essjay's Reviews (635)

Zombies, corvids, and swearing are three of my very favourite things, and I expected to L O V E this book, but I just did not. 

A lot of the humour fell flat for me, I didn't vibe with ST's voice, and the constant use of 50¢ words (the same words over and over; I never want to read glaucous or fuliginous afuckingain) just irritated the shit out of me.  


I'm also one of those weirdos who doesn't want to know how or why the zombies happened, so I was going to be annoyed with any explanation no matter what, but this one felt particularly preachy. 

Would I have liked this more if it had been pared down considerably to a tight novella length? Maybe.  Idk. Not the worst thing I've ever read for Zombruary, but also not even close to the top. Might come back and drop the rating again, depending on how mad I get when I think about it. 

I felt like this took a while to get going, but I enjoyed it enough once it did. 

Fuck, this was hard to read, but I could not put it down. 

I love the work to decolonize English, and that Time is a literal character. It didn't matter that I don't speak Kiswahili, I was able to understand through context clues. I had several friends growing up who were second generation immigrants, whose parents spoke a mix of Spanish/Tagalog/Fārsī/Vietnamese and English at home. Reading this book reminded me of sitting at their dinner tables. 

I never would have picked this up based on the title and cover, both of which I feel do this book a disservice in getting it into the hands of people who will appreciate it. 

I don’t even really know how to talk about this, but I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time. 

I'm sure it's my own fault for not checking what I was getting into before starting. I expected something more speculative than the swords and horses anti-colonialist narrative I got. 

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it while I was reading it, because I did.  It was just easy to put down and not think about until I picked it up again. 

I find myself curious about the people who didn't see the ending coming.  I did not find it shocking, everything was laid out in the epigraph, and reiterated less than halfway through. 

I will probably eventually finish this series, but am in no hurry to read the next book(s), so plan to wait until it's finished for good or at least until there is a concrete release date for the final book.  

This is a very special book that made me feel so seen, but in the worst possible way. If you feel the same way, I'm so sorry, and it wasn't your fault. 

If you happen to be one of those people who hated certain things toward the end of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, then the ending of Jennifer Strange's story probably won't work for you.

But I loved it. It made my heart thump in my throat, it made me grin, it made me sob. Parts of it I saw coming ahead of time, but that in no way diminished my enjoyment. 

Quark

Genuinely did not expect this to be as terrifying as it ended up being. Had to read in chunks during the light of day.