Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - The Seep

Interesting character driven story about a trans fmc existential journey after an alien invasion. Found the ending rushed and not great but I liked the rest of it. Relatable and intriguing. The world building was fascinating and well developed too. Really liked that the alien invasion wasn't what popculture usually displays as violent but was so with the slow, creeping influence of the seep until humans weren't willing to live without them. Was bone chilling in ways :)

Content Warnings

inamerata's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

My memories are who I am. You take away my memories, you erase me. Existence is memory. Do you understand? You’d kill me. You’d murder Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka, daughter of Rita and Samuel, a child of love. Trans woman. Artist. Doctor. Healer. Native American. Jew. You erase my memories, and you erase my lineage of ancestors—their pain, their triumphs, their passions, their dreams. No matter if the memories bring me pain. It’s my pain! Let me have it.

An interesting and sometimes frustrating read. I enjoyed the brisk writing, and the premise is neat. (How do you handle a ‘benevolent’ invasion? What do you do when your wife decides to use space magic to become a literal infant? What does utopia mean for people who don’t fall in line?) Porter digs into some interesting ideas about grief, intentions, relationships, memory, identity, etc. here.

Trina is an enjoyable protagonist; she’s dealing with internal and external angst, struggling to figure out what to keep and discard from her past, what to accept or reject from the weird new future. Sometimes she messes up, and sometimes she’s in the right railing against those around her. Honestly, I think Trina is in the right a lot more than she is not. Many other characters are pretentious, annoying, and/or just nonsensical, and it’s fun to root for her.

However, there were a few things that tripped me up. I’m still not sure how to describe my feelings toward the epilogue, where Trina’s actions made sense, but the narrative thought didn’t.

"Deeba had been right, of course, just as she always had been. It was brave and beautiful to go back to the beginning. Trina wasn’t ready yet. But she had plenty of time."

By The Seep’s own thesis, Deeba was wrong. She did kill herself by reverting to infancy, and she wanted her wife to either kill herself, too, or become her fucking mother. (Honestly, fuck Deeba.)

It is beautiful and brave to go toward a new beginning. The entire book builds toward Trina growing and moving forward with a clear head. Cursed with immortality, everyone in The Seep will have to choose when to end their current selves. So why is going "back" suddenly beautiful? How is being too chickenshit to speak plainly brave?

I also rolled my eyes at the painfully ignorant/reductive takes like "pets and eating meat are WRONG because we are all animals," especially because characters eat fish regularly. We also see carnivores, even obligate carnivores, still exist and are actively part of this society as sapient moral beings, but the story never engages with what that means for their diets. (Also, if you can see the life the wood that became your furniture...why no introspection on eating plants? Why isn’t a more holistic cycle of life brought up as at least one possible norm?)

Finally, it was odd to have a Native American protagonist whose indigenous identity is supposed to be climatically important, and then it's just never brought up outside her name and a single line. Throughout the book, we see Trina actively engage with all her other identities mentioned in the quote I pulled above, but we never even learn her tribe’s name.* In an invasion story set in North America, after the dissolution of the United States, Trina’s complicated feelings toward the Seep and its “utopian” plans never touch on what that means for her as a Native person. Which may be a good thing, as Porter is not Native American, but then why is Trina? Why in this story?

*In a 2021 Mechanical Dolphin interview, Porter confirms Trina was meant to be "Mohegan from the Connecticut area," and that she wishes she’d made that explicit. So, I guess Trina calling herself an "old wolf" might be a nod to this, but that’s not my place to decide.

Content Warnings

mandkips's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

imrereads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

This was an interesting concept, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me. I felt like it got a bit lost in itself, getting close to thr real gold again and again, but falling a bit short everytime.

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talasterism's review

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challenging funny inspiring lighthearted reflective sad fast-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? Yes

4.5

"How have we never met before? they asked again and again, but what they were really saying was, How have I only just begun to love you?"

not much of a review per se, but this book was delightful, delightful. funny and smart and easy and breezy. I really loved Trina but mostly here are my favourite quotes:

it was funny - "Trina didnt know what kind of revolution she wanted; she had trouble deciding what to eat for breakfast" and beautful - "I'm still married to her memory" "No love to keep her tethered to a form or place" "Deeba was full of life, and Trina was courting death" "The image of light reflected over water. A profound, life-aletering kiss" but also deep - "Eistance is memory" "and forever was a long time, especially now that death was an opt-in procedure."

"Trina and Deeba enacted the same circular argument until it felt like they were actors in a play going through the same performance night after night, their words hollow, their crying choreographed." THEIR CRYING CHREOGRAPHED IS SO GOOD ACTUALLY.

also special egg: inert - gay - ennie - wordle - love

"They could cycle through together endlessly, learning how to love each other in different permutations of being, in something bigger and grander and stranger than pure romance. Love as a verb, an action, an adventure in knowing. But Trina just couldn’t hack it. She was old-fashioned that way. Simultaneously, this broke both of their hearts."

"She wanted to learn how to speak again, perhaps in another language, in a land far away from the wounds of her past. " "These were the things The Seep gave us, and what it took away. "

Content Warnings

yavin_iv's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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thetenthmuse's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

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

2.5

An addictive page turner with digestible prose— The Seep constructs a glittering utopia that resembles a mixup of both “Brave New World” and “Annihilation”.

I’d be wrong to say I did not enjoy this book— I did! It was easy going, peppered with just enough touch of surreality as I enjoy. The overall plot was a tad weak, there weren’t really any stakes at all, but that aided in the book’s fast-paced reading. I wasn’t so much a fan of the characters, bar Trina, and all the character’s dialogue felt very jilted — which given the context of the whole alien stuff, I understand, but outside of that it just doesn’t read well to me.

Pick up for a fun, trippy blitz through a post-apocalyptic alien hive mind! I feel like lots of people would enjoy this book as a sort of hidden gem of the eco-alien, surreal horror-ish genre. I just wish I was one of those!

Content Warnings

vaniavela's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious 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? No

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