Reviews with content warning for Vomit - The Luminous Dead

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The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

78 reviews

w0lfyfr3n's review against another edition

adventurous challenging slow-paced

3.25

To this book's credit, I genuinely felt like I was down in the caves with Gyre, and it really delivered with the horror aspect of being trapped/isolated underground. Some of the caving equipment and terms were difficult to understand in places, but not in a way that impacted the overall story too much.

However, especially after around the 70% mark, the story was so long and sometimes frustrating that I expected somewhat more from the ending, and it fell short.

The part I had been most interested in, i.e. the walking dead folks, were never fully explained and I'm still unsure if they were ghosts, hallucinations or shroom zombies. Also, with regard to the conclusion, it feels super unnecessary for both MCs to retraumatize themselves just to confront Gyre's mom ? Did they learn nothing from this expedition ?! A similar trend is followed throughout the story, where Gyre and Em have some nice interactions but they both then make inexplicable U-turns with their character growth.

It still gets points for the creepy underground adventure but I was left unsatisfied.

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kidprezident's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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thehal's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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yuripiano's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

2.5

As a Locked Tomb fan, I sure do love me the combination of mentally unstable toxic lesbians ft. ominous caves with mysterious hidden away secrets and the threat of terrors within.
Reading the book admittedly felt like a bit of a slog though.
The opening? Great, compelling, foreboding, mysterious! You're quickly introduced to Gyre and Em, who are also the only two real characters in the book, and backstory and motives for them both are woven throughout the story as they delve deeper into the Tower-
Sorry, the cave.
I meant the cave.

Coming hot off reading Annihilation, though, there are definitely some sorts of inspirations that I can see there, and I believe there's a blurb on the back of the book noting that it has "the creeping dread of Annihilation." I definitely do think it had some amount of dread, but there was a sort of repetition to the book that left me spacing out or thinking "didn't we read this part already?"

A lot of the book was basically just this sort of Metroidvania series of checkpoints following a flowchart of "Caver, proceed through the next sump to the next checkpoint" -> "Fuck you but okay" -> "Caver, next sump" -> "You're a monster" -> "Caver, it's sump o'clock". There were definitely interesting things going on with Isolde appearing, the mystery of the Tunnelers, etc., and this kept me reading for that payoff, but
1 - the slog to get there felt like its own monotonous sump, and
2 - the payoff wasn't nearly satisfying enough
Part of that was me fully expecting there to be some sort of more paranormal explanation for what was going on. While I enjoyed that there weren't actual ghosts or anything like that, I also felt like I wouldn't have minded that, and maybe I would have been more interested in the actual plot. It felt like a lot of foreshadowing and buildup for some sort of actual run in with the dead cavers, and the title of the book made me think as well that there would be some sort of rebirth, but that didn't really seem to be the case. This isn't even talking about the Tunneler, which happened right at the very end and was just... fine? idk, it just sort of... appeared, and then Gyre did #JustGyreThings and somehow this worm that literally exists to survive in this environment accidentally killed itself? like. idk. it was so "whatever" that I just didn't really care since the Tunneler didn't give a huge sense of foreboding for me personally.
However, that could also be coming off of having read Annihilation - it didn't feel as though the ~~Tower~~ Cave really had that same sort of... "life" to it? Like, near the end, when Gyre felt compelled to stay in the cave, THAT felt like it was a Real Entity and was trying to push into that gothic space, but I didn't get that sense throughout most of it.
Still, the characterization of Gyre losing her shit near the end was probably the best part for me - her amputation, the delirium, etc. That was all strong, and the gay fangirl part of me really wanted to buy into this Gyre/Em romance thing, but I didn't really get the part of why Em had these strong feelings for Gyre? Like, I'm all for the power dynamic mismatch between Gyre and Em, and I loved the idea of Gyre having this weird sort of Stockholm syndrome type attachment for Em, but I didn't get a lot of it from the other end, and also Gyre's affections swapping back and forth was irritating as she would repeat the same thoughts over and over at different parts while tackling Legally Distinct Sump #7.
I liked a lot of parts of the book - just some of the repetition between Gyre's thoughts, the "I can trust her" -> "I can't trust her" -> "I hate her" -> "I need her" on repeat felt a little bit "fanfictiony" to me, as well as the repetition of the cave itself made it difficult to get through the main portion of the book. There was a map at the beginning of the book, but the caving-focused scenes still felt like I had read the general gist of it already. That said, even if I got annoyed with Gyre on the whole, I liked how messy she and Em both were in their own ways, and Em not being entirely redeemed in her own right was.. refreshing? Idk, I also wouldn't have minded that though. That's kind of a selfish take for me though that comes from feeling like the book read like a well put together fanfiction in parts, and I need my fanfic gays dammit.

If I could rate particular parts of the book, I'd say that the beginning was great, and the ending was also really solid, but the middle was kinda "eh". Kinda like a burger with really good bread on both ends, but when you take off the top bun, it's Oop! All Sumps inside, and I'm not sure that was the meal I wanted to spend 400 pages getting through.

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not_another_ana's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

She'd heard somewhere before that pride came before the fall. But she wasn't going to fall. She was going to climb.

Gyre Price is a liar. She's not an experienced caver and she's never been down on her own but for such huge payout? Well, she's willing to do anything. Sounds simple at first, and with a state of the art suit she expects to be working with a big seasoned surface team. Instead, there's only one person monitoring her, cold and analytic Em who is aware of Gyre's lies and is ready to deceive, blackmail, and drug her in order to get what she wants. As Gyre goes deeper and deeper into the cave, she comes across unexplained situations, like missing equipment, that combined with the harsh geography of the cave and its challenges makes the trek a harrowing experience that might prove deadly.

This was a page-turner that got me out of a mild reading slump. The stakes felt high all the time, I think the author's writing is so atmospheric in a way that really sets the reader in the place of the action. The descriptions of Gyre in the suit, of the cave and the sump, the small crevices, etc., it all worked for me. It felt claustrophobic but also wonderful and new, like we were discovering the cave alongside Gyre and feeling that fascination turn into disgust and terror. However, it was too long and got repetitive at points, this could have easily been 100 pages shorter.

The excess of pages was clear in the relationship and conversations between the two main (and only really) characters. They rehashed discussions over and over again, Gyre changed her mind on Em multiple times, and yet this didn't make their feelings for each other believable. I liked that, due to the circumstances, Gyre has to rely on someone she wasn't sure she could trust and that even with all the suspicions and outright evil actions taken by Em she was a lifeline and connection to the outside world making everything more complicated. But,

I just cannot believe that it would lead to a believable romantic relationship, and more importantly, that I should care or like it. If you're going to commit to fucked up shit then fully commit. Give me toxic yuri or give me nothing.

This is also why the ending didn't work for me.

It wrapped up too nicely and quickly, I expected more trauma. Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I kinda wanted it to end badly lmao, maybe with Gyre dying or with Em turning away from her after all they went through.

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meg_thebrave's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I really liked the premise of the book. I think Gyre and Em are well written characters. This could have been a shorter story; sometimes too repetitive, as Gyre wandered the caves. The biggest horror of the story was the body horror, Gyre’s suit, and the claustrophobia of the tunnels.

The Tunneler reveal was underwhelming, but I appreciated that most of the climax involved Gyre’s waning sanity and physical injuries.

I’d definitely read something shorter by this author, who is skilled at character exploration.

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