This fantastical Hollywood seems a liminal space. On one hand the mythology it produces, the other what it co-opts from stories of old. Where the studio executive is literally a big bad wolf, blood sacrifice is needed to grease the wheels and keep them turning, and the perception of what you are is in danger of transforming you into precisely that. It’s an interesting world.

As is the case with soft worldbuilding, I’m not sure it feels totally square? There’s no predictable nature or rules, so stuff just happens. Including the ending. I think it’s an interesting concept, and love the representation and message. Queer people ascending to a literalization of stardom, if the only could circumnavigate the straight folkloric death guarding the trajectory, it’s good at driving home that particular message. The ways the system and it’s goons try to mold her with racism and sacrifice and other ways of harrowing her into a corner, those made sense. The rest of it feels a bit too on rocky ground for me.

The prose were better than normal and the narrator fantastic. It’s certainly engaging and, to me, novel. I think I’m just a reader that puts a particular importance on the world building making sense. I don’t need to know everything, but conversely, not all of it should feel like some Deus ex machina every time a fantastic element is introduced, in my opinion.