essjay's Reviews (635)

I am such a snob about zombies, and have ended up being irritated by more zombpocalypse books than you can shake a machete at. The cover and title of this one led me to believe it was going to be a lot sillier than it ended up being, and I'm so glad it wasn't. 

No holding back on the gore, a primarily queer cast of characters, a novel take on zombiism (toxoplasmosis!), the blackberries finally making their move to overtake the Pacific NorthWest...I loved it all, and would absolutely read more if this were a series. 

If you read the blurb, you know exactly what to expect. Very similar to, but much more engaging than Sarah Gailey's Eat the Rich. Although, you know, without the cannibalism.

Alas.

Weird that this is the second book I've read this month that takes place primarily on an island off the coast of Georgia. That doesn't have anything to do with anything, it just felt worthy of being mentioned.

If you don't enjoy gore, you'll have a bad time with Guillotine, but bloody as fuck is my absolute favourite, ESPECIALLY when it's assholes doing the bleeding. 

Fuck, idk why I keep going back to this. The art keeps getting worse (it was never GREAT, but it had STYLE), and what the everloving fuck was up with that ugly-ass pomegranate brooch that was just cut and pasted in at weird angles?! I am going to keep reading, but will actively hate myself while doing so. 

Not a huge fan of the narrator. Might try again as an ebook since the audio was not doing it for me. 

Sigh. This very much reads like someone (or three someones in this instance, I guess) who doesn't read fantasy thought it'd be easy to pull off. The twee references to modern things with medieval trappings really didn't work for me. I'm sure it will work for other people, but not for me at ALL. 

Well, goddamn. 

This was a fantastic (mostly) one sitting read, and I would not have minded if it was twice the length, though I do find 200-300 pages is my personal sweet spot. The translation was great (sometimes if you're familiar with the translator's own work you can feel their voice bleeding through, but that didn't seem to be the case here), and I can't wait for everyone else to read this so I have people to talk about it with. 

Well, shit. I wanted to like this so much more than I actually did. Was so stoked about an adult CYOA format, but started having doubts almost immediately when it made no sense that

Marsh sent in her application the day before filming started

. And then every time

Ren

showed up, I was all

"that fucker is behind all of this, watch."

AND I WAS RIGHT. Around the time I realized, I stopped making choices and just read to find out if I was right. And I was, so I won, except I didn't bc I still spent several hours reading this shit. 

Woof, what a mess. This is the first bedtime book read aloud that the 14y/o has requested we stop reading. The pacing was weird. Some things that didn't require any description at all were overly detailed, the fight sequences didn't make a whole lot of sense (so many exclamations from the kid of "what does THAT mean?!"), and we were just not having a good time with it at all. 

I needed something I didn't have to think about and this was just that. Would that all of us with mommy issues could solve them so easily. 

I desperately wish the end hadn't felt so rushed, it felt like the big revelation needed room to breathe. Other than that, I love me some creepy cottagecore and even better when it's queer and has

cannibals.