Reviews

Parallel Hells by Leon Craig

teethmachine's review

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This was an absolutely fantastic collection of unapologetically queer characters. The stories themselves grip you from start to finish, and I've been thinking about some of them for days. This book is queer in every sense of the word, there are some truly bizarre moments, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. Hags was absolutely my favourite story, I could read an entire novel about it. 
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poisoned_icecream's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

emwiththebooks's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

athornton's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

erinbarton's review

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dark mysterious slow-paced

2.0

unfortunately just didn’t get on with this collection. writing style for me felt so detached and although some stories had interesting concepts the execution felt a bit flat or just bizarre. every character just seems like an empty shell of a person, no one has any autonomy or defining characteristics. (examples behind spoiler tag)

Spoiler for example in the first story ‘suckers’, the mc seems completely unphased to learn that her new friend’s partner is a vampire - they don’t react with shock or excitement or even disbelief, they just carry on with the story. in the story ‘raw pork and opium’ when carly finds who she thinks is rené but now with a female body she instantly has sex with him

in every story the characters just don’t seem to have any reaction, emotion, conflict, motivation etc that actually makes a story interesting and engaging. the majority of the writing felt very whimsical and seemingly without any sense of place and time, but then the dialogue felt so jarringly modern and informal; overuse of swearing, use of slang (like the phrase “fingerblasting”), one line had a reference to voldemort, etc which made the dialogue feel so unnatural and incongruous with the stories.

the story ‘lipless smile’ was the best of the collection for me - it’s concise, interesting concept and solid writing. the ending is a bit strange and unsatisfying but i also found this with most of the stories. ‘suckers’ and ‘hags’ were other ones i enjoyed but unfortunately still suffered from the same issues i had with the collection as a whole

kriavidar's review

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dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.5

catgutss's review

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dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

driveupstate's review

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challenging dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

enjoyed “hags” and “lick the dust” but the rest were not that great

cavvythecat's review

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dark mysterious tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There's a layer of engagement with the theme missing in so many of these stories, like they are great ideas where the author wasn't sure on execution. It's good but not "took 7 years to write" good.

heretherebemonsters's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75