I think I've let #bookstagram entice me one too many times into reading something I otherwise might not have picked up. In this case, I should have leI think I've let #bookstagram entice me one too many times into reading something I otherwise might not have picked up. In this case, I should have left this particular book on the damn shelf where I found it.
First, praise where praise is due. The first 100 some pages were actually quite good. Our MC Josh discovers his wife has cheated on him and he takes to the woods to clear his head. A good long hike on the PCT may be just what he needs, enjoying nature and making small talk with the few odd folk on the path. That is, until he stumbles on a dead body, and takes a quick detour into the small town of Belam to file a report. But help does not come easy there, and he can tell he's not exactly welcome, so he hightails it back to the trail just as night is falling ... and... cue the Woodkin and all kinds of weird ass shit, which marked the beginning of the end of this book for me.
What crap. What absolute crap this book became. Almost none of it made sense and it just felt so uneven and sloppy. I think the author watched one too many woodsy horror movies and tried to evoke the same creepy you-can-try-and-run-away-but-you'll-never-leave vibes but it just didn't work.
The death of her aunt causes Liz and her younger sister Mary to return to the house they were raised in. The ancestral mansion appears to have been seThe death of her aunt causes Liz and her younger sister Mary to return to the house they were raised in. The ancestral mansion appears to have been severely neglected even though there's a groundskeeper still employed on property, and when Liz runs into her childhood neighbor and friend Julian, she quickly begins to realize something dark and evil has taken root there.
The book is steeped in Mexican and Indigenous culture and folklore, leaning heavily into the ancient gods, ghosts, and cryptids like El Coco, Chupacabra, La Muerte, and Xolotl who are tied to that unforgiving desert landscape, which was a cool space to world-build in. Who doesn't like dark, calamitous, and ruinous fiction, amirite??
That said, Sundown in San Ojuela is a fairly uneven debut which suffers from pacing issues. It's told from multiple characters' viewpoints, each written in a different POV - Liz and Mary's are told in third person; Julian is in second person; the Sheriff is in first. While initially off putting, it ended up working out for the best because once each character's chapter is first introduced, Olivas doesn't really bother to let us know whose chapter it is anymore. And in most instances, the plot is driven forward by revisiting the past in the form of flashbacks.
A few things to note: Liz developed the skill of clairvoyance as the result of a traumatic car accident when she was younger which plays heavily into the storyline and I'd recommend you play close attention to the prologue, which acts more as an opening chapter, since the events that take place in it are happening nearly simultaneously to the rest of the storyline and is not, as I had originally thought, something that has happened in the distant past...
I think I was left more confused with the way the story was told than with the actual story itself, although towards the end it feels like things just became overly and unnecessarily complicated with its many moving parts....more
The cover and title are *chef's kiss*. The vignettes themselves? A bit of a hot mess.
The publisher, who I love and adore, gives us this description -The cover and title are *chef's kiss*. The vignettes themselves? A bit of a hot mess.
The publisher, who I love and adore, gives us this description - "With no real plot to speak of, Hope and Wild Panic defies categorization and concise, catchy jacket copy. It's a collection of microfiction, or it's a novel-in-stories, or it's something else. Neither. Both. Doesn't matter."
But it kind of does matter. It's like flash but not. It's kind of all tied together but not. While the overarching focus is on the narrator's wife and son, there's really nothing connecting one sentence to the next or one story to another. It's one of the most scattered and strange things I've read in a while. The only 'story' I loved was the title story. It was the longest by far in the book, and it read and flowed incredibly smoothly.
I keep saying that I typically like experimental fiction but I don't think I like it as much as I think I do. Because even though I keep saying I like it, when I run across it, more times than not, I don't....more
I thought this book sounded wild and requested a review copy.
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Mid way check in: this book is breaking my brain.
~~~~~~~~~I thought this book sounded wild and requested a review copy.
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Mid way check in: this book is breaking my brain.
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Honestly, I am not sure what I just read. I believe this is taking place in a near-future post eco-collapse environment where a government agency referred to as RSCH took advantage of the chaos and began instituting extreme new social, educational, and gender rules and norms for its Citizens. Individuals are fitted with permanent AR contacts that record and upload memories directly to RSCHs infrastructure and are used as a means to monitor conformity. Any deviation to the social or dietary regimens is met with strict retraining, amputations slash body modifications, or axeing (which I think is a form of kidnapping) in the hopes of rehabilitating the person. Though, depending on the level of deviance, I think some people are just disappeared.
It's written in a highly experimental format that plays with language and structure A LOT. Part fragmented novel, part poetry, part found footage/transcripts/government postings, it was really difficult to follow. I mean, Cavar makes you WORK for it, you guys. And I don't even know if I got it. I could be really far off base here. My head was literally SPINNING throughout the entire thing.
Early reviews are all glowing, so this could totally be a me-not-you thing, but as someone who tends to dig experimental fiction, I'd be really surprised if I'm the only one who will struggle with this.
Pick this one up if you have an appreciation for sci fi authoritarian dystopia with trans and disability representation. For a vibe check, if you like the concepts in Darin Bradley's Dystopian Cluster series (Chimpanzee, Totem, and Noise), or the writing style of Blake Butler, this may also be for you too.
If you do end up checking it out, I'd love to know what you think! ...more
I saw this at a used bookstore for 4 bucks and when I realized it was an end of the world plaguey kind of book, which is right up my alley, I figured,I saw this at a used bookstore for 4 bucks and when I realized it was an end of the world plaguey kind of book, which is right up my alley, I figured, yes, let's do this.
The premise of Black Moon is a simple one. Suddenly, almost everyone is infected with incurable insomnia. It only takes a few days for people to start hallucinating and struggle to communicate clearly. A few days more and they are outside wandering around, lost and babbling nonsense, but they can start to sniff out a sleeper. The longer they go without sleep, the more aggressively they go after the sleepers when they stumble upon one actually sleeping. Kind of like zombies, only they aren't dead and they won't eat your brains, they will just beat you to death in an attempt to release your sleep.
Through a series of alternating chapters, we follow a few of those who haven't been affected, and one who is but is in a place that believes it can help the sleepless begin to sleep again, and travel with them on their individual journeys as they try to find their families, or attempt to leave them behind, in this new hellscape.
While I liked it overall, it felt too much like of a knock-off of Nod. And the length of time in which the people appeared to still be alive and functioning, if you could call it that, without sleep seemed a little unbelievable. I'm no expert but I would think that no one would be alive after nearly a month of no sleep. I mean, ok, yes, I googled how long a human body can go without sleep so you won't have to, ha, and the longest recorded length of time was 11 days, so there's no way to know for sure, but a MONTH? To still be alive and walking around, even if you're completely out of it and zombie-like? Eh. I mean, I'll give Calhoun some credit, because towards the end of the book, the sleepers were seeing more and more dead bodies laying around, but even still, I couldn't suspend belief and buy into it, and that kept pulling me out of the book.
A decent read if you're into pandy fiction and don't mind if you never learn what triggered the pandemic or whether society is able to recover from it...
Q: What's your favorite pandemic/end of world novel(s)?...more
When you work the night shift and need a smoke, you end up at the local graveyard because it's the closest place off campus to sneak a cig. You meet oWhen you work the night shift and need a smoke, you end up at the local graveyard because it's the closest place off campus to sneak a cig. You meet other nicotine addicted, sleepless, late night weirdos there too and develop a kind of unspoken insomniac club. All's cool until the night you all notice a freshly dug hole in the ground and let Occam's razor take care of the rest.
This fungal thriller is a really quick read that flows fast off the page but with all loose ends and no resolution?! Are you being serious right now? That's how this book is going to end?!
I think my digital review copy is missing a couple chapters because there is no possible way it just hangs there like that. Send it back to the author. They have more work to do. They failed to understand the assignment.
Oh gosh. I requested this review copy because it sounded like something I would enjoy. I'm all for Appalachian fiction and weird fiction, and this proOh gosh. I requested this review copy because it sounded like something I would enjoy. I'm all for Appalachian fiction and weird fiction, and this promised to be both. But this was... it was something else entirely.
I mean... it was both Appalachian and weird. But it was also a whole lot of wtfery. It's full of strangeness and wonder but almost nothing made sense. So while I enjoyed reading it, I really had no idea what was happening.
There's an invisible rope that cannot be cut, monstrous handmade cards that appear to have minds of their own, a boy who may or may not be a ghost, a killer on the loose, and the stars of the story, Shelia and Angie - two sisters who have a very deep and mysterious connection with the mountain they live on and who are, in incredibly different ways, about to play a very big role in bringing peace back their land.
It was atmospheric but also incredibly ambitious.
What were some of the weirdest, wtfery books you've read?...more
Aw man. I really gave this one a try but I ended up DNFing at 110 page mark.
The novelette Tentaclehead was weird and bizarre and fun in a really cheeAw man. I really gave this one a try but I ended up DNFing at 110 page mark.
The novelette Tentaclehead was weird and bizarre and fun in a really cheeky way and its length definitely worked in its favor. Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is a whole lot of the same, only there's soooo many more pages... and the weirdness, which was kind of fun at first, kept getting weirder and weirder and I felt my brain turning to mush and my eyes starting to roll in their sockets.
I just couldn't see myself reading about a soda bottle baby who gushed brown liquid out of their mouth, nose, and eye holes or about a skullhead who vomited pink foam that dissolved anything it touched or about Tentaclehead's obsession with a store mannequin and his own suicidal thoughts or about a slimy goo thing that argued with itself over what to eat for another 200 pages.
But you never know. It might be the perfect summer read for you! And what a cover, huh?!...more
A fairly quick and easy read, THatEoLS is more cerebral, psychological horror than scare-me horror, and does a fairly good job of keeping all of us, rA fairly quick and easy read, THatEoLS is more cerebral, psychological horror than scare-me horror, and does a fairly good job of keeping all of us, reader and characters alike, on our toes nearly the entire time...
Three strangers, with little to no memory of how or why, find themselves stepping onto a midnight bus that delivers them to a seemingly empty house at the end of Lacelean Street. As each enters, they find a note with their name on it, welcoming them with a room key and a list of rules they are expected to follow during their stay. They have no idea what is going on and they have no choice but to play along.
Catherine McCarthy packs every page with lo-key tension and this constant feeling of always being on the edge of some painful or horrific discovery, which succeeded in making me feel just as unsettled and uncomfortable as the main characters.
I enjoyed it but I wasn't in love with it. It's an entertaining and engrossing read, and I kept finding myself asking over and over again, along with the characters, just what the fuck was going on, but I thought it left things a little too unfinished - what is this place? how did THEY get chosen? were there others before them? why does it do what it does? what's its end game?
Strange and suspenseful, consider this book if you're looking for a fun way to kill an afternoon during spooky season. ...more
#bookstagrammademedoit and they did me dirty. I saw so many people reading this over the last handful of months and itWhat the fuck did I just read?!?
#bookstagrammademedoit and they did me dirty. I saw so many people reading this over the last handful of months and it sounded so intriguing that I went on a mad hunt for it and when I finally found a copy, I shot it up to the top of my TBR...
I like weird books, but this was just waaaay too weird.
Nope. Got 42% of the way in and I want out. I usually love Tor titles but this one just isn't doing it for me. It's too heavily focused on the lives oNope. Got 42% of the way in and I want out. I usually love Tor titles but this one just isn't doing it for me. It's too heavily focused on the lives of two married women and the men their home colony "pairs" them with in order to propagate and keep the human species going after a rival settlement stole their genetic regeneration whatevers. Ugh. It oozes toxic relationship stuff when I thought it was going to ooze pissed off alien goop stuff.
There's a strong part of me that wants to continue pushing through just in case the focus shifts and crazy alien stuff starts happening because you know, DNFing is such a hard thing for me. But I'm going to try to fight the urge to keep picking it up...
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... Ok, I am a weak DNFer. I picked it back up and finished it. It got better. Not immensely so, but right after the place I was going to DNF, the book did what I thought it was going to do and shifted focus.
Was it worth not DNFing? Eh. Am I glad I went back to it? Eh. But at least it's finished and I don't have to worry about whether I DNFd too soon and didn't give it a fair shot, right?!...more
I had read and loved The Employees so when I saw My Work while browsing the book shelves, you better believe I grabbed it without even really reading I had read and loved The Employees so when I saw My Work while browsing the book shelves, you better believe I grabbed it without even really reading the jacket copy.
This one is about pregnancy and motherhood and postpartum depression and the fear that you are losing your shit and trying to journal your journey in case you DO actually lose your shit because getting it all down might be the key to remaining sane, only now you're not sure if you are the one who wrote the stuff you just found or if someone else or perhaps another version of you has written it... and we the reader aren't totally sure of this either.
There a numerous beginnings, middles, and ends. The entries and poems and narrations are not necessarily in any real sort of order. And there's this section of about 100 pages or so that just drags on kinda painfully and repetitively.
A little uneven, a little weird - even for me - and quite the trip down insanity lane, the deeper into the book you go. I'm not quite sure what I read there at the end, honestly... ...more
Aw man, what is it with me and the horror books I've been reading lately? Either I am becoming totally numb and jaded to the genre or my expectations Aw man, what is it with me and the horror books I've been reading lately? Either I am becoming totally numb and jaded to the genre or my expectations are just set ridiculously high. Add this one to the #meh pile.
A retelling of Rapunzel but make it horror. Only... it's not that horrorifying. True, there is a witch in the woods and some creepy cat things. There are some kidnapped children. There's some hair eating and some cannibalism. All the ingredients of a really good scary story were there but something about the writing style just fell flat for me.
I felt like I was reading a book geared more towards a YA audience than adults. The gory parts weren't gory enough. The jump scares felt more like peek-a-boo scenes. There was no real dread or tension.
I know I will likely be in the minority here, and I'm ok with that. Looking forward to seeing what you think if you get your hands on this one!...more
Easy to read, yet maddening abstruse, The Factory introduces us to three new employees as they acclimate to their jobsHello you strange little thing!
Easy to read, yet maddening abstruse, The Factory introduces us to three new employees as they acclimate to their jobs - a document shredder, a proofreader, and one who studies and catalogs the moss that grows around the property. We quickly learn that the Factory is much more than just its offices. It has its own housing sections, cafeterias and restaurants, bus and laundry services, museum, rivers and forests... it even appears to have its very own ecosystem of birds and beavers... and yet no one really seems to know what it is The Factory actually does, or how they contribute to the bigger picture.
We follow our three workers around as they chat with thier co-workers, struggle to get comfortable within the mind numbing limitations of their roles, and explore the property in search of answers they may never receive to questions they may never ask aloud.
Honestly, not much happens, but I'm not complaining.
This one will be a good fit for readers who've enjoyed Helen Phillip's The Beautiful Bureaucrat, Jesse Ball's The Cure For Suicide, and Olga Ravn's The Employees.
I grabbed this one on a whim, having heard nothing about it previously. It's an incredibly short and unsettling read, clocking in at just over 100 pagI grabbed this one on a whim, having heard nothing about it previously. It's an incredibly short and unsettling read, clocking in at just over 100 pages. I found it to be more psychological horror and isolation fiction than full on horror but still...
A couple and their young daughter get an Airbnb out in the middle of nowhere. He's supposed to be working on the sequel to a hit screenplay, she's supposed to be enjoying the quiet time away. But the house seems to have other plans for them.
It's slow to start and super creepy towards the end. Easily digested in one sitting but man does it linger in your brain for much, more longer.
Similar themes and vibes to books like Leave the World Behind (the sparce writing style), House of Leaves (the way the house keeps changing), The Shining (the isolation and the niggling fear that you're losing your mind)...
I was browsing the shelves in a new-to-me used bookshop and stumbled across this one. I'm familiar with Jesse Ball, having read his novel Samedi the DI was browsing the shelves in a new-to-me used bookshop and stumbled across this one. I'm familiar with Jesse Ball, having read his novel Samedi the Deafness, and still have Census sitting here in the TBR. This one sounded more interesting though, so I jumped right in with high hopes.
From what I remember of Samedi, Ball likes to confound and confuse his readers right up until the very end and A Cure for Suicide is no different. As I was reading it, Helen Phillips' novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat came immediately to mind. Ball plays in the same enigmatic sandbox, withholding important background information and personal histories, leaving us blindly following along, hoping things will soon start to make sense, but thoroughly enjoying the ride regardless.
Here, there is an Examiner and a Claimant, and they live together in a house in the Gentlest Village, a town apparently built with the specific purpose of rehabbing individuals who were "very sick and almost died" but "asked for help and were brought here". It is the Examiner's job to reteach the Claimant everything - "this is a chair. they put chairs wherever somone might sit" and "the skeleton is a hard substance, hard like wood, like the wood of this chair" - and prepare them to eventually rejoin society.
The Examiner has a very specific job to do, with very specific rules to follow, reporting back to their employer the progress of the Claimant, but it would appear our Examiner might be a bit of a rulebreaker, though it is unclear to what extent.
The Claimant is pliable, moldable, easily influenced and not entirely interested in, or maybe not even capable of, challenging or questioning their current situation. There's a pervasive fogginess that shrouds them. Hell, the book itself is a masterclass in fogginess.
What did the claimant do to get themselves here? Where they a willing participant in this strange experiment or is something more sinister going on? Will their memories ever return to them? Will they rehabilitate and rejoin the world? Is there even a world outside of the Villages to return to? Are these pages hiding more than they are letting on?
I guess you'll just have to read it to find out!!...more
WTF did I just read? How many times did I tell myself to DNF it, to just put it down and walk away? And I didn't listen.
I don't getNope. Nope. Nope.
WTF did I just read? How many times did I tell myself to DNF it, to just put it down and walk away? And I didn't listen.
I don't get it. I mean, I typically like weird, experimental fiction. The stranger, the better. But this was a bunch of cocky doo doo. Quite literally. No, really. The two main characters, Anita and Rainie, spent a lot of time talking about and messing with poop, human and canine.
The writing for the first 100 pages or so was just maddening gibberish. The more I read, the more it started to feel like a bunch of unconnected words and thoughts mushed together on the page. Whole paragraphs were making no sense. It was like listening to someone who just woke up from a feverish dream. Or like those really flowery poems that look beautiful but never make any sense, no matter how you try to dissect them.
From what I gather, ten year old Anita and Rainie are best friends with great imaginations who decide to play at becoming dogs. They obsess and fuss over the strays dogs and the old sycamore tree that live in a empty lot in their neighborhood and explore each other's bodies and generally reek havoc against their mothers' better judgement.
Anita is a vicious instigator and at one point she forces Rainie to push her arm through the fence, and Rainie suffers a nasty dog bite that puts her into a coma for a week. Not long after that, Rainie and her family move away. When Anita's letters to Rainie go unanswered, Anita spirals into a decade long deep dream from which she cannot wake. Her family watches helplessly as her body begins to rot from the inside out, until Rainie returns home to check in on her friend and devises a plan to bring her back from the dreamworld.
But also... blood becomes red thread, dog teeth are skin gems, feces are everywhere, and banana ghosts are like genies who grant wishes if you agree to free them from the trees. Oh, and let's not forget the dangers of unhealthy co-dependency.
This is another #bookstagrammademedoit book. It wasn't at all on my radar until I saw a review of it over there. Then, when I added it to my to-buy shThis is another #bookstagrammademedoit book. It wasn't at all on my radar until I saw a review of it over there. Then, when I added it to my to-buy shelf on Goodreads I saw it had over 350 ratings already and thought, man, how could I not have known about this one yet?! #FOMO much?!
Full disclosure: I went in expecting it to be something quite different than what it is. That's not to say I didn't like it, because I did. But where I anticipated speculative fiction and magicial realism and the exploration of gateways to different worlds (aka Jeff Vandermeer style), I instead found myself engrossed in grief fiction following a character who is quickly becoming separated from reality.
What you need to know is that David, as a child, was very close to his grandfather. His grandfather believed there was more to this world than we knew, and he was determined to crack the multiverse code. Then, suddenly, amidst a worldwide crisis in which people begin to go missing and unidentifable bodies started popping up in strange places, David's grandfather also disappears. His parents tell him he died, but there were no hospital visits (like there were when his grandmother got sick), and no funeral. David is convinced that his parents are lying to him, and that his grandfather successfully crossed over to a different world, and he becomes determined to find him.
Mothtown is broken up into two alternating parts, Before and After. But where the actual split has occured appears to be left to the reader to decide - before and after when David learns of the death/disappearance of his grandfather at the age of 10? Before and after the discovery of his grandfather's book of instructions in the thrift store as an adult? Before and after his first meeting with Michael, the man with the maps and the knowledge of where the doors are located? Maybe, possibly, yes, to all of it.
I think Nils Shukla's blurb explains it best, "a tale about discovering how to belong". It's a book about feeling unstuck and uncomfortable in your own skin. It's tender and twisted. It's desperate and dripping with dread, but its pages are also imbued with a desire to find the space where your body fits best....more
A pandemic in which your gender and the color of your hair determines whether you will turn rabid and brutually attack others? Ok, sign me up.
This boA pandemic in which your gender and the color of your hair determines whether you will turn rabid and brutually attack others? Ok, sign me up.
This book came out in 2012 and somehow flew right under my radar, which is weird because pandy fiction is so my jam. And honestly, I am not even sure how it got onto my radar now, but I'm glad it did.
You're going to have to throw basic logic out the window for this one though because the virus only affects blonde females. And not just natural blonde females. It also affects dyed blondes. But if you shave your head and pubes, you might trick the virus into passing you by. Which, what? That makes like zero sense since the virus is supposed to interact with your genes and cutting your hair or dying it won't change your genetic markers but whatever, here we go, we're committed and we're going along for the ride...
So blonde women catch this virus and begin going mad, ragey and bitey, killing people left and right. In no time, the body count is in the hundred thousands A DAY and the world shifts into pandemic mode. Our red headed protagonist Hazel finds out she is pregnant on the day of the inital outbreak and the rest of the book follows her as she decides to find a place willing to terminate the pregnancy while also trying to locate the baby daddy so she can let him know. Of course, neither of those things are going happen without a fight, especially when the government begins to lock things down and segregate anyone who may have been exposed or is at risk for The Blonde Fury.
I love that Schultz wrote a book in which a virus specifically targets the hollywood standard for beauty, the C'mon Barbie let's go party people of the world. What was once coveted is now feared.
And while it's dark due to the subject matter - pandemic times, unwanted pregancy, maritial affairs - it's also darkly humorous and at times a little cheeky. Hazel has the most hilarious nicknames for her unborn baby and ends up spending some incredibly uncomfortable time in close quarters with her baby daddy's wife. It gently balances hope and compassion and optimism while also showcasing the horror and fears of the unknown.
It's a chunky one, clocking in at just under 400 pages. But it reads quickly, and read it you should. ...more
This has been on my to-buy list ever since seeing it in the bookstore on the New Fiction shelf. Isolation AND pandy fiction, how could I say no?!
But hThis has been on my to-buy list ever since seeing it in the bookstore on the New Fiction shelf. Isolation AND pandy fiction, how could I say no?!
But honestly, it was a bit of a strange one for me. It was more chewy than I had anticipated - I picked it up thinking it would be a quick read about two people who were surviving a pandemic on a remote island, but it was really so much more than that.
Kit was a deliciously unreliable narrator. You know right from the get-go there is more to this situation than she is letting on. How did she get there? How long has she been alone? Why is she ok with letting this guy Crevan, who apparently just showed up out of the blue one day, boss her around and take charge of her and her bunker-den hideout place, but she's not ok when he rescues an unconscious woman from the ocean? And she came across as weirdly immature, which bothered me until you get closer to the end of the book (spoiler no spoiler but there's an interesting little twist) and then you kind of get why.
The pacing was a bit uneven, quicker when there was a bit of action, which was few and far between, and sloooower during the moments where she got stuck inside her head, which happened more frequently. It was definitely more isolation fiction than pandy fiction and the atmosphere was what made it all work - the whole situation was downright eerie, there was loads of tension, and we know we're being fed a bunch of half truths, so we're actively trying to figure out just wtf is going on while also giving in and going along for the ride because, what choice do we have?...more
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