DM
Haven't read The Slob yet, but being in circles with A. Prunty and CV Hunt means I'm quite aware of the noise Aron has been making over the last year or so. While Playground had been floating around my TBR for a while, I hadn't given it a lot of thought. Splatterpunk with kids...probably boring and predictable even if “popular” (for the genre). But a friend wanted to read it - and an opportunity to do that - with this genre? Yes!
We have a 290 page book, not a collection, not a series of interconnected shorts - a full proper novel sized book about kids getting fucked up on a playground. And while it is heavy on the (bad) metaphors, the story is actually almost character-driven, and the characters have history, and depth, and their own unique voice. By the time the blood starts truly pouring you actually give a shit about these people. The deaths, the tension and torture are relatively creative if occasionally predictable. So despite some errors and just bad metaphors, the writing won't blow you away, but for the genre it is I was overall impressed.
If the trigger words don't bother you, perhaps you've read the genre before - if you're on the fence on this, this is a great book to take a leap from and impale yourself on that fence.
and I just don't see any of that sexism spoken of here - she was a disgusting human being, and there is no word, no insult, unworthy of her. And seriously, this book had a Nazi in it without ever promoting hatred, or bigotry - that's some careful writing.
Leaving far behind the impression of being a Dune fanfic, Howling Dark finds itself having its own voice and story to tell. Does it still play of the work of others, still utilize common tropes? Absolutely, of course it does. You will be hard pressed to find a modern scifi or fantasy novel that is truly unique. Howling Dark knows this, embraces it, and stands on the shoulders of those who made these tropes. Taking the best and cutting the worst of scifi's master voices. The story is epic, the twists can be unpredictable, which shocking, given the narrator actively tells us what is going to happen.
The author has built such a huge universe, and writes so..so many pages, and yet still finds time skips acceptable, showing us bare glimpses of things vast enough to be their own book series, complete with a vague history that comes somewhere, somehow, after Star Wars, Foundation, Asimov, again, a prequel series at this pace with this vastness would justify another 10 books....or just read the Foundation series, it's literally the same shit.
Though just as Steven Kingly wordy as Empire of Silence, this time the slog is far more rewarding with actually interesting description, observation, and story telling. And, it's a good place to find a quality SAT word casually and aptly thrown at a rate of about once every 2 pages. In Howling Dark I actually found the dialogue, and the 100 pages of narration between and mid-sentence, to almost be more enjoyable than the action.
Howling Dark has established a voice, embracing itself for what it is, and where it came from, and create a huge mythos that will be very interesting to continue further into.
Maybe not a particularly high rating, but this is by far from a bad book. It is unfortunate to see it lumped aside House of Leaves, a lengthy, complicated, and difficult metafictional horror/romance novel. This is not that book, and shouldn't be forced into the shadow of it. This is a short, passionless examination of a series of events, and it is in that concise, detached manner, this book brings about a story of a haunting, and our ability to ignore the strange, and that while never scary or horrifying in any sense is still intriguing and well worth the read.
Easily my favorite in the series, while it started off weak in the beginning, coming off as another rehash of the relatively boring story and exploration of the prior two novels, “world-building” is what I think someone nicer may call it. Part way through it stops that crap, and actually has a story... It might have taken 2.3 books to world-build a fairly not-at-all-complex-or-interesting-universe, but when it finally finished that we get a weird, unique, matrix-fairy-tale-fantasy novel, and it was great.
My experience was that of reading a fairly enjoyable family drama, with a dash of comedy and oddity thrown in here and there. Unfortunately the oddity, the “horror”, the “metafiction”, is so sparse and lacking it frankly adds absolutely nothing to the story, take it or leave it, it really makes no difference. While it might make a great “first weird fiction” book for someone, to be more than that it needs to utilize the weirdness to create a more complex, unpredictable, and interwoven story.
It wasn't bad,
it just wasn't what it thought it was.
I love the concept, the writing style. A less fun We Need to Talk About Kevin. But despite the atmospheric wandering, and subtle horrors... it lacks making me care about the narrator, or their big questions, and the atmospheric horror aspects, while good, lack any thrill or climax. While I didn't particularly like this book, I want to read more from this author. They know how to create a mood, I'm hoping in other works the content and characters add to that mood.
High paced, “young adult” style writing, 600+ page non-stop adventure. The ease of the writing style, the high tempo pace, and of course the traditional absurd, fantasy, violence, suffering you're used to in King, written in amusing quippy often sexual-innuendo-esque, often slightly disturbed, quite weird, and not always in-character one-liners makes this a hilariously fast enjoyable and dark read. Stupidly quotable, and highly addicting.
Off the top of my head I cannot recall a long series with a more than OK ending, most are at best disappointing. This ending is...okay, maybe a bit better than okay. The series ends? Check. Majority of plot lines and character arcs, wrapped? Check. Epic with a foreshadowing of a future with/without our characters? Check. Reading the book itself is quick, easy, and adventurous, it sloughs a bit here and there, nothing new for the series. I would not call the best of the series, but it's a fun and enjoyable read. I loved the series, and this does not change my opinion on it one way or another, I'll miss this world.
It took me a year, but I read this twice. It deserved to have attention paid to it. 853 pages each one giving credit to the book's title. If you're considering this book, I hope it isn't your first >300 pager, if you're considering this book, I hope you've strayed into the darker sides of indie before, or more hopefully, read some splatterpunk/extreme horror before.
I rec reading splatterpunk, not because this is that, but because it is NOT that.
There's this dark place, a hole, an endless pit to hell..., in this pit is all the fucked up, depraved, human excrement, and lusts, and sins, and desires that are not polite to discuss, or to approve of, or to fantasize about. The indie authors we claim we admire, whose books we tuck away when company is around feature this place in the background of their stories. They acknowledge it. They want you to cringe and praise and bow at their willingness to even be near it.
I'm not impressed by that anymore.
The splatterpunks, the extreme horror, the legions of copycats. They see that hole, want to see if they can fuck it. They dive right in. Oh and that shit's fun, it can be a bit same-y, but it's fun.
I'm desensitized to that now.
But Damien Ark, doesn't just flirt with the extreme, he walks right up to it. Dances around it, maybe even crawls down into it a bit just to see how that feels. Fucked Up over the course of it's many many pages paints a picture of grief, and loss, and longing, and lust, and drugs, and desperation. And it's beautiful. It is visceral poetry, it's damnation beautified.
It's a coming of age road trip....with a bisexual schizophrenic psychopath confused drug addicted kid, through whose eyes we see the beauty of destruction, but also the pain of growing up, of being different, of feeling like everything is out to get you...
A book with the title Fucked Up, feels relatable at times. Probably that's a bad thing. Whatever.
It's long. It's not without flaws, characters can sometimes sound undifferentiated, the endless something-worse-always-around-the-corner can be tedious. But generally these issues at best might slow down a reader for a moment, a 1/4th star off at worst.
But yes, if you're someone who looks at trigger warnings, because you're worried about content....you'll find this to be shocking and offensive, maybe unreadable, if you look up trigger warnings because you think “more the merrier” perhaps you can appreciate the lines Ark does not cross, yet how close he comes, and how beautiful that border between can be.
I can't not compare this to House of Leaves, if only because of the space it takes on my shelf, and because like House what the book is about, it's genre, whatever, is a tad confusing. House of Leaves is a romance novel at it's heart, masquerading as a weird meta fictional horror novel.
Fucked Up is a beautiful coming of age novel about hope, joy, and overcoming obstacles, masquerading as depraved indie shi..lit.
I do not disagree entirely with the negative reviews on here, and thus why it loses two stars. However these reviews seem to ignore what makes Hamilton enjoyable, even if it can be can an annoying slog at time - that is....he eventually gets around to finishing up all those lose ends, all the odd stories, characters that seem to vanish - it all just ends up tying up, eventually. And, it ends up doing so in an interesting way that in the end develops a good overall, and occasionally a bit complex, story. But it takes a long long verbose time to do it. This is fine if you're used to longer than average books, but if 800 pages makes you hesitate, than you really shouldn't be reading Hamilton, as the patience required won't come with a reward that'll leave you satisfied. But if you're used to 800+ page books, the story ends up being quite enjoyable. And, of course, I have to read the sequel, the decent story needs its ending
DNF at 70%
Can't deny the beautiful imagery, almost every object or person, every place, almost every page, absolutely amazing imagery.
But to embrace good imagery you need a language and a depth to bring you in, to make you actually appreciate rather than just window shop. And, like with the Annihilation series, the poor pacing, and lack of anything to grip on to or immerse in, just ruins it. I also feel such imagery demands a better “more difficult” language, with at least some playfulness and experimentation with more complex and non-traditional sentence structures - make us do some work.
As I read more and more I've made myself start writing reviews. My thought is sometimes these can be useful to others, other times not so much. I have nothing to add that hasn't been said already in other reviews. So I'll keep this sort, and more to trigger my own memory in the future.
It slogged a bit in the middle, I got quickly bored of the twist every page in a half. Pushing me out of immersion or caring would normally knock a star off, but I was enthralled from the start....and it's after the mid point we return to continuously increasing insanity and depravity of the start of the book, and each paragraph after just adds more and more intensity to it.
In my opinion, the best thing Cooper has written. Forming a coherent, engaging, and thoughtful story this style is a true achievement.
The cover art and concepts were beautiful and compelling. The rest..
Merged review:
The cover art and concepts were beautiful and compelling. The rest..
Wonderfully and beautifully, if not perfectly, written. Given the negativity around this book I was expecting a lot....more than what I got. While the ending is almost hilariously cruel, so is life. Life often makes me think that God proves His existence through His hate and our suffering. What I see is a bleak, fragment of a very real life, and a life that people have lived. And examples of very real sexualities, friendships, and relationships. People seem upset that the mains were not “gay”, or labeled. They were just human...and lived a life like humans do. And some people get abused, and some people get the short stick, and time does not heal all wounds.