While passable as a gory, fun ride, I had really high expectations for this, owing to it being heralded as the best manga ever written by so many people. So far, at hundreds of pages in, we know next to knowing about the world. It’s a standard dark fantasy affair, underscoring violence to women as various drives for the male cast, and a literalization of the worst in humanity manifesting as demons and the occult. At the end, there’s one chapter on Guts’ backstory - finally - and otherwise its little more than population to one fight after another where there is no real stakes, since it is not believable that Guts would ever lose. Or even come close to doing so.

The artwork is quite basic, for my taste. The pseudo gothic Victorian setting flavour is never explained in the slightest, but it’s relatively interesting for character design. I’m sure it’s important, in terms of its influence in the medium, but that’s an importance placed as a macro perspective and not something I care about when consuming anything, even “classics”. I want a story that’s compelling and interesting, not just to see what was first (and therefore probably worse than things that iterate on it).

Again, an improvement, but I don’t think enough to say it exceeded expectations, either. There’s some actual world building. The last chapter has Guts’ past, albeit ending with an implied child assault. It seems like the setting is just, like, a typical progenitor of dark fantasy. The literalization of the worst in humanity, essentially, and some brief respites. We also learned about how the Count morphed into a demon, which had some INCEL vibes, so it makes sense that was popular in manga. Still is, really. Nuance is obfuscated in favour of men being driven by pain done to women at every point.

TLDR: It’s predictable and the art has only improved marginally, so I doubt I’ll bother continuing with it.

There’s a bit more lore dropped, which makes things more interesting, slightly. Guts’ brand and demons pursuing him, as well as what drives him. So, some actual character development. But it still feels like quite a basic story, focused on the fights. Which is fine. Just not special, either.

We basically know absolutely nothing about the world too. All we know is Guts pretty much just finds trouble, which is a mechanism for him to mess people up. And now something about Godhands for a couple pages, before that going away entirely. I think people must have really liked the art a lot more than me, for it to be rated so highly, even now.

I assume this is going to be similar to Hellboy, where it’s pretty fun but fairly basic in storytelling and art for the first book, and improves greatly overtime. This is always heralded as the best manga of all time, so I have to believe it’s about more than just a cursed asshole who kills demons and other assholes each chapter. I remember liking what little I saw of the anime as a teenager, but don’t remember any of these parts. Anyway, so far, it’s quite fun, but also nothing special.

It’s a bit, Just When I Thought I Was Out They Pull Me Back In, but to great effect. Whitehead is a fantastic writer. I tried to pay more attention this go around as to what I particularly like, and his Thing that I really like is using a great metaphor, which is subsequently qualified. Most writers cannot pull this off at all. But Whitehead manages to get the full effect and then add a completely new layer of depth to the character with the qualification, which cuts out so much additional sentences that would tell the reader about the character, at some point.

Usually the qualifications feed into the historical aspects of the novel. Greater themes around gentrification, racism, but also the culture of the time. Which is wild because many of the lifted events from the time I recall, albeit vaguely. It’s part of getting older I guess, and an interesting feeling to feed into a novel. Maybe one of the first times nostalgia has worked for me because I could situate events, as well as the disparity of those things contrasted to my own life, making the setting highly effective.

Once again, though, I also was not completely blown away. I think I’ve yet to give any of Whitehead’s novels 5 stars, but they are always on the cusp of it. Honestly, the fact that they’re so solid all the time may be a case for them being bumped up.

Another great instalment. What really makes this series is the heavy character development and seeds planted early on coming to fruition for those moments, so that they feel honestly earned, rather than put in purely for melodrama or manipulation.

Plot wise, the second book still has an elegant yet intricate frame that was just masterful, to me. This is still more of a fun ride, established by the last one, but with some more serious plot beats. I liked this direction more than the previous. Also there’s a Canadian, leading to some really great lines.

The “radical” empathy, as the term goes around these days, is a cornerstone of this series. Where older people are more than just the hook. The author clearly puts a lot of time and effort into making them the opposite of the punch lines they can be, or else the punching bags they sometimes are. They aren’t railing at youth politics or always fumbling with the technology. They’re competent, go against stereotype—most of the time displaying how especially male friendships are enriching and hyper masculinity is sad and sometimes, a sad joke.

Shaw does a good job with the narration, having taken over from the last book. I’ve sort of settled in with her. The last book I missed the original quite a bit though.

This was surprisingly fun. Though, I didn’t know it wasn’t a stand alone, which might have influenced if I’d read it or not. It’s incredibly sprawling and changes perspectives multiple times. From Ajay at a young age, to those he encounters along the way. After making a decision with wild ramifications, he gets embroiled with a rich, corrupt mafia-esk baron’s son, spiralling his life into chaos, death, and a destructive cycle that defines the age, as well as the country and city he entrenches himself in.

It is gripping and tense throughout, but ebbs slightly when specific events being entangled. Three character perspectives continually go over the same time period, making some of the information redundant. Sometimes the perspective can be interesting. But a lot of the time it can be inferred and the section truncated.

Some of those sections do elucidate how the age progresses and why some events occur. Though, I think some of my favourite developments and choices have no clear through line. Destruction of the self comes stems from many things in this novel, but sometimes things just “happen”, and that makes it feel more organic and interesting. Such as a completely random story from a random character that is wildly gripping and sets up questions for whatever comes next.

It’s taken me a couple days to gather my thoughts on this.L because there’s a lot going on in this book. It’s a snapshot that becomes a portrait that becomes something even more intricate, of a small town as a few characters—all of whom are bound together by their childhood and high school days—return to it, for one reason or another.

At first blush it appears to be tapping into the culture and verisimilitude of high school in particular, as the characters are thrust back in time, with only the reader, I think, being really aware of these interceptions of memory taking place. It provides context and deeper meaning to the meaning of coming back home and how pivitol, formative moments led them to act and Be who they are now, and what they’re doing. The patterns they are bucking against as they encounter the ghosts of their former selves seems to be the main point.

As each character has their storyline and the tapestry comes together though, a major subplot that could have been the entire plot of a different kind of novel emerges organically. Only the reader can connect these dots; the cast, as in their adolescence are on rails crafted by childhood circumstances and the cultural mythos of the times, their galvanizing generational moment steeped very specifically in 9/11, all thematically convey a wonderfully, if heartbreaking, portrait of these people.

This transition into rumination on so many large things, without being preachy or heavy handed in the least, makes this a great book. Like all great fiction it becomes about everything. And again, like most great fiction, the characters are vibrantly human in their contradictions. Many of which only work because of this gradual and deep, nuanced look at their lives. It does not demonize truly horrible acts and does not shy away from the insurmountable damage people visit in each other in casual ways, especially as a teenager. Because it’s about trauma in no small way, it requires this degree of granularity to it, or else it would not be doing the subjects any justice.

Many books would have stopped short and given various motivations for actions and deeds, and also probably delivered some kind of catharsis. I think part of why this packs such a punch though, is that it is willing to say something more rather than breaching the subject and using wind up toy motivations like so many other books that want to only peripherally be about these things. Part of why some people (I count myself as one of them) have felt so unmoored and disconnected from people in an age of post globalization and should be pronounced connectivity, lays in issues this book interrogates. The feeling of people who went through this time, I think, is tremendously well captured here; In a way I don’t think I’ve yet read.

The prose work is also fantastic for almost all of it. One section, and this is why it took me a while to deliberate on my ranking and thoughts, somewhat loses the specificity of the starting chapters. Taking place through the eyes of a kid who grows up to go to the war in Afghanistan. I think maybe the idea of styling that experience as with the rest of the book might have been slightly disrespectful—or, perhaps, the experience is also probably ineffable for a reader like me, who has never had any experiences remotely like that. I know when I watch and read war as a genre, I do not connect to it at all. I know what I think about war and don’t need an empathy exercise in it, because, again, it’s not really something I can imagine, even when they are stylized or literalized in from of my eyes. There’s no comparable feeling I’ve ever had that I could use to someone who is blown apart or suffering PTSD, or in an active combat situation.

So, in the end I’m giving this top marks because I don’t think that section is, as I first thought, less well written then the rest. It thematically ties in well and I think is quite substantive. And the ending was just absolutely stunning, for me. The first half is like the dense anxiety of watching the TV show Euphoria and the second half transforms it into something even more holistic.

This was a fun, if a bit commercial mystery book in which past and present pseudo mirror one another when life long best friends (and fellow writers) decide to vacation at the titular villa, where, years past, a famous couple also stayed. Only it ended in murder then.

In the present day the main character is coming to grips with a messy divorce and her deep seated jealousy aimed at her successful self-help guru whose plan and expense this little vacation is planned and executed. When more details surface about the past, we are thrust more explicitly into the past, and what is known about the crime, steeped in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, is reframed by the women brought to the house as hangers on.

It’s a pretty simple story and makes for a quick read. I think a more literary version of this could have really slammed some of the themes home. As it is, the both surprising direction it takes when it looms really close to trite territory, as well as the commercial ending after, makes for a bit of a mixed bag. But it’s very fun and worth reading while managing some more complex female relationships.

Joy’s prose cut an alternating line between poetic, and clean-cut. I enjoy it very much. Almost as if most of the sentences are wind-ups for knock outs.

As to the meat of the thing, thematically, this is nothing really new. When a black woman is murdered, the subsequent investigation acts as a catalyst for a southern town to regurgitate their internalized biases. At its heart this aims to interrogate white fragility in a more nuanced way than is typical, but not as in-depth, I think, as some lit written by people of colour on the subject. In a way, that’s what makes this work. It’s almost fish-out-of-water because most of the characters don’t know why they’re acting the way they are; or reacting, rather.

The plot is nice and twisty, the characters archetypical for a purpose, and the setup leading up to the investigation rocked me back on my heels. Rather than use it as a police procedural hook, or a graphic murder, it’s a slow, incisive portrayal of the characters and town, and cultural.

In the end, it feels well done, but it did not blow me out of the water. But I have read a lot of books on the subject. Both nonfiction and other.

Another point in its favour is the audiobook. Narrated by the same person as the new Cormac McCarthy books, boy does this man narrate well, and particularly southern books. Really stellar stuff.