This was interesting although not really horror as much as magical realism. Overall it was enjoyable but the pacing was off, at some points, extremely slow. I didn’t like the romance and it felt like the characters were very flat. The Rovers seemed to be stereotypical indigenous instead of any real research being put into their culture and ways. 

That was a waste of time

I think this was a cohesive, comprehensive, multi faceted history of ways art has been used and can continue to be used as resistance. I find it a bit disappointed that while talking about the covid 19 pandemic, disabled artists weren’t brought up, however it was a pretty full list of stories that I enjoyed

This felt like such a lukewarm book that I don’t understand why it’s been so highly recommended to me. Kuang’s prose is fine, not my favorite but it’s bearable. However, the characters felt very one dimensional and that all of them, Robin included, only existed to be a plot device, instead of fully fleshed out with character arcs. The theme was so clearly the violence of colonization but I hate being treated like an idiot by authors. I didn’t need multiple footnotes telling me what was essentially “colonization bad” or summarizations of what happened. This book is a masterclass in telling, not showing. I think the premise is interesting but there was no further analyzation of the effects of colonization or the intersection of race and gender (Victoire defending Letty bc they’re both women when historically black women have been treated worse than white women) or the intersection of class and race. It felt like being spoon fed that racism and colonization = bad with lesson on etymology in between these spoon fed lessons.

This was a pretty good murder mystery. I wish there was more done with the mc’s work as a mystery writer, and I thought there were a few stereotypical murder mystery mistakes that the mc made and the characters felt very one dimensional. If  I was smarter, I’d probably have been able to guess the murderer, although it also felt like there were several jumps in logic to make the murderer who it was. I really enjoyed the dual plot line, and probably would’ve enjoyed it better as just the diary entries.

This was nothing like how it was marketed. the prose was nice but I couldn’t get myself involved in the story and I kept waiting for something to happen to make it more like how it was marketed and I was let down

This was such an interesting allegory for life in Korea. The way that Kang writes is so poetic yet eerily detached in a way that mirrors the main characters detachment from life. I also found it interesting that we see the main character from other people’s perspective, never her own. The commentary on violence and patriarchy weren’t derivative but were expressed in a way that felt different than other feminist literature. I will be thinking about this for a while

This was an extremely interesting collection of short stories that felt like they all were collected very well. The themes throughout were very consistent and I loved the fantastical elements intertwined within the stories

This is only the second duology I’ve read this year where I love the second book just as much as the first. There wasn’t a drop in quality like many second books. 10/10 read