versmonesprit's reviews
217 reviews

I’ve had the misfortune of reading many dull books, but I think this might take the crown. From the very first sentence on, this book is nothing but dull. There’s a curse that never lands anything other than being silly. (“It’s an old form of paganism.” Yeah, that sloppy.) There’s never any tension, never anything ominous. It’s all dull as fuck. Two murders happen, and they’re so painfully dull, I don’t think one could ever be worse than the other, because that’d make one better, and “good” is not an adjective that belongs anywhere near this waste of time. There are never any real stakes, the writing is amateurish at best, and the conversations are laughably inorganic. Makes me doubt some writers have ever had conversations themselves.

As if not enough, constant namedropping (Tinder, Netflix, Gatorade, Reddit…) dates and cheapens this story all the more. I was wondering why no editor felt the need to intervene, but apparently this was self-published, in which case I’m sorry that the writer doesn’t have any honest people around. I was so hyped for this book, I’m still not over the shock that this is the dullest thing ever written — yes, duller than romance even!

Oh and… Make it illegal for men to write women! This was a cringe-fest, I’d say “when it wasn’t a snooze-fest” but my God, it never stopped being a snooze-fest!

The Worm and His Kings, despite its silly little title, starts off with a properly strong chapter. It sets a bleak, desolate tone, and gets right into the story. That is the last time good writing and good pacing will be found in this book.

For one thing, the story drags and drags and drags, even though it doesn’t have enough substance to be spread this thin. This is a short story stretched into a novella, which causes the terrible opportunity for the writer to fill it with unnecessary backstories and with too many details that take away from the obscurity that needs to cast a shadow over any cosmic horror for it to land. Too much exposition is the main issue, but the blame is also on the comically amateurish writing present both in dialogues and in the prose too . . . 

. . . which is why I can’t believe some people have compared this to Clive Barker, who is a master of prose, who writes evocatively without drenching his stories in unnecessary details that add that unmistakable tinge of Wattpad. I saw fewer comments about this being a lovecraftian story as well, and I find it equally preposterous. Listen, Lovecraft was a horrendous man, but he knew how to write cosmic horror: he purposefully omitted details because the unknown will always be scarier than silly worms, and he kept the main character’s own personal story to a minimum because that just makes the story clunky. Piper unfortunately did not realise any of these.

Instead, her story is overly clogged with unnecessary background stories, and she unfortunately over-explains the ‘lore’ which is bound to sound childish when said lore talks about Pangea being smashed by a worm (and not without having to include facts about Pangea because apparently the American education system is this much of a horror within itself that Pangea needs to be explained). Another issue is that Piper reaches for concepts that are beyond her understanding — the concepts being quantum physics and space/time. Even accomplished scientists acknowledge the complexity of quantum physics, so it’s no surprise that using it in a story without no real grasp of it will sound, sorry to say, stupid.

Oh and the “twist”? Yeah, you go into the story having already deciphered it, because though the blurb writer seemingly believes “nothing is as it seems,” both branches of the alleged twist are so over-done that they’re almost.. formulaic?

I’ve had an insupportable headache all day, so I listened to the audiobook. The narrator speaks a bit nasally, but thankfully she isn’t the sort to over-dramatise the reading so I had no issues with it. That said, the narration is very slow, to the point 1.8x sounds completely natural, and some dialogues continue to be at a regular pace even at 2.5x. The real reason I eventually sped up to 3x was not the narrator, but the story itself. One  complaint I had about the narrator is that she voiced certain creature sounds, but it sounded nothing like described in the text. And still I find this a shortcoming of the text, as it just adds another layer of silliness when you add in “sound effects” as if this is a comic book.

I think this book might have worsened my headache due to the severe annoyance it caused.

Burroughs writes with engrossing clarity, simplistically but never dully, though some portions do become a bit tedious. Even then, he’s the sort of writer who doesn’t drag past the irredeemable point, and livens the book with new action. Each new ‘event’ feels like an adventure, the reader’s curiosity piqued. Despite being categorised as fiction, Junky is possibly the most remarkable testimony on heroin addiction. Burroughs refrains from psychological explanations, but instead presents the fact of being addicted, and sometimes peddling drugs. The struggles aren’t subjected to inquisitions, but instead shown as they are… which, oxymoronically, provides for a very sober insight.

I think it’s a good signifier that a poetry book was nothing but pure agony when it takes me 26 days to read 150 pages. I don’t speak Italian. I can tell the translation is completely wrong. 

Now repeat after me: translation is not a creative writing workshop. 

But that’s what Slavitt did, exclusively. I did not like a single poem, because I knew none were as Cavalcanti wrote them.

I still read through the Italian originals, and I don’t think I’d like them anyway — they’re very repetitive, and feel amateurish as in each, Cavalcanti removes vowels to fit the metre. Just write better??

The ebook has many ridiculous typos as well, and I have to say, how embarrassing for a university press!

Of the 14 stories in this small selection, I liked just over half, but even fewer were genuinely enjoyable. The fault partially lies in the translation, which sounds way too modern and Western, stripping the character of these stories. The other portion of the fault, I find, lies in the act of reading itself: these are very much like folk stories, which by nature are meant to be told. I feel I’d have enjoyed them more had I listened to them individually, interspersed, and even better if within the right atmosphere.

I also can’t help but feel I’m missing necessary historical and literary context to be able to appreciate what these stories are. For me they were a bit too short and rushed to really drive anything home, be it strangeness or shock.

The only fault I could find for this little book would be the order of the stories, simply because the eponymous one is the most wonderful piece of literature you can read, and all else by comparison, no matter how great within itself, fades in its aftermath.

This selection consists of The Legend of the Sleepers, and Simon Magus. The latter tells of two legends about the figure’s death, written in that simple but engaging language common for folktales. The former is, even more than an exquisitely atmospheric and cinematic retelling of a legend, the fragmented series of a mystic’s visions. Dream and reality blur, fervent images and pagan allusions burn like the Sacred Heart. It’s a demanding story, one I knew I’d have to read over and over again through the rest of my life, one that is read not with the eyes but with the heart, one that cannot be deciphered but understood deep within. Its obscurity is what makes it so transcendental, so divine. As someone interested in mystic literature, I wager this might just be the best the out there.

This is a story that requires perseverance. The first half made me want to cry in frustration due to how utterly boring and rambly it was. It got less bad in the second half, and only became alright in the last few pages. I don’t know the author enough to know whether the racism is her own, or just fictional, but I found it added nothing but another layer of antipathy to the story. I wish Porter had done what she did at the very end, through the entire story: the real dynamics of an age gap marriage, how it’s perceived, how it affects the younger partner… And again, without the racism, the main character could have been one that I’d feel tenderness for. In the end this persuaded me not to get a longer book by Porter, so I’d say I wouldn’t recommend this even at the price tag. 

I will never read Borges, at least in translation, again. These stories were imaginative, but only in concept. He’s the sort of writer who writes plots, and plots only. Maybe there’s a beauty to his words in their original, but they’re definitely absent from this English version. Even then these stories would never be good, for the reason that Borges doesn’t bother setting them up. Things happen in a flurry, without allowing for connection between reader and story. Descriptions are at a bare minimum when atmosphere and imagery would have been necessary for the success of the story. I’d have reviewed each story individually, had my sole impressions not been boredom and disappointment for them all. 

In The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder as the narrator-voice says that in literature, it is the expression of the heart that matters; style is merely the vessel. That precisely accounts for the missing star in my rating, as someone whose greatest delight in literature is the way, the manner of the expression of the heart. Make no mistake: Wilder is tender, funny, and at times, unexpectedly and beautifully moving with his expression. But the book is rather plot-heavy, and for me that doesn’t make for the most enchanting experience.

For a while I also had difficulty reconciling the expectations created by the misleading blurb versus what the book really is. The blurb makes it sound very much like it’s the story of a friar surveying the life circumstances of the five people who die when a bridge collapses before his eyes. That’s not what happens. The friar is only ever mentioned; the stories of the five are told by a different narrator, who by the addressing of the reader as ‘you’ seems to be the author himself. Once you accept it’s the blurb and not the book that’s misleading, you get to like the book for what it is.

The ending finally moved me to tears, so it’s safe to say Wilder accomplished what he believed to be good literature: baring the heart. All along the story his respectful, loving, and tender treatment of women was a pleasant surprise, and when the book ended with three very different women coming together, I was in awe. After reading a review claiming the book is sarcastic and not appreciative of love, I felt the need to read Wilder’s Wikipedia page. What I found out about his life provided for me an explanation behind this attitude towards women that was beyond his contemporaries’ stance: he had three sisters, all of whom had strong careers. Things we love to see.

Also, Wilder remarked that the book stemmed from debates with his father who, in the Puritan tradition, believed in a swiftly punitive God, which Wilder believed totally ignored God’s caritas. He said he only asked the question in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, but from the ending I believe it safe to say: this is a book about the everlasting power of love, whether it be secular or divine. It’s not the sort of approach to the theme of grief that I usually read, but to be fair, it’s by far the most comforting.

This is so much tamer than Catullus. 

That’s pretty much my entire review, because I liked the writer’s honesty that these were not meant to offer any deep literary experience, but a fun time. They’re fun to read indeed, even though at times the writer lost the premise of this being a “Devil’s” book of sonnets what with there being quite a few very positive and moralising pieces. Thanks to the writer’s honesty, I never looked for mastery, but still felt like there was easily room for improvement; my biggest disappointment had to do with the poems not being lewd enough.

[DRC provided by NetGalley]