Reviews and Comments

This novel absolutely broke my heart, and it's so perfect for that. I feel like every Gatsby retelling I read, the more I love the guy and all is quirky charms. I'm not sure what's not to love about queer, cyberpunk Gatsby, so like, just read the book.

In all seriousness, I wrote a full review on my website because I got this book for review from NetGalley. Check that out for more coherence. It's linked in my profile.

Another great book in the Wayward Children series that I think took somewhat more of a darker turn then some of the previous books. I know that there have been dark stories up until this point, but this one felt particularly dark. Perhaps that was because it took place in our world instead of one of the world's of the doors.

Readers are finally introduced to the other school that exists alongside Eleanor West's and it's not a pretty sight. It's uncomfortable and disturbing and a lot of ways, but I really liked this edition.

This is especially true because I have found Cora extremely annoying since her introduction several books previous. I was very glad for her character to grow and for her to become more sure of herself in this volume. It's an easy recommendation and I can't wait to listen to the next book.

Normally I try to write reviews pretty soon after I finish reading a book. I know there are people to wait to review until after they've finished processing a book, but I'm more interested in knowing how I felt about the book immediately afterwards. While it may be true that with a few days, I may look more kindly upon a book, that doesn't mean I actually enjoyed it when I was reading it, and it's actually very rare that I feel the need to change my personal ratings.

But for this one, I waited for a little while. Part of this was because I finished reading the book at midnight and I need to go to sleep, but part of it was simply that the The stories in this collection had a certain kind of weight that was a bit hard to think about completely off the cuff (especially at midnight).

I think basically every collection in this collection was sad in some way. More or less every single story references war or death or suicide bombing or intense misogyny. It wasn't easy to read and I wouldn't suggest anybody read it for personal enjoyment.

That being said, there were still so many moments of joy to be found and the love that the authors have for their country was palpable. From the outside looking in, there's not a lot of hope when someone looks at the situation in Afghanistan, especially when it comes to the rights of women and girls, as well as any member of the LGBTQ+, but the authors of these stories remind that the fight is worth fighting for, and there's a lot of hope in that.

I spent a lot of this collection remembering videos, feed to me by the Instagram algorithm, of white Christian men visiting Kabul and bragging about how amazing it was while they're escorted by somebody carrying an AK-47. The most notable part about every single one of these videos isn't the AK-47s though, it's the fact that there are no women or girls in sight.

Yet I see the love those same women have for their country in the words in this book, and I want so much for them to live the reality it is that they seek.

A hard collection, but very worth the read.

It took me nearly 2 months to listen to the audiobook for this novel because of life happening, and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to meet this book and its characters as they came to life in my ears.

The novel is told through several different perspectives, primarily of a 70-year-old woman, a 30-year-old man, and an octopus. There are some others, but these three are at the forefront.

The octopus, Marcellus, provides commentary on the human condition and acts kind of as the behind the scene eyes for the reader. On the other hand, the humans are constantly dealing with human style drama and coming up with or failing to come up with human style solutions.

There's a lot of good humor, but tragedy too. Reading along, I was reminded that people are complicated and we never stop growing into who we are, even at 70 years old. There's a lot of pain in the hardship out there, but a lot of good stuff too, and even though humanity has a tendency to fall into the absurd, we can be remarkably bright features too.

Today I learned how badly I needed to hear a human man narrating the perspective of an octopus saying, "Let's cut the shit."

It seems it was quite badly in fact.

This book isn't even 100 pages long, so I finished it in a single sitting, and I don't regret doing that. I loved Ray Nayler's debut novel and this short novella was just as great, if not better in many ways.

He tackles so many serious issues with such sincerity and depth despite the length and the multiple character perspectives really highlight the positionality of different people in society and how it affects their views and what they care about and their memories. Obviously what can't be ignored about this book is the idea that you can bring back extinct species and the underlying current of the climate crisis and humans and destruction, but those issues weren't really at the forefront of my mind as I was reading--they only came later.

This book showcases breathtaking cruelty, but also a heartbreaking kind of kindness too. Very good. Will buy whatever he publishes next.

This book was insufferable. Beautifully written, but the content itself was absolutely insufferable. I'm so mad that the words were so pretty, but the meaning so bland.

This book basically follows a French woman in her 30s whose gone to Japan to read the will of her late father, a Japanese man who she's never met. He worked with artisans, poets, and the like, so he was very wealthy and very well connected in Kyoto--which sounds like an interesting premise, but what it ends up reading like is intense exotification and romanticization of Kyoto and Japan at large (because that's what it's doing). It also leans very hard into Japanese exceptionalism, which is really icky.

I believe there are people who feel this way about Japan, and it does seem that the author spent some time in Kyoto, so maybe that's the root of this weird vibe that's going on. But I think it's gross. You can't describe a whole entire nation of peoples using old poetry and aesthetics. Japan may be special to individuals because of specific personal experiences, but it's not especially unique in any particular way. The fact that this narrative still happens is very strong evidence that the Japan propaganda game is still very strong. Poetry is beautiful. Calligraphy and traditional pottery methods are beautiful. Temples are beautiful, but Japan isn't going to save your life by being special, because it's not some magical realm unique in the world at large. These types of narratives are infuriating.

Having somebody go to Kyoto for the first time and be dragged around without being given any information to temples throughout the city to have some kind of "awakening" isn't romantic or meaningful, it's weird and deeply uncomfortable. Being treated like a child and being forced to go on some aesthetic journey before you read your father's will is some weird power play shit.

Absolutely insufferable. This is exactly why I tend to avoid reading books that take place in Japan and weren't originally in Japanese to begin with. I can't even begin to comprehend how anybody feels this way about anything.

Finally after 6 months delay, I've started reading the books from the International Booker 2025 long list. This is the first book that I've read, and if I'm being completely honest about it, I don't even really know what I think or feel about it yet.

When I read the first chapter, I was kind of annoyed and confused because I hadn't read the book blurb since I bought the book in March I think? But after I looked that up, I was pretty game again, and I think what's really interesting about this book is how it kind of weaves in and out of different perspectives.

One may think that everything is kind of being told through the eyes of the Narrator, but for anybody with a keen eye, you'll quickly realize that that isn't the case and that may be there or even more views that you're gaining as the reader than even just from Fanny and the Narrator.

Is Felix there too? Is there somebody else? Many more somebody elses? There aren't a lot of answers, and in the lack of answers, it seems to me that you find the actual answer.

This book is about not belonging, about existing on a different rhythm than everyone around you, about the inner conflict that comes with figuring out and understanding who you are.

I liked this book, but I'm not sure this review articulates why, and perhaps somewhat ironically given the nature of this book, I'm not sure I even know why to begin with.

As the title of my review implies, reading this book in the evening before you go to bed may not be the best idea. While most of the stories are mostly just creepy rather than being absolutely terrifying, exceptions apply. But yes, I read all of the stories in this collection to "wind down" before bed. I never claimed to be the brightest cookie in the jar.

I liked this collection much like I've liked the earlier English translations of this author's work. It's critical of misogyny and machoism in all the ways I enjoy, and it doesn't hold back the punches when it comes to pointing out other societal issues like poverty, but I'm currently shivering under the covers and wondering how I'm going to be able to go to sleep without thinking of demon children finding me in my room and dragging me out of my bed.

Much like the title suggests and a kind of roundabout way, I feel like this book has a lot to offer in terms of comparing and contrasting, and the near future climate crisis setting really helps with that.

There are a bunch of troubled girls being pumped full of a drug called BeZen in an effort to dull them down. Yet the world around them is absolute chaos. None of the adults who are charged with looking after them seem to be trained to do that job and the narrator herself is a mess of traumatic experiences.

Yet as bleak as the setting is, the story still manages to be hopeful in a kind of dark way. I think I wrote about this more intelligently on my long form review on my blog, but I really liked this but quite a lot. It's calm chaos really resonated with me.

I love speculative fiction like this.

This isn't the kind of book I normally read. It's a book that was originally published for free online as a web novel that got picked up by a publisher and it's an isekai. For stylistic preference reasons, I normally don't read these.

That being said, I was kind of surprised by this! Basically, the main character Liar gets reincarnated into his favourite game and all kinds of chaos ensues. But the system that the world functions under is really interesting. It takes a lot from Christianity and the idea of the seven sins. So it's absurd in every way possible, but also extremely serious because it talks about sins and the consequences of lying and blah blah blah.

The magic system is also related to the seven sins, but there was also a part that kind of reminded me of Pokémon? I don't know, there's a lot going on with this.

It's a style I'm not used to, but the story itself is really interesting and the longer I read the more I got into it. Will definitely read the next book in the series at some point in the future.

I had no idea that this was a horror novel until I was halfway done the book even though there's a blurb on the front of the cover that says it's a horror debut. Anyway, I have no idea what I read, but I really liked it. Queer, creepy fiction that takes place at the beginning of the 20th century seems to be something that I like.

Natalie Naudus narration was also perfection as usual and I realized near the end of the novel that the author is actually from the same province as me, which honestly as an extra layer of fascination and coolness to the whole experience.

I found the concept for this story really interesting. It calls back to The Little Mermaid to form its base, but takes on a strongly feminist tone, though it's not necessarily extremely explicit in this. Exploring the monstrousness of the relationship Ceto and Naia do and don't have was something that was really interesting to me. It also had a very queer undertone. These are all things I really liked about the story.

That being said, the overall execution fell a bit flat for me. I really like stories told in present tense and stories that shift perspective and time, but there just wasn't time to feel any kind of connection with any of the characters. Nothing really surprised me or caught me off guard in any meaningful way and even though the ending had what it took to be moving, I found that I didn't really care either way. I just wasn't invested in anything that was happening. Given how emotionally fraught the story is, my lack of emotional commitment to the story honestly comes as a bit of a surprise. Even though the concept and key features interested me, I just didn't care for the storytelling itself.

I want to be emotionally invested in a story like this, but my experience ended up feeling clinical and detached. I felt no raw emotion when reading Ceto and Naia's story and I finished the book unconvinced by the emotions presented in the story either and I'm sorry about that.

I loved so much about this book, but it also made me so mad, and as a result, took me 3 months to finish listening to. There were so many anecdotes and tidbits from the author that I really appreciated and a lot of things I simply had never heard about before that I'm glad that I know now. It made me start to brainstorm ways that I can be more connected and take care of the earth better even though I live in a huge urban center. But at the same time, there was this really icky undertone of classism in some of the chapters that I really think made this book less. Perhaps this would go unnoticed by someone who hasn't been exposed to people from many different places before, or lived in many different types of environments before, but it was really noticeable to me. I also found the author's somewhat interchangeable use of immigrant, settler, and colonialist, to be rather unsettling given the current political climate. I realize that this book is somewhat older, and that topics of Indigenous sovereignty can be fraught in the Americas and Australia in particular, but it nonetheless struck me as somewhat careless in contrast to how much care the author puts into expressing reciprocity in such explicit terms.

I was really excited about this book given how many good things I've heard about people who've read it in the past year so, but I'm feeling more on the negative side of lukewarm about it, which is a shame. Maybe I'll have to try it again at some point with some more education under my belt and see if I feel more positively about it then.