essjay's Reviews (635)

This book was gorgeous and maybe I will eventually figure out what to say about it. 

Tore through this entire run in a day, and wish there was more. The story was fantastic. The art was good to great (sometimes I had a hard time telling characters apart). The colours were incredible. 

I seem to be in an "I wanted to like this so much more than I actually did" rut lately. This isn't marketed as YA, but my gods, it felt like it was. I figured out whodunnit super early on, and if I could have found spoilers to confirm whether I was right, I would have DNFed at 26%. I don't even want to talk about the weird pregnancy stuff or how stupid everyone was for living in their DAR on a godsdamned spaceship. Idek if I want to keep this at 2½, might drop the rating if I get more mad when I think about it. 

Man, I was so excited when I learned this existed bc I love cannibal stories. But every story beat was predictable and the art was just...not great. Very generic comic art that looks exactly like every other generic comic there is (and idk why Astor had to look like Johnny Bravo, but it was SO distracting). 

Honestly, most of my rating is nostalgia. This was my first Anne Rice (30y ago, wtf) and at the time I had no idea how prone she was/would be to overwriting. If I had read IwtV first, I probably never would have read any more of her stuff, and missed out on the queer kid rite of passage that is this series (and the Mayfair Witches). 

As an adult, I realize that Lestat is merely an authorial insert, which is why he's so fucking perfect and everyone loves him despite him doing every single godsdamned thing he's warned not to do. 

If I were FORCED to pick a favourite of this series, it would probably be this one. Ofc, I'll probably say that after reading each book aloud. 

I wanted to like this so much more than I actually did.  It was competently written, but all of the commentary felt very surface level with zero depth or nuance. This book has a very specific liberal audience who will probably make this the next Big Deal. If your ideology falls somewhere in the Social Liberalism/Social Democracy areas on the Political Compass, you'll probably love this book. If you're further Left than that, you'll likely have a bad time. 

Some of these stories ("Power and Control" and "Seagull Village" were my favourites) hit me exactly right, but others really did not. Most of them seem to just...end. Like the literature from the planet Bartledann in Mostly Harmless where all books are exactly 100k words long? Some of these felt like that. 

I did not intend to get so thoroughly invested in this, but I am, and I guess I'mma have to start reading weekly. 

I love the shift to a more muted, limited palette in chapter 6. Love seeing artists evolve and the new colours are absolutely gorgeous. 

I might come back to this another time, but am not really feeling it rn.