essjay's Reviews (635)

Wow, this was just weird and bad in a way that was not at all fun. 

I love these books so much. I lingered over something spectacular on every page. 

(Will probably bump this up to 5 after reading it again before it has to go back to the library.)

I wanted something like Shoresy and Laura Mohr. This was close, but not that, even with mentally aging then both up about 10y. 

My notes for these stories say things like "gross" and "fucking delightful" and "ew, why was that hot?" and "wonderful, but could have used more cannibalism, tbh" and "hahahaha, what the FUCK."

"Pineapple" and "Notes on Performance" were my favourites, but I at least really liked all of them. 

Me, to my friend who recommended this to me: omg, the art in this is fucking gorgeous. And why are the old timey racists so hot?

Her: R I G H T?

I read this aloud to my 14y/o (about 30 years after I read it the first time at their age). This was their first full length Stephen King, and they are ridiculously excited for us to read more of his stuff together. 

Truly heartbreaking and visceral. 

I love Saltmist. 

Much like Be the Serpent, the majority of Silver and Lead takes place over one long-ass day. Our girl and her crew go through some shit, in ways that might make this the most intense installment for some readers. I don't even know how to talk about it without spoiling major things? 

If you haven't re-read the series in full recently, you should be good without it bc the first ~20% is a mixture of new plot+recap of relevant highlights. 

A woman was "blond" on one page, another woman was "blonde" on the next. I understand it's a needlessly gendered word, but at least be consistent? 

I went back and forth on whether I was even enjoying this while I was reading it. Would be thinking about DNFing, and then get sucked back in. This happened multiple times before I decided to just finish it.