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reads_vicariously 's review for:
Lonely Receiver
by Zac Thompson
Inventive, emotional, complex, confusing, and full of great Cronenberg vibes.
Set in the future, this is the character study of a woman named Catrin and her struggles with relationship, loneliness, co-dependency, love, lust, and so on. Unable to connect relationally to anyone human, Catrin is married to an Artiļ¬cial Intelligence partner. After a decade of marriage her partner, who's meant to bond for life, disconnects and sends Catrin spiraling into an increasingly depressing and deranged hunt for meaning at the cost of her own sanity.
Lonely Receiver is a wild ride that raises a lot of interesting questions while delving into topics of toxic/abusive relationships and our relationship with technology - all through a weird and surrealistic sci-fi lens. There is some horror here (more in the second half), but also a lot of despair and cruelly fulfilled yearning. There's also a lot of nudity/sex, strange AI dreamscapes, unsettling future tech and body modification, and hallucinatory sequences of intimacy and violence.
The downside I suppose is that because there is so much going on, some of it is confusing and frustratingly dense. I feel like there is a lot of emotion and personal experience/musings in the story, which I love, but not all of it translated onto the page in a way I could firmly grasp. Then there are moments which aren't meant to be firmly grasped, and thus I struggled to fully understand. Like a lot of great surreal mind trips in entertainment, this one is going to take several read throughs to wrap my head around.
By the way, the art is fantastic here! The illustrations by Jen Hickman perfectly embody the story, and the color palette is gorgeous. I also really enjoyed the lettering by Simon Bowland. Great work all around by the creative team here.
(3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads)
Set in the future, this is the character study of a woman named Catrin and her struggles with relationship, loneliness, co-dependency, love, lust, and so on. Unable to connect relationally to anyone human, Catrin is married to an Artiļ¬cial Intelligence partner. After a decade of marriage her partner, who's meant to bond for life, disconnects and sends Catrin spiraling into an increasingly depressing and deranged hunt for meaning at the cost of her own sanity.
Lonely Receiver is a wild ride that raises a lot of interesting questions while delving into topics of toxic/abusive relationships and our relationship with technology - all through a weird and surrealistic sci-fi lens. There is some horror here (more in the second half), but also a lot of despair and cruelly fulfilled yearning. There's also a lot of nudity/sex, strange AI dreamscapes, unsettling future tech and body modification, and hallucinatory sequences of intimacy and violence.
The downside I suppose is that because there is so much going on, some of it is confusing and frustratingly dense. I feel like there is a lot of emotion and personal experience/musings in the story, which I love, but not all of it translated onto the page in a way I could firmly grasp. Then there are moments which aren't meant to be firmly grasped, and thus I struggled to fully understand. Like a lot of great surreal mind trips in entertainment, this one is going to take several read throughs to wrap my head around.
By the way, the art is fantastic here! The illustrations by Jen Hickman perfectly embody the story, and the color palette is gorgeous. I also really enjoyed the lettering by Simon Bowland. Great work all around by the creative team here.
(3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads)