Nate
(2.5 rounded up)
As someone who reads almost exclusively horror, splatter, and transgressive LGBT fiction, hates TERFs and fascists, and wanted more than anything to be able to write a 5-star ‘fuck you review-bombing transphobe shitheels' review, I came into this book ready to love whatever it presented me with.
I didn't, and I don't get to write that review now :(.
I don't really like writing bad reviews so I'm not gonna say too much, but I did read Felker-Martin's novella ‘Dreadnought' last year and loved it. I didn't review it, but one of the aspects I remember feeling very strongly about was her amazingly efficient use of language in that book. She painted these gorgeous fleshed out scenes with perfectly economical word choice and phrasing. Lush movements and environments sprung out fully formed from a handful of words. It really impressed me. This book is the literal opposite of that and I found it super frustrating. There is about as much story in this as there is in ‘Dreadnought' but this is 200 pages longer. It feels so painfully padded out.
Hidden inside the stuff I hated about this book are some moments of tremendous genius and achievement. There's a chapter near the middle that I think might be my favorite chapter of anything I've read this year. There is such deep pathos and empathy and pain and instruction about the trans experience and body dysmorphia and mental illness and found family and loss and longing and lost futures and ahhhh it is so goddamn brilliant. It's frustrating that it's so deeply sandwiched between uninspired nothingness..
That said, fuck you review bombing terfs, good job Gretchen in triggering all these incel religious fruitcake douchenozzles and I'll probably like the next one more.
Probably my least favorite Zahler so far. Feels a lot more underdeveloped than his more recent output.
Nevertheless, still an easy 5 star and one of my top 10 for the year.
Zahler has skyrocketed to the top of my favorite authors list this past year and a half and I'm gonna be super sad after I finish ‘Mean Business on North Ganson Street' and have to sit and wait for his next novel.
Finishing this and then coming here to check out the reviews has been super disheartening. The amount of straight up terrible takes is fucking astounding.
Like, if a book has a minority protagonist, and that character experiences racism, and you take that as a personal attack? You might need to take a look in the mirror. Jesus fucking christ. So much disingenuous bullshit. I feel really bad imagining Amina coming here and browsing these reviews :/. Y'all should be ashamed.
So when a story about a secretly wealthy young person who gets rescued and told they're special and is taken to a beautiful secluded land with strange people in robes casting spells and waving magical stones where they can self actualize and develop into a badass stars a Pakistani girl, the book is “shallow and vapid and can't shut up about its liberal politics” but when it stars a little white boy it's “the best selling book of all time”. Ok.
I loved this book. Breezy thriller with a great emotional core. I absolutely loved Ronnie and her self-actualization journey. I loved hating the villains, I loved the ravens, I loved the friendships, I loved the writing. Straight up devoured this book, can't wait to check out more of Amina's work.
There is no reason for this book to exist. It's barely a book.
It's basically just the ending of book 2. This series should not have been a trilogy. Absolutely no reason for it. A good edit could turn this series into an outstanding 500 page book, or a pair of really decent 300ish page books, but what we got is a mediocre trilogy that really outstays its welcome by the end.
The three quarters of this novel is just a bunch of bad military fetish action vignettes thinly stitched together. The ending is legitimately good though, which gives it a bonus point. 2 stars instead of 1...
Another one that I'm finding hard to rate.
I almost DNF'd this one a few times in the first half before it started to work for me. I found the jokes didn't land, the action boring, and the edgelord-y offensiveness tryhard and rote (misogyny, homophobia, sexual violence, and racism are like, the lowest hanging fruit of offensiveness. Try harder. That kind of shit just makes me roll my eyes.)
But I pushed through. I had to. This book seemed almost tailor-made for me. I've worked in basically nothing but supermarkets my entire adult life. I'm into horror, slashers, extreme horror, comedy horror, I loved extreme metal in the 90s/00s, I love cults, I love ridiculous kills and camp and the pure outlandish fun that only the most goofy of 80s splattery exploitation movies can elicit.
I think the first ~130 pages of this 240 page book are just straight up not very good. Pushing 2/5 at my most generous. But then something happened and this book took the most insane uptick in quality I have ever seen a book take in my life. It's like the authors suddenly realized what this book was, and what it needed to be, and what worked and what didn't, because the last 25% of this book is absolutely incredible.
It's like the first 75% of this book was a rough draft written by an ambitious highschooler, and the last 25% was the literal platonic ideal of this concept. You know at the end of Bill & Ted 2, when B&T are playing at the battle of the bands and they realize that they don't know how to actually play their instruments so they hop in their time machine to grow out their ZZ Top beards, pop out some babies, and spend a few years learning how to play and write music before coming back and absolutely crushing it? I am not convinced that this isn't what Triana and Harding did before finishing this book.
The jokes started landing HARD, the creativity on the kills and set pieces went through the fucking roof, the gross bits made me actually queasy, every single piece fell perfectly into place and it ended on such a glorious high note I almost want to give the entire book 5/5 in retrospect.
I think I'm landing on a 4, but it's a 4 with huge caveats.
There are a lot of books that I've finished that I disliked or disagreed with or thought were kind of boring, but I feel like even my most hated books usually have at least something I can take away or learn from them that make the experience worth it.
I can count on one hand the books that I actually regret finishing, books that I thought were a literal waste of my time. Last Exit is now public enemy no. 1 on that list.
Repetitive, vapid, hollow, and full of long, winding, navel-gazing, word-vomit prose that ultimately has nothing to say besides the most empty and basic of platitudes.
It's insane to me that a book this obsessed with introspection and inner monologues and growing up and the passage of time could somehow at the same time have such cookie-cutter, replaceable, robotic, one dimensional characters. Characters with no growth, and no arc, and no chemistry whatsoever in a road trip book without anything that makes a road trip worth reading about.
I'm kind of upset that I didn't DNF at 50 pages when I first wanted to, and then every 50 pages thereafter, but I'm a glutton for punishment and an easy victim of sunk-cost fallacy so I persevered. I shouldn't have.
Just straight plowed through this. I think I'm starting to get why Blake Crouch is so popular.
Definitely not the best, or deepest, or smartest, or anything-est book I've read this year, but there's something to be said about how incredibly readable these books are. Just pure popcorn entertainment.
I still really dislike Ethan as a protagonist though. Mentioned this in my review of the first one, but I can't stand his weird fetishization of violence. His internal reaction to everything and everyone upsetting him is to fantasize about throwing tantrums and breaking things and hurting people. If this trait was framed as a character flaw that he's aware of and actively suppressing I'd say he was a great three-dimensional character. Instead it's framed in this weird macho sort of way where I feel like the book is saying like “Hey look how cool Ethan is because he wants to punch people, isn't he so tough?”. It just feels kinda petulant and childish.
Either way though, I've got book 3 on hold at the library to pick up this weekend and am in the hugely long waitlist line for his 2 most recent novels (#36 in line for Upgrade and #10 for Recursion), so I'd say I guess I'm now a fan?
This was a fun experiment from an author I'm not super familiar with, and from what I've gleaned I think I might have been more well served by his more traditional novels.
I really like the concept of this, it's one of those ideas that feels almost tailor-made for me, but I feel like it was being pulled in too many opposite directions and it wasn't able to really excel in any of them. I think the horror elements and true-crime elements both dampened each other's impact and the parody non-fiction elements made the comedy feel a bit tonally out of place. It's kind of like if an artist had full palette of vibrant colors, and instead of using them to highlight and enhance each other, he mixed them together until everything was a boring ruddy brown.
It did really pick up near the end which was pretty much perfect, and bumped it up to a 4 for me, but it was just a little too late.
Super bold experiment with flawless execution. I couldn't imagine this style of book being done better than this.
Kind of a failed experiment though :/. While I loved these stories, and I love the risks taken in this collection, they just weren't very engaging. I'm glad he tried and I'm glad I read it but its a hard recommend to anyone.
I loved this!
Eric LaRocca is taking the horror world by fucking storm and I'm here for it.
Also he lives in Cambridge? D: I work in Cambridge! It's inevitable we have a meetcute right? Where we blindly bump into each other around a corner, he drops a stack of looseleaf A4 (his newest novel fresh from the printers!), I kneel down to help him collect it and we bump heads (ouch!), I offer to buy him a coffee (pumpkin spice oatmilk lattes! yum!), we hit it off immediately... yada.yada.yada... we end up back at his place... he introduces me to the demon he sold his soul to for all his indefatigable creativity and talent so I can make that same goddamn deal. Inevitable.. right??
Really hard to rate this one. I grabbed this one because every single time a book recommendation thread comes up asking for books like Twin Peaks, Wayward Pines trilogy is inevitably the top comment.
And as a book trying to give Twin Peaks vibes? 1/5. The Twin Peaks comparison is completely superficial. Yes, they both involve a idyllic PNW mountain town whose charming wholesome exterior masks a pulsing heart of darkness. But that's just setting. If someone asks for movies like Jungle Book, are you gonna recommend Predator because they both take place in the jungle and have a big sneaky antagonist with fangs?
Thematically they're so wildly incompatible that I feel almost insulted. TP is a deeply humanist work that answers the question of violence, human cruelty, and cosmic darkness with compassion and understanding. Ethan Burke however, REVELS in violence. He fantasizes about it, dreams about it, performs it, and only abstains from it when he's afraid of being caught for it. Pines apes Twin Peaks style without understanding beyond its surface details. It's Twin Peaks written by Michael Bay.
The thing is though, on its own merits? This is a pretty good fucking book. A blistering page turner with a fun puzzlebox at its core that completely falls apart and faceplants the ending. I read this in two sittings. It is delicious schlocky entertainment.
Was vacillating between a 4 and a 5 for most of my reading, but the ending dropped it to like 3-4, but since I'm curious enough to have grabbed the sequel, I'm thinking 4.
Ok. This is almost definitely my #1 book of the year. Zahler is, I think, my favorite person doing it right now. He's such a riveting storyteller.
I've almost worked my way through his entire public oeuvre (2 books and a comic left) and I think I'm starting to realize exactly what really makes me vibe with his work. It's not the gritty violence, it's not Zahler's provocateur stylings, it's not the modern day exploitation sensibilities (is MAGAxploitation a thing? Because this is definitely that), but something much simpler.
If there's one consistent theme or through-line in his work it's probably systemic violence against characters trying to reach above their station. It's smart, ambitious characters who are too smart and too ambitious for their own good in an unfair world where the status quo refuses to be bucked. Zahler's morally ambiguous (besides Hug Chickenpenny, that boy is a fucking saint) protagonists look above them and want what they see. They see the tactics used by the powerful and use those tactics thinking the same rules apply to everyone. This works out for a time until the world takes notice and the jaws of reality snap shut in a black hole of blind violence sucking in everyone in the vicinity. This reaffirms my view of reality.
Now... Congregation of Jackals or Mean Business on North Ganson Street next?...
Don't have a ton to say, but it was pretty good. Felt like a big part of the middle section was stretched out by characters being willfully ignorant. Lots of Victorian era bewilderment. Really picked up in a fun way near the end though and tackled some topics I find super interesting. Mostly a 3, but a great finish lands it a solid 4.
Merged review:
Don't have a ton to say, but it was pretty good. Felt like a big part of the middle section was stretched out by characters being willfully ignorant. Lots of Victorian era bewilderment. Really picked up in a fun way near the end though and tackled some topics I find super interesting. Mostly a 3, but a great finish lands it a solid 4.
This book isn't perfect, but man did it fucking work me over.
Another book I've had on my list for awhile due to an r/horrorlit thread and I went in almost completely blind. I barely ever read book synopses (I feel like they almost always tell me exactly the things that I DON'T want to know about a book and exactly none of the things I DO want to know. I tend to care a lot more about themes/mood/vibes/style etc. than hard plot beats) so I came into this one with some vague expectations of cosmic horror + vampires in space.
Basically I expected pulp. This is not pulp. This is heady, deep, philosophical hard sci-fi with a nihilistic horror bent. This is like if you fed Liu Cixin a diet of Liggoti and Cioran before sending him off to write ‘The Dark Forest'. And like Liu's ‘The Dark Forest' (and Ligotti's ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'), this is the kind of book that added a fundamentally new perspective to how I view the universe and my place in it, and so despite any flaws that it may have in execution, it'll be one of the books I think about regularly for the rest of my life.
Speaking of execution, all of my complaints about ‘Blindsight' fall distinctly in that category. The book, ESPECIALLY the first half, relies heavily on overbearing sci-fi nonsense jargon. I can appreciate some goofy jargon in my sci-fi, but so much of the book has passages that are like “Franklin-Borson radiation poured over my cortical synapse receptors and sent fireworks of vorpal pixels cascading across my neuro-displays. I shouted, “Fourth dimensional proton plasma shouldn't have this kind of resonance decoherence!” I would later find out that it was because the attack was a fifth dimensional electro-plasmic neutron stream”. I know this is hyperbole, but it really felt that way at times.
When ‘Blindsight' really hits its stride is when all the themes start collapsing down into each other like a brilliant philosophical Matryoshka doll and you get completely blindsided with its horrifying final argument. No spoilers, but holy shit, it is wonderful. Exactly the flavor of deep cosmic nihilism I like in my philosophical arguments. Real strong Ligotti vibes. As the kids say, I'm shook.
Hope the sequel is as good. It has some ridiculously big shoes to fill though..
I had a strange experience while reading this novella. I only realized, after reaching around the 70% point, that my subconscious was picturing the stuff happening in the style of 80s film practical effects. My imagination is usually pretty straight forward. I picture what's written however my brain thinks it would look. But in this book everything was fake blood and wet puppets and spotlights through smoke and shadow and I loved it. It's got me thinking about actively cultivating different stylistic choices in my imagination while reading and that's new and cool I guess.
That aside, this book is fucking terrific. It was interesting seeing the iterative elements added between the writing of this and the filming of the movie. Like, I find it wild that Kirsty was only changed to being Julia and Rory's stepdaughter in the movie and that she was only a family friend in the book. It feels like that's such an essential piece of the plot and perfectly encapsulates Frank's moral reprehensibility/corruption. Crazy to me that that wasn't in the original draft.
The book does a much better job of portraying Julia's inner world, Frank's motivations, and the worldbuilding at large and makes the Cenobites feel way creepier and alien, but paradoxically also more understandable. Also the BDSM brush they're painted with in the film kinda sends a weird mixed message that I'm not a huge fan of. Stop yucking other people's yum Clive.
One thing I was really looking forward to was seeing how Frank's reanimation scene ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erpHSw3x5cE (straight up top 3 practical effects horror scenes in movie history)) would work in writing, but it mostly just happens off-screen :/.
Book > film imo, but that's me in most cases anyway.
This was so good! Also sad. Also infuriating.
I came in expecting more ‘fuck capitalism' satire in the vein of Landscape Under Invisible Hand, and I got that, but what I didn't expect was the depressing exploration of how algorithm driven content drives people into segmented niches and cliques, reinforces (and refuses to challenge) their beliefs, and softens/hides the harsh realities of the world while brazenly, surreptitiously, cruelly, and kindly is always trying to peddle shit. How people raised and taught by an algorithm driven hyper-capitalist nanny are exactly perfectly ill-equipped for any sort of real moments requiring patience and introspection. How our weird self-induced technological isolation bubbles are completely fucking our brains into vapid misery.
It's fun. I loved it.
Came into this one with the mindset of like, “oh this book got super popular and people are hating on it because it's offensive, it must be doing some cool modern transgressive shit that people don't understand”. I was hoping I'd like it and be one of the cool kids in my pretentious ‘you guys just don't understand art' club.
Nope.
It's not really that offensive and mostly just kinda reads like incel fanfiction. There's nothing transgressive about being a successful toxic white guy who treats women bad and is secretly kinda sad and lonely. Tucker Max ran this well dry like 15 years ago.
Guy mostly just has a bad personality and thinks he's cooler than he is. It's got big unreliable narrator vibes but not in the fun way where it makes you question the deeper elements at play, but in an annoying eye-roll way that makes you wanna pat the guy on the shoulder and say “ok champ, good luck with that”. It feels like you're being lied to by some sad incel dipshit who thinks he's some Machiavellian mastermind.
Got a bit better near the end where it seemed like he was actually being the tiniest bit vulnerable, but by then I was completely checked out.
Super fun collection. Reminded me a LOT of Stephen Graham Jones minus the MFA energy.
The longer stories were definitely the highlight. Especially ‘Truck Stop' and the mind swapping one.
I felt like some of the shorter stories brought the average down though. A few felt a bit more like writing practice than a full short story and seemed a bit like they were added to fill up space which was disappointing :/.
More like a 3.5?
I've listened to all of Terry Miles' podcasts and I don't know how but he always ropes me in and I always feel the exact same sense of dissatisfaction by the end. “This time it'll be different!” I think, going back to another one of his works. It never is though.
There are a lot of things about this book (and his entire oeuvre in general) that I feel like I could drag and be super nitpicky about, but also a lot of that doesn't really matter in the moment, because his works are just straight up fun.
I really think Terry Miles should be working in TV or film. He's a bit too action oriented for podcasts, and a bit too script oriented for books. I really think he'd find his stride and a huge new audience if some mid-tier studio took a chance and let him create a pilot.
Not what I was expecting at all, but super pleasantly surprised. Found this one in an r/horrorlit thread asking for books similar to the film Event Horizon. What I was expecting? The Hellbound Heart in space. What I got? Thought provoking philosophical cosmic horror about God, organized religion, zealotry and the means of control, the unknown and the terror of the unknowable.
I can understand some of the reviewers who complained about nothing really happening. Going into this book thinking it's pulpy space horror about a spooky alien ship and then getting bait and switched into slow low-action creeping philosophical horror might not be everyone's cup of tea. It is mine though.
My biggest complaint is probably that it was a little bit too predictable. Not very twisty or revelatory, once it gets in swing there aren't a lot of surprises. The methods of how it gets to where it's going are fun and interesting, but where it's going doesn't veer too far off the map. Also the writing is a bit flat and boring. Procedural and perfunctory. Adequate and clean, but completely devoid of any sort of flourish or authorial voice.
Despite everything that follows, I think this is basically a perfect novel. Grady Hendrix's modern output is immaculately plotted, richly detailed, eye-burningly addictive, and chockablock with vibrant three dimensional fully realized characters. He is a fucking master of his craft and an author I'll never not be excited to devour a new release from.
That said, I think his current output is bordering on being TOO perfect? It's not that the books are predictable, and it's not like they're dumbed down or overly simplified. It's almost like, and I hate this comparison but, it's almost like they're the horrorlit version of Marvel movies? Like, written by committee almost, focus tested and data-driven to perfection. Inorganically designed to be the least offensive and most broadly acclaimed?
Again, this is a 5-star nearly perfect book and I'm basically nitpicking here, but I think my biggest issue is that it's just TOO digestible. It goes down so quick and so easy. It's a popcorn novel. I devoured it and when I was finished I was still hungry. After I finished it I was left kind of empty. No lingering wondering or questioning, no real thoughts besides “that was great! ok now what's next?”
A large part of why I like to read books, especially horror books, is that I like to feel challenged. I like ambiguity and open-endedness and unclear motives and confusion and maybe just a little bit to reaffirm my belief that nothing happens for a reason and everything is chaos. This definitely isn't that. It's very neat. It's very clean. It's absolutely perfect. I loved it. I also want more from Grady Hendrix. I hope he doesn't languish in this space for long. I'll keep reading his perfect books, but I'll also keep craving his experimentation.
Also now that I've read all of his ‘modern' output, here's my GH ranked.
#1. My Best Friend's Exorcism
#2 We Sold Our Souls
#3 The Final Girl Support Group
#4 The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
#5 Horrorstör
(Excluding Paperbacks from Hell, I own it, and it's incredible, best coffee-table book ever made, but in a completely different category)