Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The Luminous Dead

After finishing this book I’m not really sure how I feel. I don’t hate it but I honestly don’t feel it was a good time.

Gyre is underground in a cave on another planet fulfilling a very expensive, well paid, secretive caving job for her abrasive employer Em. As Gyre gets deeps into the cave things start going worse and worse. Soon she’s struggling to not just survive, but to make it back to the surface in one piece.

This book had so much potential! I love survival horror, space horror, and caving stories because I find them so terrifying! This one had ghosts, weird alien worms called tunnelers, and an antagonist that is complicated and Gyre’s key to survival. All the pieces were there but the execution was not.

While Gyre was a great character it was hard to relate to the other main character Em who is responsible for Gyre’s plight and her reasons for it are dumb and pretty nonsensical. The author tries to make it sound like her motives have a meaning but honestly they don’t and it makes her incredibly unlikeable and impossible to relate to.

Also, the forced romance between Gyre and Em I found really gross. Stockholm syndrome does not equal love, and the fact that this unnecessary abusive and toxic relationship was even a thing, just sat very wrong with me. Gyre would be in a horrific situation and thinking about Em and how she cares for her despite all the abuse Em dishes out. I don’t like novels that glorify toxic or abusive relationships, and this one was so off the rails and really not necessary.

In addition, this book is so long and slow with nothing really sci fi going on beyond the suit and these tunnelers that we don’t see until the end of the book and only for a page. The pacing is far too slow, with a majority of the book being climbing and traversal of the cave intermixed with Em and Gyre’s interactions, and Gyre’s slowly unraveling sanity which made this a hard one to get through for me. In the end it wasn’t even worth it because the ending was so anti climactic and again just kinda gross due to the toxic relationship here.

This one had so much potential and was honestly a big disappointment.

Content Warnings

spaghettii's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

The ending was an interesting choice

Content Warnings

hzamrzla's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-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

3.0

I loved the premise and voice of this book, but the pacing and actual plot were so hard to stick with. There is only one REAL conflict: whether or not Gyre trusts Em, and we revisit it about 8 times with no real resolution. Reluctant trust, big betrayal, insistence on doing it alone, horrible failure due to the decision to do it alone, rinse, repeat.

Specifically, I got so frustrated with Gyre by the end because of her

constantly refusing to let Em guide/medicate/STOP her, doing something stupid, and then being in a rage that Em didn’t guide/medicate/STOP her

. This happening once or twice seemed reasonable, and then for it to KEEP happening, as the only source of action in the book, felt contrived.

Also, I hate

“turns out it was all in your head”

books.

It got old, which is sad.

Content Warnings