gxuosi's Reviews (390)

i’ve never given up so fast but dnf at 8%. she was so deeply unlikable and boring. the vibes were so off and i couldn’t put a name to why… and then i found out the author is a cisman which unleashed incomprehensible rage i never could overcome.

given that i denied myself the right to dnf another book so soon, i managed to finish this. i really wanted to like it, and given the comparisons it garnered on tiktok- i should have. but it turned out to be the most nonlinear, at sometimes plotless, ring-around. the pacing was often stunted by the author choosing to use broken sentences and then immediately repeat them. this mechanic works for emphasis, but when used is excess it becomes just a endless game of smacking your skull into a concrete wall. i also found the character development generally lacking due to dream-like absurdist scenes taking priority. i was never able to connect with or care about any of the characters nor did any of their goals, motivations, desires become apparent until the second they exacted them. the general concept was intriguing, but due to the under developed and poorly explained magical universe, it felt like i was the one stuck in a dreamscape time loop instead of esmer. also it basically quoted batman/the dark knight twice... and that reeeeeaaally annoyed me.

an obsessive absurdist study in being known, grief, love, and the terrible reality of not having the answers. chen's use of surrealist and absurdist tableaus woven into painfully real moments creates a fascinating twist through his life making something somehow better than mangos.

“is it sacrifice that makes a mother is it suffering that makes a woman is it sacrifice / suffering / sacrifice / suffering?”
maybe it’s both. maybe it’s neither. probably it’s a hurricane of hope, dreams, sacrifice, suffering, violence, peace, rebellion, tenderness, rage. in the end its all the same; a performance but one we each learned or lost differently. this collection hit somewhere so strange inside for me as it’s kai cheng thom’s endless pursuit of womanhood while i seek to erase my own.

there is no room for neutrality. there is no fence to straddle, middle of the road, both sides argument to make. humanity seeks the immediate and permanent liberation of palestine, the dissolution of the israeli settler colony, and the end of western imperialism and colonialism across the globe. god willing, in my lifetime i will see a free palestine, a right to return, and israel alongside the global west will be held accountable for their war crimes. for rifqa. for mohammaed. for hind. for sidra. for refaat. for 12 universities. for 97 journalists. for over 34,000 palestinians. for the enduring culture, hope, faith, and dreams of palestine that israel has never been able to crush.

little compares the nauseating dread and tension of that last 60 pages. a theme i've noticed in korean literary fiction and horror is the subtle but overarching theme of the lack of woman's identity. oghi never says his wife's name, she is always his wife and his mother-in-law is much the same. oghi's complete failure to communicate with his wife while she was alive vs his physical inability to communicate with anyone post accident is a telling parallel. and while we get the sense that oghi isn't the most worthy cause of empathy as his story unfolds, perhaps the sheer level of trauma done unto him is excessive for what he's being held accountable for.

dnf at 10%. i already wasn’t into the first book of the trilogy, to the point where i struggled to read it, so i really should have known better than to start the next one. that’s on me. i am a m.a. phipps lover but the project w.a.r. trilogy just didn’t work for me. pleaaaaase if you’re interested in this series, keep going! keep reading it! it just so happens that this was not for me, BUT phipps’s origin prophecy trilogy was! so if this series ain’t working for you, try that one instead!

assimilating. metastasizing. enough micro-aggressions can unmake a person. when will they have given enough?

wouldn’t it be nice if we could all belong somewhere when we wanted to without seeking permission or validation from others

it was such a strong concept that personally means so much to me and such a promising start that the 2nd act of the book being a let down was a just horrible blow to my morale