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There's a lot of complexity here. The worldbuilding is top-notch, without many shortcuts: social strata viewed from more than one side, foreigners from all over with culture and languages and everything that feel consistent and realistic even when they're only mentioned in passing. Honestly this feels like a technical masterpiece in so many ways: there are a lot of moving parts and they all meet up like some sort of complex knotwork; lots of characters, with proper arcs and everything, but introduced at a rate and in a manner that keeps them easy to keep track of; some of the best-done character voices I've seen; perspective-hopping showcasing things (characters, situations, social classes, privilege) from different sides in a way that feels easy and natural. It's just... really well done.

It's also just a fun read. Engrossing, left me wanting more.

Selling points: fun, fast-paced, great worldbuilding, casual bisexuality with no one making a big thing about it, technically excellent, high-class person realising their privilege without it feeling like proselytizing

Warnings: sacrificed friendship

Das Buch hätte wirklich Inhaltswarnungen brauchen können. Es gibt anscheinend auch welche auf der Website der Autorin, leider aber nicht im Buch selber. Daher erstmal ein paar Warnungen: Sex, explizit; sexuelle Übergriffe bis hin zur Vergewaltigung, auch von Kindern; grausamer, sexuell übertonter Mord; fehlende Autonomie; Misbrauch von Kindern; Krieg; Inzucht (unbewusst).

Ich hab das Buch trotzdem genossen, aber wahrscheinlich hätte ich nicht, wenn ich mich nicht besonders für Märchen interessieren würde. Es war auf jeden Fall interessant zu sehen, wie jedes Element von Rötkäppchen eingebaut wurde. Und es hat auch etwas zum nachdenken angeregt. Schwierig war es aber doch, und ich hatte auch ein bisschen das Gefühl, dass es Vergewaltigung etwas verkleinert - dadurch, dass sie fast wie Shock-Value aussah, anstatt ernsthaft thematisiert zu werden. Der eine Täter kann irgendwie nichts dafür, gegen den anderen kann man sich relativ leicht wehren, und die Häufigkeit, mit der sie vorzukommen scheint, lässt alles irgendwie verblassen. (Das fällt besonders auf, nachdem ich gerade The Bayou von Arden Powell gelesen hab, in dem die Vergewaltigung und Mord eines einzelnen Kindes solch weitreichende Nachwirkungen hat - nicht nur für das Kind selber, sondern für das ganze Dorf - dass das gleiche hier fast überflüssig scheint.)

Ein paar komische Ideen über Wolfsverhalten sind auch dabei, aber Märchenwölfe sind halt anders. Da kann man nichts sagen.

I have to say, Eugene might be the single most passive protagonist I've ever seen. Not a flaw in the writing: a deliberate character choice. There's depression and all-pervading anxiety, yes, but the level of passivity here - of learned helplessness - was deep enough to be engrossing, to have me wondering: what caused this? How did he get to be this way?

The question is answered. It is one of many questions raised and answered, or first answered and later raised: as short as this novella is, there's a many-layered depth to it that rises the more I think about it.

There's also a very consistent atmosphere to it - thick, oppressive, uneasy; dread so creeping that it feels more like depression than fear. Might be a hard read, if it were longer. Though, again: there's more to it than its length implies.

Selling points: gay, hella atmosphere, depth, for all the purported supernatural horror villains the true horror is what lies in humanity

Warnings: suicide (on page, moderately intense); child sexual abuse; sex (tasteful but explicit); sex used to shut someone up; sex used to secure binding promises from someone without their necessarily noticing; homophobia (especially internalised and religious homophobia, period-typical); gun violence; religion (Christianity (Catholic) as an authoritarian institution and a social force).

I've kind of a complicated opinion of this book, and while part of me wants to recommend it to absolutely everyone, another part of me wants to preface that recommendation with a whole slew of caveats and content warnings. It is, unquestionably, a good book; but it is not a pleasant one.

The writing is fluid, the narrator easy to empathise with, and the framing device both really nifty and very immersive. It also performs another important function: it makes it clear from the start that whatever else happens in the book, the narrator is going to - somehow, somewhen, in some capacity - make it through. This is the sort of book in which that knowledge is critical, and for some readers might make the difference in being able to finish it.

The narrator - whose only given name and pronouns in fact belong to someone else, for which reason I'm uncomfortable with using them - spends nearly the entire book in a state of no or nearly no agency. Every aspect of their life is tightly controlled, down to their perception and their ability to move their own body. Their mind is their own, but there's so much gaslighting and disregard for their personhood that that, too, is under constant assault. Other characters range from dismissive to misguided to outright abusive. The threat of rape or sexual assault is a constant looming shadow, though - this is the other thing that keeps the book readable despite all of this - it doesn't ever actually happen.

In various ways, Mirror Project parallels medical abuse, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, and really just about every kind of abuse you can think of. The narrator's situation is deeply traumatising, and readers who are sensitive to any of these things should take every measure to brace and protect themselves before reading (if, indeed, they read it at all).

A good book, an important book, but also a deeply uncomfortable one.

Selling points: voidpunk; AI/robots; hopeful ending.

Warnings: all the content warnings; see above. There were also occasional typos in my edition, though not so many that they seriously disrupted the reading flow.

I do not have many words right now, but there were many things to like here: the deeper exploration of the AI Gods, an epic fight scene that worked better than that in "The Fallen", the way the conclusion went. I do feel a bit weird about the extant that Yasira (and Tiv, and the Seven) all blamed Ev for everything - I mean, they're not wrong to, exactly? She certainly fucked up Jai? But also, she didn't really torture or break Yasira, not intentionally anyway; I suspect that a certain amount of blame that really belonged to Akavi ended up pinned on Ev just because he appeared to be out of the picture. Which is a realistic way for blame to go, but it's... weird, in that I find her amoral, sympathetic, and almost reasonable, and yet people seem almost more upset with her than with the Gods and angels.

Anyway, this went nicely mythic, and although I can't words very well right now I liked it.

Das Buch hat durchaus ein paar rauhe Stellen - die viele Kampfszenen sind zum Teil recht langgezogen, besonders am Anfang, wo man noch nicht viel Kontext dafür hat, und manche Charaktere sind nicht ganz so dreidimensional wie andere (besonders die Sally ist meiner Meinung nach ein bisschen kurz gekommen) - aber seine Stärken gleichen die lässig aus. Nämlich: der amusante Schreibstil; die Welt, in der ich - obwohl das Buch keineswegs dünn war - auch gerne mehr Zeit verbringen würde; und besonders die Charaktere.

Ein paar Sachen die mir besonders gefielen: - Lichtmagie und Dunkelmagie sind einander entgegengesetzt, aber völlig ohne moralischen Wert; weder noch ist gut oder böse; - kein Romanceplot (und sogar eine Anspielung darauf, dass eine Person, von der es fast so aussah, als könnte sie in einem Romanceplot verwickelt werden, aro ist!!); - Monsterpositivität, ohne, dass ihnen die Zähne genommen werden.

Warnungen: - Golems in einem nichtjüdischen Kontext - ab und zu Harry-Potter-Referenzen - Folterung - ziemlich viel Gewalt

Wenn jemals ein neues Undertown Buch kommt, würde ich es gerne lesen.