ok. good. solid. not as gripping as Manhunt or as tight. no real complaints either - just felt a bit less developed! way less hopeful in the end than I felt Manhunt was, too, despite the bleakness of both books. 

enjoyed the weird gross cosmic horror stuff. uh oh awful meat world!

expansive. funny and dark. mystery that isn’t a mystery. sometimes strangers are connected by fate, but for no reason or purpose. this book does so many interesting things with narration and point of view. all its protagonists are extremely compelling. if I was an english lit student I’d be making a Bolaño thesis my personality for the next 4 years

mysterious little book. very lovely writing - kind of childlike narrator and surreal setting. I think if I was Australian I would have understood a little more of this but at any rate this is actually exactly what living in a medium sized rural town is like. 

solid post apocalypse zombie genre entry but the Dynamics (queer, gender, power) at play are obv the star here. lots of characters I’m going to think about for a while. interesting, flawed POV characters. totally despicable villains. I think this book like… “gets gender” (what a stupid phrase, hear me out) in the sense of it being a social alignment with other people, politics, community, and simultaneously just like a thing about a person that is fundamentally not that interesting or defining. also does some really fascinating work in the realm of terf psychology… like why tf are they like that? Gretchen Felker-Martin has thought about it. the terf chaser character… greasy little worm trainwreck you can’t look away from. really really interesting. much to think about here. a really brutal book with a lot of interesting stuff going on. 

Slow! Not my thing!

SUCH a stressful and tense reading experience. George Orr and Heather Lelache are just like… utterly likeable characters. Dr. Haber is such an interesting exploration of ambition & the desire for power. This is perfect sci fi to me - pulpy concept taken to philosophical and ethical extremes. I loved this!!!

Every story is like the kind your oldest relatives tell you nonchalantly: “that’s just how things were then,” that makes you go, oh my god, how are you alive, how did you keep going?

Very beautiful, scary, weird. Delightfully freakily queer. Like finding a more ancient more fucked up version of a familiar fairytale. 

picked this up because I’ve followed Alicia Kennedy’s food writing for a couple years and really enjoy her short form essays & journalism. I’m what she describes in this book as a “conscientious omnivore” but have been vegetarian & cook & eat most meals in my week without meat. I worked in a vegan restaurant for close to 3 years but I’ve never really understood veganism beyond its role in the lives of people close to me as an eating disorder enabler. That said, I’m sympathetic towards anyone else operating with the goal of reducing the environmental impact of our diets (as a meat eater something I care a lot about and build my diet around!) and very curious about the cultural history of veganism!

Unfortunately I didn’t like this book! I’m always saying this about every nonfiction book but I really really mean it here: it needed a much better edit than it got. there’s so much less flow and clarity here than Kennedy usually has in her writing; so many sentences or whole paragraphs are clunky, with weird syntax and awkward quotes. Chapters lead with anecdotes that are never really connected back to the main topic. Major issues are brought up and then quickly dismissed (my qualms about restrictive eating and the wellness industry’s overlap with veganism get kind of given lip service in chapter 7, about raw veganism, but aren’t really addressed beyond a few sentences that are like “yeah we definitely see thinness as culturally important & healthy - and that’s not great!”). Despite Kennedy’s opposition to the commercialization and depoliticization of vegan food, sections of the book read like just a list of vegan/plant-based companies, brands, restaurants, and pro-chefs.

Weird things are taken for granted as already known by the reader (I was like “what the fuck is rejuvelac” for 2 chapters before it’s explained) but so much of the book also feels like re-treading 101 territory for people interested in food justice and sustainability that I’m actually not sure who the intended audience is. It doesn’t seem to be vegans… there’s a slight defensiveness that seems geared toward omnivores or highly skeptical vegetarians, but it’s certainly not written with the goal of changing anyone’s mind about their diet either. idk not that a book about veganism has to proselytize either… I guess the unstated goal here seems to have been to change the (potentially non-vegan) reader’s opinion on what veganism is - ie. it is political, the food can taste good, many people and movements have contributed to the development of a vegan cuisine. It just feels a bit disorganized in its approach sadly.

There are some interesting bits in this book! Like the first soy dairy business being a Chinese anarchist scientist in Paris was fascinating and I could have read way more about that! The sections on commune cooking and cookbooks were great but don’t super address how these communes settled on veganism in the first place. I would have loved more information about non-western veganism, and more just straight up stats and numbers and sciencey facts, especially in the “Wheatgrass and Wellness” chapter re: claims of the health benefits of veganism and raw diets (not made by Kennedy necessarily, but by the figures she is writing about). 

Anyways dang. I wanted this to be really good but found it a little bit of a slog and felt disappointed. I hope forthcoming books get a better editing treatment and the benefit of more experience and knowledge.

honestly i wish the old guy was more of a pervert

this was my gabriel garcía márquez introduction lol perhaps i will try one of the better known books next time. the writing was nice! 

Ooh I liked this a lot, very close to 5 stars for me

Big interesting alt history light magic world with lots of things going on - I wish we’d seen more of it, but I think the choice to follow characters who are kind of isolated and insulated from everything Happening is interesting. Love this time period, so much to think about. We got some but I wanted even more direct refs to real historical events going down.

Enjoyed the more political intrigue/organizing/coalition building/siege-y aspects of the end, I was so pleasantly surprised to see sabotage and general strikes laid out as the most effective tactics in opposing empire! Like… hell yeah… I am always saying this etc but you don’t get to read solid spec fic that is also saying this very often y’know?

My only gripes were with pacing - sometimes very slow, lots of studying and buying bread which I don’t hate and is kind of par for the course with a campus novel but dragged at times, and eventually felt a little out of sync with the last 100-150 pages which move at a much faster pace with lots more moving parts - and then also characterization being like. maybe a little weaker than I had hoped! I wish secondary characters had been developed a little more, I wish Victoire had gotten a bit more spotlight earlier on, and I feel like the way Letty is described by her friends vs. the way she appears to speak and act in the actual text of the book are a little out of sync (she’s described as being kind of blunt and ruthless but half her scenes are her crying or coming off just kind of tactless and naive, which is fine but hard to square with the way her friends seem to see her). 

Would love a (totally unnecessary) followup with a

tortured evil Victoire/Letty rivalry and more global Hermes action

but also I think that would probably be difficult to write and cheapen the ending.