the ending fit like a glove. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a collection of short fiction this thoroughly or felt so strongly that there were no misses!
Redsight by Meredith Mooring
Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
I DNF'd this book a while ago intending to start it again at some point but I saw it in my TBR just now and realized I did not care! I simply do not care about it! At all!
When I Arrived at the Castle by E.M. Carroll
3.75
Look I think I'm just too autistic for Carroll's writing but that's not their fault. The art is always beautiful even if I get to the end cover and have no idea what I just read!
Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew
This book hit me in the same place that remembering reading Narnia, watching Little Woman (2019), and watching my nieces and nephews grow up while contemplating the flow of my own life between my fingers does. Which is to say, it hit me in the gut with all the force of a freight train with emotions about childhood, growing up, leaving it all behind, being haunted by the ghosts of the past good and bad and complicated. It doesn't matter how grey the skies were, the golden moments of joy still ache like taking a bite of fresh from the freezer ice cream. I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in my soul. This book is one long "you can't go back, god, you can't go back, you just can't ever go back."
It's also a story about three people so deeply deeply entangled, it's as though the green sap of Willow Heath runs through all their veins. It's always the three of them, you see. There is hate, there is anger, there is violence and blood and crying and kissing. And at the end of it all there they are. What relationship between three people who grew up under the heavy thumb of a strange, pressing ritual guild could possibly come out normal in the wash? Their hands are bloody for each other; their arms locked in an embrace nothing could possibly break. Is it romance? Sure I guess. I don't know. I'm aromantic. To me, this is simply the deepest well of devotion that could possibly exist; bigger than romance. Deeper than romance.
There is so much pain in this book, but there is also power. Andrew, in my opinion, balances the power dynamics so deftly on a knife's edge. It's thrilling. It's delicious. I felt like I was reading a feast spread just for me.
5.0
They'd dreamed together. They'd fought together. And eventually - reluctantly - they'd grown together.
"You're mine. You and Peter. You always have been." / "People don't belong to people." / "Don't they? I take care of what's mine."
He could only remember James. The way he laughed, lit from beneath by a firefly glow. He could only remember Wyatt, and the way the skies thundered when he kissed her that first impossible time.
This book hit me in the same place that remembering reading Narnia, watching Little Woman (2019), and watching my nieces and nephews grow up while contemplating the flow of my own life between my fingers does. Which is to say, it hit me in the gut with all the force of a freight train with emotions about childhood, growing up, leaving it all behind, being haunted by the ghosts of the past good and bad and complicated. It doesn't matter how grey the skies were, the golden moments of joy still ache like taking a bite of fresh from the freezer ice cream. I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, in my soul. This book is one long "you can't go back, god, you can't go back, you just can't ever go back."
It's also a story about three people so deeply deeply entangled, it's as though the green sap of Willow Heath runs through all their veins. It's always the three of them, you see. There is hate, there is anger, there is violence and blood and crying and kissing. And at the end of it all there they are. What relationship between three people who grew up under the heavy thumb of a strange, pressing ritual guild could possibly come out normal in the wash? Their hands are bloody for each other; their arms locked in an embrace nothing could possibly break. Is it romance? Sure I guess. I don't know. I'm aromantic. To me, this is simply the deepest well of devotion that could possibly exist; bigger than romance. Deeper than romance.
There is so much pain in this book, but there is also power. Andrew, in my opinion, balances the power dynamics so deftly on a knife's edge. It's thrilling. It's delicious. I felt like I was reading a feast spread just for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Medical content
Reader, I by Corey Van Landingham
4.75
Powerful, incisive poetry about love and marriage. Sometimes a little too tangled up in it's own allusions to be clear, but nonetheless a breathtaking experience.