essjay's Reviews (635)

It has been...probably 20 years since I last talked to my Caitlin. The girl whose friendship (and more, tbh) defined the second decade of my life. Sometimes I miss her so much it's hard to breathe. 

You need me like the wind needs the trees to blow in
Like the moon needs poetry
You need me

I saw the cover and immediately requested this ARC, without bothering to read anything about it. Because of that everything described in the blurb was new to me as it happened, which led to much squealing and kicking of feet as each new Universal Monster showed up. Absolutely delightful, and am genuinely disappointed there aren't already at least four other books in the series to devour. 

I'm not super into the whole daddy thing, and mostly picked this up bc I was under the impression there would be a lot more infernal bureaucracy than there ended up being. But neither of those are why the low rating. 

The pacing, story, and editing were all over the place. Some sections were really well done and felt super polished, but they were sandwiched between bits that read like a rough draft. 

Do not think I'll be reading more of the series. 

What. The fuck. Was that. 

This is top tier PKD, just super bleak and hilarious at the same time. 

I don't think this book had anything even resembling a developmental edit, and maybe had a cursory spell check done before hitting publish. Like, errors with tenses and homonyms on almost every page. Weird anatomy, but not in a fun way (completely unable to picture a scene bc human bodies don't move like that). Pretty much no character development. 

And yet...I couldn't put it down and will absolutely be reading the sequel. 

I have so many notes on this one that are just quotes followed by 👀👀👀 because of how many things are casually mentioned in it that eventually pay off. This is a v rewarding re-read. 

Loved the concept of this anthology, and for the most part feel it was executed well. 

Gave 6 out of 16 stories 5/5, and there was only one that I just didn't vibe with at all (I'm not even sure I understood the point of it, and I've been thinking about it for three days). Most ended up somewhere between 3¾ and 4½, which is pretty indicative of my ratings for most things. 

Found several new-to-me authors that I'm looking forward to following up on. Favourite stories were:



"Redistribution" - Temim Fruchter

"Peep Show" - Alissa Nutting

"Of Course, a Curse" - Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

"Bad Dog" - Anna Dorn

"Distraction" - Maame Blue

"Operation Hyacinth" - Sam Cohen

I took notes while I was reading, but am not even looking at them rn, bc they kind of stopped mattering. 

Hell yeah, fuck yeah. 

Seriously, how do I always forget how these are wrapped up?!