shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

extremely sleepy rn so this isn’t a great review or anything but man this was incredible 

not sure ive ever seen a book tackle this sort of concept before, and it was super cool :)
would be a five except,,,,, look i love vico ortiz’s work in general but their narration here left a lot to be desired. extremely exaggerated southern accents when quoting anyone from the southern US, glaring mispronunciations that could have been easily resolved with a quick google search (honestly there were too many mispronunciations to count but the most obvious were Buc-ees being said with an ‘s’ sounding C instead of a hard C, and Illinois being pronounced with the s said instead of being silent (idk how else to explain it, but ortiz said it as “illinoise” instead of “illinoy”)
that kept throwing me out of the book, so honestly if you plan to read this please read it physically or digitally

hate to dnf, but i gotta do it
this is very different from the impression i was given. i thought it was a short story collection of various fairy-tale-like stories, and im a sucker for fairy tales so i was like “hell yeah !! im down for this” but that is Not What This Is.

this is more like mini-novellas that are just general speculative weirdness

although the cats who ran a weed farm were amazing and i love them

, and mainly not my taste (except for what is mentioned under the spoiler tag above). also Prince Hat Underground? boring as could be. and it’s hard to make gay people boring

this book was. fine
very very much not my favorite seanan mcguire, and i really dont plan to continue the series
i grew to dislike this book more and more while reading it cause it feels like things just *happen* one after another with no real buildup or climax or anything

i think this was a pretty bad start to reading joan didion.
honestly overall this felt way too private to have been published, to the point where i began to feel uncomfortable reading this. i dont want to be a voyeur of a woman’s grief over her daughters death!! thats not my place!!
also this badly badly badly needed some editing help, if it was going to be published. which it was

i love that so many people love this, but it just wasn’t for me. much too slow-paced for a novella for my tastes, and i really just was not interested in any of the characters. the knight aspect was fun, as i can be a knight vibe fanatic at times, but over all i just felt very :/ about this

pretty cute :)
i wish this had been longer, since the length vs number of participants meant that it felt like many of the stories ended very suddenly
but other than that this was lovely

i promise i tried. i tried so hard to not dnf but i simply could not take it anymore
this is much less “horrifying alien goo” and much more “relationship drama between a forced polycule”. the seemingly one singular Goo Scene (so far. i got to 40%) was the dude who got naked and swam in it and breathed it in and i love him! that was a super well written scene!!! but everything else is horrifically boring in comparison