booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

In retrospect I should’ve realized a book whose blurb mentions three authors I don’t like reading (as a positive comparison) was not going to be a book I would probably enjoy. 

I like the main character (Raina). I appreciate the way a story-specific version of sign language is used for her to communicate and others to communicate with her, and I like that the book has a list of author supplied contact warnings available at a link. That’s basically where the stuff that I like ends, and most of those ultimately aren’t about the actual story. 

I have enjoyed other books where two people that are from groups that hate each other for various reasons end up in a romance. I often do like those... when the two individuals involved haven’t already hated each other specifically in this context. But I’m having trouble relating to this story where part of the main premise is that Raina specifically hates the Witch Collector, and then has to travel with him, and the book seems to be heading towards a romantic/sexual relationship between them. I am not in favor of this trajectory, and the rate at which she is softening to him does not, to me, line up with what he’s actually doing. Ultimately, it’s just not a story that I care to read and so I'm stopping.

Seems like it would be good for someone who loves 1980's movies with puppets. That's not me, though.

THE UNDEAD TRUTH OF US is a story of grief and complicated relationships. Zharie’s mother died recently and unexpectedly, but in her final days Zharie perceived her as a zombie, an undead person with unintelligible speech and pieces of her sloughing off. Now, Zharie is living with her aunt when Bo, a boy around her age, moves into another apartment in the building. Since her mother's death she has been seeing many people as zombies, but is fascinated against her better judgment when Bo sometimes appears halfway as a zombie, rather than the full and permanent transformation that Zharie has come to expect. 

Zharie has four main relationships with other people. There’s her mom, though she’s deceased when the story begins, and parts of their life are shown through memories of their time together. Zharie's connection to her mom (both past and present) is very driven by their mutual love of a dance style called West Coast Swing. They’re both Black and the competition space for this style of dance is overwhelmingly full of white people, to the point that often Zharie's mom was the only Black instructor in any space. Since her mother's death, Zharie has been practicing in her room rather than going back to the studio. This is both because of a lack of money and because being the Black person in the room serves as a visceral reminder of her loss.  For those still among the living, there’s her aunt with whom she now lives, who is spending most of her time working long hours (I think in multiple jobs). Next is Luca, a boy from her school who at some point decided that they were going to be friends and hasn’t really take a no for an answer, so also Zharie doesn’t want to push him away completely. Generally, she’s conflicted and often annoyed by his presence. Finally there’s Bo, the new kid who moves into the apartment building, the boy, who is sometimes halfway a zombie, he finds her beautiful, and wants to hang out with her, gradually drawing her into his circle of friends. Bo tries to pull Zharie into his life at a pace that seems dizzying, asking her to different things, but often failing to explain the particulars of the event, in a way that makes her feel off kilter even before the undead encroach on her attempts to relax .The final major character who perhaps ought to have a relationship with Zharie but does not is her absentee father, generally referred to as the "sperm donor" by Zharie.

This is a very character-driven story, to the point that trying to explain any step after this basic setup, seems to me like it would spoil the plot in a way that I don’t want to accidentally do. Zharie is trying to work through her grief, to understand that shape and figure out what place if any, it’ll having her life. 

Because it’s set in contemporary reality, most of the worldbuilding is in is related to what’s going on in Zharie's head, how she relates to the people in her life, and what dance means to her. She lives in the USA and her dad is in another state, but the worldbuilding is pretty sparse on what would often be more logistical details in a contemporary novel with a teen protagonist. It takes place as school lets out for the summer, and there's more conversations of where she attends than there are moments set there within the story.

Zharie uses Vincent van Gogh's life and paintings as a way to process the emotions she’s feeling and the strange things she’s seeing around her. No one else seems to notice the zombies, and in trying to understand herself Zharie keeps re-searching zombies, the undead, and the life of Vincent van Gogh. In addition to the zombies, Zharie sees intense colors, either layered upon or interwoven with the world. I’m not totally sure which they are, because that may be a distinction without a difference in this case. 

The story maintains a tension in the question of whether what Zharie is seeing is real or if it’s a manifestation of some underlying mental illness that’s affecting the way she sees the world. The parallels drawn with van Gogh don’t specifically resolve this tension, because, as this book is shelved as fantasy/horror, the implication could be that in this version of reality, maybe he, too, was seeing something real. Honestly, if it weren’t for the very last line of the book, along with the explanations Zharie finally figures out for who looks like a zombie, this seems like it wouldn’t have to strictly be fantasy in order for the story to happen. I wondered if this was where the book was going to go, and then it did… and I guess it does fit the book. But it’s a cliché enough moment that it sent me back out of the story right as it was coming to an end. This also complicates my reaction to the book because of the way it’s entangling potential mental illness with a possible magical explanation, and the conclusion that there is some kind of reality or way in which she is perceiving something with a genuine and understandable cause outside of her own brain. This isn’t the first book I’ve read that’s leaned in to the difficulty in distinguishing fantasy from reality when there isn’t a meaningful way to check the perceptions in one’s one mind, but this particular resolution happens to not quite be in the direction I would’ve preferred.

FEED THEM SILENCE is the story of Sean, an academic researcher trying to gain a sense of intimacy in her own life through a technologically assisted neurological interface connecting her to a wolf, rather than nurturing intimacy and connection with the humans in her life (such as her wife). She feels deeply connected to the wolf she’s studying. Part of this is through anthropomorphizing the wolf with the assistance of the technology that maps the words, thoughts, emotions, and perceptions onto her own, human brain. She specifically thinks of this as not anthropomorphizing, and I’m not quite sure how literally to believe that in the story, especially when it’s about how her obsession with treating this as the most important relationship in her life leads her down a path where the being she feels most connected to is one that is likely unaware of her presence. To whatever extent the wolf ("Kate") knows of her, it is as a blurry memory of kidnapping and pain when the other terminal of the neural interface was implanted. 

At home, Sean's wife is feeling disregarded and unloved, like Sean just wants her there to cook and clean. They’re both academics with their own careers, but one of Riya's complaints is the way that Sean is behaving like a white man who just wants a housewife. Riya has put her own desires aside for a long time because of the demands of Sean's research and academic schedule, but as their relationship deteriorates, Riya tries to get Sean to initiate connection, or at least reciprocate it. But she feels like an ancillary note to Sean's research, research that she feels has massive ethical concerns. Sean’s thoughts are consumed by her work, it seems as though she’s been obsessed with this idea for a very long time. Then the reality of it, and whatever is going on with the neural link, has turned it from a dream into an obsession that is distorting her ability to put care into other parts of her life for any significant stretch of time. 

There’s an ongoing question about whether what is happening is cruel, as there is no way for the wolf to meaningfully consent to the experiment. Having tied her own brain to Kate, Sean ends up more and more torn in her thoughts, because the only way that she’s obtaining this intimacy is through what began as and continues to be a massive violation of the wolf's autonomy. Her fellow researchers see Kate and her pack as part of an experiment, having accepted that the process of observing them during a harsh winter is likely to mean watching them die. But, as she feels more connected, Sean is unable to accept this. Because her change in her stance is driven by an increasing (and one-sided) emotional bond with Kate, Sean is also unable to meaningfully articulate her changing feelings without letting on to her colleagues how much this process is affecting her.

Set in the 2030's, climate change and the associated ongoing loss of many animal species forms a backdrop to this drama, as part of the reason for this particular research is that this is the last wild wolf pack. I’m not sure if it’s the last one in the region or the last one on Earth, but the main point is that the trajectory for the species is one of decline and impending extinction. This makes the various questions around how to study the wolf pack even more important, but whatever precise way they matter to the characters, these considerations don’t overly end up affecting the story. There wouldn’t be a book if they weren’t going to go ahead and do the research. That choice at the beginning sets many things in motion so that the environmental and ethical concerns become matters of conscience after the fact, more issues of how to gain some sense of stability, and potentially assuage any moral compunctions or lingering guilt over what happened. 

I specifically enjoy this audiobook narrator’s performances, I’ve been reading a lot of them recently. I like the ending because it feels realistic for the characters without feeling inevitable. It doesn’t feel like this was the only way that things could’ve gone on every front, but there is a kind of slowly unfolding horror; realizing the way things are likely to go and seeing the characters seemingly unable to avoid it. In terms of character development, I like how the various members of Sean‘s team have different reactions to what’s going on. They’ve accepted animal death as part of their research, but seem to not be taking seriously the level of cruelty that’s involved in this particular experiment until it's already in motion and they figure out how to make some kind of peace with it.