sarah984's reviews
628 reviews

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I picked this up because of the cool looking cover, after seeing it recommended as "feminist body horror" on Likewise. So if you are like me I will save you some time: it's not feminist or body horror. The cover is cool though.

The main character is a woman but she hates and/or belittles all other women (except her grandmother, who is a complete non-entity in this story) and thinks she's unique as a woman due to her misanthropy. The book makes a big deal about it being sexist that stories require women to have trauma to be villains when men can just do what they want, but then gives Maeve villain trauma. The romance is all "oh he was so much bigger than me" straight people crap.

Several quotes and entire scenes are lifted whole cloth from American Psycho but nothing interesting is done with that at all.

I really have to wonder who this book was for. I feel like it was somehow simultaneously too much and too tame, like it's not extreme horror because pretty much everything "extreme" happens off screen, but too much "extreme" content is implied for this to appeal to normies. Baffling book.

Some of the Halloween music trivia was interesting, so 2 stars.

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The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

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hopeful tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

I was excited for this book, but it was just not good. It is written in an extremely bland style where everyone's motivations and emotions are just laid out for you in a list, character relationships feel stilted and weird, and the whole thing reads very immature to me. I was genuinely shocked at the reveal that the main character is 25. The plots within plots are not interesting
(I kept forgetting she was even working for the other group until someone else brought it up),
and every character is exactly who they appear to be upon first meeting so none of the court intrigue is all that intriguing. A lot of plots feel like they get dropped as soon as they might complicate anything for anyone important.

The descriptions of living under occupation are visceral and feel "real" but the understanding of how empire works and what it needs to sustain itself is just not there. The way the Imperator as an institution is characterized and the description of how this empire supposedly runs are insulting to the reader. 

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How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

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dark emotional slow-paced
  • 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

2.5

I enjoyed parts of this, but I always want to like Grady Hendrix's books more than I end up doing. This was way too long and felt like it spent a lot of time spinning its wheels, the characters felt like they were mostly acting however it was needed to keep the plot moving, and a few plot points strained credulity even keeping in mind it's a horror novel.
The anarchist puppet collective putting on a show critical of the Bush admin in the immediate post 9/11 era to third graders and then a group of people dressed as clowns with a puppet trash one of the teachers’ houses and no one ever reacts to this or talks about it?? This would have been bigger than the killer clown craze in 2016.

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Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum

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funny informative sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There's a lot to like about this book but my overall experience with it was just average. Most of the storyline really worked for me (except
Yessie's little field trip
near the end, which just felt kind of silly and out of place) and I liked having points of view from characters in different parts of the system. However there is one character who feels SO author-voice to me, like just halting the plot for lectures directly from the author, and a couple of the points of view were written in ways that felt borderline racist (especially the way the Mexican character's accent is written out).

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A Blackness Absolute by Caitlin Marceau

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dark

2.0

The writing was pretty weak, these read like subpar creepypastas to me.

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Hearts in the Hard Ground by G.V. Anderson

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The plot was fine, but everything felt kind of vague and unfinished. I think there were too many ideas for a short story.

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Penance by Eliza Clark

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dark funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was fine, it captured the voices of the teens and (most of) the internet culture of the era really well, but I do think it fell into its own trap a bit in over focusing on the perpetrators without a lot of self awareness, and a few things about the internet culture of the time are inaccurate in a way that annoyed me (especially the assertion about ao3 because I think the truth actually adds to the book's point). The twist is so obvious from pretty much the beginning that the epilogue feels like a joke.

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Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

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challenging emotional hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book was a little bit slow for me at first, a lot of day to day descriptions of travelling, and a few of the side characters feel like they're just there to pad out the team (sorry Tyler) but overall a great hopeful post apocalyptic story.

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Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This took everything I liked about The Luminous Dead and dialled it up to eleven. Claustrophobic, tense, ambiguous, and the characters are great. It dragged a little bit about halfway through, but the ending was worth it.

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Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

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challenging dark reflective
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A really interesting collection of bleak, prescient sci-fi stories. Aside from the pop culture references it's hard to believe they were written around the 1970s. Overall 4 stars, but I knocked it down to 3 because I really hated the first story.

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