krispy_reading's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Very atmospheric writing. Characters dealing with “dominos falling one by one” type plot.
Wonderful storytelling. I would recommend the audiobook so you can hear the spoken native language in some dialogue scenes.
Wonderful storytelling. I would recommend the audiobook so you can hear the spoken native language in some dialogue scenes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Violence, and Cursing
Moderate: Racism, Blood, Animal death, Alcohol, Suicide, and Death
Minor: Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief
josephhack's review
dark
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
lyndzyrenee's review against another edition
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I really enjoyed this book, but I kept waiting for it to get paranormal or But that's more on me and my preferences. Esp when I'm going into a book blind.
Also I highly recommend the audiobook if you'll struggle reading the characters' native tongue. The author explains what they're saying but it takes me out of the story when I don't know a word. So the audiobook helped me a lot!
Spoiler
people to start getting killed. Neither really happenAlso I highly recommend the audiobook if you'll struggle reading the characters' native tongue. The author explains what they're saying but it takes me out of the story when I don't know a word. So the audiobook helped me a lot!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Grief
Minor: Cannibalism, Alcoholism, Suicide, and Racism
junegloome's review
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
bittennailbooks's review
dark
emotional
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? It's complicated
4.0
“Yes, apocalypse. We've had that over and over. But we always survived. We're still here. And we'll still be here, even if the power and the radios don't come back on and we never see any white people again.”
If you are a fan of "The Only Good Indians" by Stephen Graham Jones, here is your next read. For being from 2018, Rice certainly predicts the future of post-pandemic ideologies, mass panic, and bleak survival. A devastating read about a power outage in a remote reserve and the surrounding area. This book does an incredible job about discussing the impacts of racism, residential schools, community, and trauma within the stories context of survival.
Thumbs up: One thing I've been sitting with since finishing this surprisingly short book is Rice's incredible way of not demonizing those who have been deeply impacted or removed from traditional ways of knowing. That there were serious and ongoing impacts of colonization and fleshes out the reasons that the conditions and plot (without spoiling it) resulted in how they did in the novel. The discussions of how ripping one from one's culture creates a reliance on oppressive structures that lead to the novels incredible conclusion.
Thumbs down: If you're looking for romantic prose, you will not find it here. The writing is very straight forward and overtly descriptive. However, that's certainly not a turn of for me with this novel.
Was it a nail biter? Absolutely, I devoured this book in one sitting and think it absolutely deserves space on your shelf at home.
If you are a fan of "The Only Good Indians" by Stephen Graham Jones, here is your next read. For being from 2018, Rice certainly predicts the future of post-pandemic ideologies, mass panic, and bleak survival. A devastating read about a power outage in a remote reserve and the surrounding area. This book does an incredible job about discussing the impacts of racism, residential schools, community, and trauma within the stories context of survival.
Thumbs up: One thing I've been sitting with since finishing this surprisingly short book is Rice's incredible way of not demonizing those who have been deeply impacted or removed from traditional ways of knowing. That there were serious and ongoing impacts of colonization and fleshes out the reasons that the conditions and plot (without spoiling it) resulted in how they did in the novel. The discussions of how ripping one from one's culture creates a reliance on oppressive structures that lead to the novels incredible conclusion.
Thumbs down: If you're looking for romantic prose, you will not find it here. The writing is very straight forward and overtly descriptive. However, that's certainly not a turn of for me with this novel.
Was it a nail biter? Absolutely, I devoured this book in one sitting and think it absolutely deserves space on your shelf at home.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Death, and Racism
Moderate: Alcoholism and Alcohol
Spoiler content warning:Spoiler
Cannibalismlevininja's review
First, for the good. The narrator on the audiobook is very good. The First Nations accent is evocative and clear. Wonderful job on that front. Also, I really enjoyed the setting. I would love to hear a good story told of a post-apocalyptic period on a rez. More Native American stories would be welcome in general, but especially in this context, it seems fitting. I appreciate that idea.
However, after getting 30% of the way through this (2 hrs) and continually waiting for something to happen, I had to stop. Note, I push myself through a lot of books. But this one suffered from an egregious lack of anything happening. 2 hours into the book and only one plot point has happened: the services went out. Has anyone done anything meaningful about it? No. They’ve just noticed that the services are out and talked about it. A week into the outage, has a single person thought to drive outside of the rez and see what’s happening? No. They all just say, “well, let’s wait for the power to come back on. I’m sure it will eventually.” Fascinating. I feel that if a book can’t pull me in even slightly by the time I’m 30% through then, well—it’s just not going to.
Now, I don’t require that all books have a fast plot. Quite the contrary. But in the absence of a fast plot there must be something else to hold the attention. There needs to be interesting dialogue, or interesting character revelation, or interesting narration at least, or some poetry, something, anything—but unfortunately that’s not the case.
The book is almost entirely every-day narration of every-day events and every-day dialogue. The author seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that everything that has to happen in a scene must be described. No, I don’t need to know that he walked to the phone, then picked up the receiver, and then put the receiver of the phone up to his ear and listened for a few moments, while standing there, hoping to hear a signal so that it would tell him if they still had landline service, but then he put the receiver down, discouraged that the line was dead. (Although I am hyperbolizing here.)
I try to judge a book by what it was trying to do. The desciption of this book includes the words “thriller” and “literary”. After 2 hrs of listening to this, I think I can definitively say, this is not a thriller. If no fear or horror or even action has happened whatsoever in the first 2 hrs—it’s not a thriller. I hope we can all agree on that.
On the term “literary,” that is much more subjective. One of the definitions of “literary” is that it is character-driven instead of plot-driven. While I can agree that it’s certainly not plot-driven, being character-driven is not merely an absence of being plot-driven. The characters are not revealed or developed in deep ways. Sure there are little things here and there, but no more character development/revelation than your average genre fiction, to be honest. We aren’t given hardly any insight into the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters at all.
Another definition of “literary” is that it involves the human condition. This is even more subjective, and to anyone who disagrees I would fully respect that disagreement, but for me at least, I did not feel that this was seriously discussing the human condition. There simply wasn’t much being revealed about the characters besides their simple outward actions, which were by-and-large not actions other than any generic person might take.
So for me at least, I felt duped by the promises of this novel—1) thriller, and 2) literary—and cannot recommend it.
However, after getting 30% of the way through this (2 hrs) and continually waiting for something to happen, I had to stop. Note, I push myself through a lot of books. But this one suffered from an egregious lack of anything happening. 2 hours into the book and only one plot point has happened: the services went out. Has anyone done anything meaningful about it? No. They’ve just noticed that the services are out and talked about it. A week into the outage, has a single person thought to drive outside of the rez and see what’s happening? No. They all just say, “well, let’s wait for the power to come back on. I’m sure it will eventually.” Fascinating. I feel that if a book can’t pull me in even slightly by the time I’m 30% through then, well—it’s just not going to.
Now, I don’t require that all books have a fast plot. Quite the contrary. But in the absence of a fast plot there must be something else to hold the attention. There needs to be interesting dialogue, or interesting character revelation, or interesting narration at least, or some poetry, something, anything—but unfortunately that’s not the case.
The book is almost entirely every-day narration of every-day events and every-day dialogue. The author seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that everything that has to happen in a scene must be described. No, I don’t need to know that he walked to the phone, then picked up the receiver, and then put the receiver of the phone up to his ear and listened for a few moments, while standing there, hoping to hear a signal so that it would tell him if they still had landline service, but then he put the receiver down, discouraged that the line was dead. (Although I am hyperbolizing here.)
I try to judge a book by what it was trying to do. The desciption of this book includes the words “thriller” and “literary”. After 2 hrs of listening to this, I think I can definitively say, this is not a thriller. If no fear or horror or even action has happened whatsoever in the first 2 hrs—it’s not a thriller. I hope we can all agree on that.
On the term “literary,” that is much more subjective. One of the definitions of “literary” is that it is character-driven instead of plot-driven. While I can agree that it’s certainly not plot-driven, being character-driven is not merely an absence of being plot-driven. The characters are not revealed or developed in deep ways. Sure there are little things here and there, but no more character development/revelation than your average genre fiction, to be honest. We aren’t given hardly any insight into the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters at all.
Another definition of “literary” is that it involves the human condition. This is even more subjective, and to anyone who disagrees I would fully respect that disagreement, but for me at least, I did not feel that this was seriously discussing the human condition. There simply wasn’t much being revealed about the characters besides their simple outward actions, which were by-and-large not actions other than any generic person might take.
So for me at least, I felt duped by the promises of this novel—1) thriller, and 2) literary—and cannot recommend it.
taystalltales's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
periwinkle_hk's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
beancity's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
I devoured this book in an afternoon and am so glad i came across it. Rice's prose was beautiful and evocative, creating a community of characters that felt truly real and lived in. I loved that the nature of the disaster/crisis is believable and explained enough to make the novel work, but is not the focus of the story itself. I'll definitely be re reading again!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cannibalism
Minor: Murder, Gun violence, and Death