miminku's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
catsy2022's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
kirchnerkd's review against another edition
dark
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
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Blood
Moderate: Grief, Classism, Child death, and Mental illness
Minor: Alcohol
rouge_red's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
3.0
One of the more interesting books I've read in a while. A cross between paranormal, horror, and sci-fi made this a weird read, but I can't deny the sights and sounds were not things that kind of worked?
mrgalahad's review against another edition
3.0
Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones is the debut novel of Micah Dean Hicks. I did not know anything about it starting it, as it got randomly chosen for a book club. After reading the synopsis I was intrigued. Ghosts, talking pigs, a provincial town seems like an interesting premise. The novel's main thematic was trauma and racism and I am unsure how good it achieved to explore them, but I will come back to that later.
You follow the main protagonist Jane and her brother. They live in Swine Hill a haunted city, which mainly drives on its meat factory and is haunted by many ghosts (which is acknowledged by everyone). The author doesn´t further go on how normal ghosts are in this world, as they only seem to appear in Swine Hill, but I was fine with that as an answer could have gotten really convoluted. Jane and her brother both are haunted. Jane has a ghost that tells her the secrets of other people, while her brother can create magnificent things (like the former mentioned talking pigs). Trauma is explored through the ghosts people have as these only haunt people that they can identify with, a big focus here lies on regret. While I liked the idea, there was a big problem that I encountered during the last third of the book. BtBHtB also deals with racism and emotional trauma has to take a backseat for that. The subplots which mostly dealt with it (Trigger and Bethany) also felt like the weakest part, as they were the least connected to the main story. Bethany in general felt a bit out of place with her later developments which just felt convoluted.
The main story is about pigs getting conscious and being used as butchers for the normal pigs. An interesting premise, as the townsfolk started getting scared for their jobs as a new minority is created which is taking their jobs. I mostly was invested in this plot thread as I really felt for the newly created pigs and was curious what would happen to them, would they stay wage slaves, rise up, who knows? This leads to my main criticism of this book, the ending. The humans in Swine Hill do some horrible stuff, on the level of 20th century USA lynching horrible. I have to get into spoilers here because I really disliked the main conclusion. Dennis the son of the headpig gets butchered, humiliated, and laughed at, at his funeral. Jane´s brother who created the pigs gets his nose cut off "to look more like the pigs he loves". The citizens of Swine Hill (while scared for their jobs) are unredeemable evil people. Still, the end message of the novel is that the ghost of Jane´s brother (the defacto creator, god) of the pigs tells them to think about the good in the world and start living in a lonely desolate forest. This just did not sit well with me at all. I get where the author is coming from with his moral (circle of violence yadaydayada), but giving us such vile disgusting humans and not having them pay for what they did, while also telling the pigs to look into the good of the world, just felt like a cop-out. Spoiler End My last criticism would be the subplots of Trigger and Bethany, which I mentioned before. The book had a great start and good middle part but just fell apart towards the end, as the subplots did not tie in with the main plot at all and just felt redundant. I would have been happier if the pigs or Jane´s dad would have been explored more and maybe having Trigger or Bethany cut for that.
Despite my problems, BtBHtB is no bad book. The writing is good, nothing spectacular but serves what it wants to be well and the atmosphere Hicks creates here is dense and gripped me from the first pages. It hardly took him the first chapter to give me an impression of the rundown city of Swine Hill its ghosts and the meat factory looming over it. I also find it recommendable to have such a unique idea and setting for a story, even if it fell a bit apart towards the end and was a bit convoluted overall. In the end, this was a good debut novel but only an okay horror story. Despite the shortcomings, I will be looking forward to his next work.
You follow the main protagonist Jane and her brother. They live in Swine Hill a haunted city, which mainly drives on its meat factory and is haunted by many ghosts (which is acknowledged by everyone). The author doesn´t further go on how normal ghosts are in this world, as they only seem to appear in Swine Hill, but I was fine with that as an answer could have gotten really convoluted. Jane and her brother both are haunted. Jane has a ghost that tells her the secrets of other people, while her brother can create magnificent things (like the former mentioned talking pigs). Trauma is explored through the ghosts people have as these only haunt people that they can identify with, a big focus here lies on regret. While I liked the idea, there was a big problem that I encountered during the last third of the book. BtBHtB also deals with racism and emotional trauma has to take a backseat for that. The subplots which mostly dealt with it (Trigger and Bethany) also felt like the weakest part, as they were the least connected to the main story. Bethany in general felt a bit out of place with her later developments which just felt convoluted.
The main story is about pigs getting conscious and being used as butchers for the normal pigs. An interesting premise, as the townsfolk started getting scared for their jobs as a new minority is created which is taking their jobs. I mostly was invested in this plot thread as I really felt for the newly created pigs and was curious what would happen to them, would they stay wage slaves, rise up, who knows? This leads to my main criticism of this book, the ending. The humans in Swine Hill do some horrible stuff, on the level of 20th century USA lynching horrible. I have to get into spoilers here because I really disliked the main conclusion. Dennis the son of the headpig gets butchered, humiliated, and laughed at, at his funeral. Jane´s brother who created the pigs gets his nose cut off "to look more like the pigs he loves". The citizens of Swine Hill (while scared for their jobs) are unredeemable evil people. Still, the end message of the novel is that the ghost of Jane´s brother (the defacto creator, god) of the pigs tells them to think about the good in the world and start living in a lonely desolate forest. This just did not sit well with me at all. I get where the author is coming from with his moral (circle of violence yadaydayada), but giving us such vile disgusting humans and not having them pay for what they did, while also telling the pigs to look into the good of the world, just felt like a cop-out. Spoiler End My last criticism would be the subplots of Trigger and Bethany, which I mentioned before. The book had a great start and good middle part but just fell apart towards the end, as the subplots did not tie in with the main plot at all and just felt redundant. I would have been happier if the pigs or Jane´s dad would have been explored more and maybe having Trigger or Bethany cut for that.
Despite my problems, BtBHtB is no bad book. The writing is good, nothing spectacular but serves what it wants to be well and the atmosphere Hicks creates here is dense and gripped me from the first pages. It hardly took him the first chapter to give me an impression of the rundown city of Swine Hill its ghosts and the meat factory looming over it. I also find it recommendable to have such a unique idea and setting for a story, even if it fell a bit apart towards the end and was a bit convoluted overall. In the end, this was a good debut novel but only an okay horror story. Despite the shortcomings, I will be looking forward to his next work.
lisa_vautier's review against another edition
5.0
I stayed up too late reading this book and awoke with it so strongly in my mind that I tried to tell my partner about it before I had my coffee. I totally mangled the attempt. I like the strange, but not strangeness for strangenesses sake, trying to describe the book doesn't communicate what HIcks is able to do with the strange world he creates.
There is an article on the Brain Pickings page on Robert Frost's advice to his daughter about how to read and write about books. He advises to take note of your feelings and thoughts as you read the book. My thoughts while reading were quite wide ranging because the fantastical elements that Hicks creates are so psychologically rich. One of the things that I love about great fantastical books is that they are able to use the fantastical metaphorically to explore complex dynamics and abstracts while also entertaining. I found myself thinking about Emerson and his ideas in Nature and Self Reliance, I thought about family dynamics, about schemas and Ideaologies and how we use them to shape our world, I thought about Arendt and her proposition that the essence of totalitarianism is the ability of a society to fully claim a human being and reduce them to their societal utility. Most of all I thought about the idea of the tragic flaw - a human trait that can consume and destroy like a cancer.
But as with the best fantastical books it wasn't simoply the exhilaration of the ideas, but how I felt for the characters, the pig-boy, the ghosts and even the inhabitants of the town.
This is definitely one of the books of the year for me and this author will be one that I hunt for.
There is an article on the Brain Pickings page on Robert Frost's advice to his daughter about how to read and write about books. He advises to take note of your feelings and thoughts as you read the book. My thoughts while reading were quite wide ranging because the fantastical elements that Hicks creates are so psychologically rich. One of the things that I love about great fantastical books is that they are able to use the fantastical metaphorically to explore complex dynamics and abstracts while also entertaining. I found myself thinking about Emerson and his ideas in Nature and Self Reliance, I thought about family dynamics, about schemas and Ideaologies and how we use them to shape our world, I thought about Arendt and her proposition that the essence of totalitarianism is the ability of a society to fully claim a human being and reduce them to their societal utility. Most of all I thought about the idea of the tragic flaw - a human trait that can consume and destroy like a cancer.
But as with the best fantastical books it wasn't simoply the exhilaration of the ideas, but how I felt for the characters, the pig-boy, the ghosts and even the inhabitants of the town.
This is definitely one of the books of the year for me and this author will be one that I hunt for.
stepnic's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Child death, Classism, Death, Murder, Violence, Animal cruelty, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Gore, Hate crime, Animal death, and Blood
Moderate: Physical abuse, Abandonment, Child abuse, Police brutality, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Racism, Fire/Fire injury, Mental illness, Stalking, and Torture
Minor: Death of parent, Sexual content, Cannibalism, Gun violence, Slavery, and Suicidal thoughts
lizzie24601's review against another edition
dark
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
5.0
Holy shit, I was not expecting this book to be so good. Jane and Henry are really interesting, well-developed characters (with realistic sibling interactions!). The author uses fantasy and sci fi to dissect community-level trauma and the difficulty of leaving a bad environment.
And this book was NOT about what I thought it would be. I mean, the description on the book jacket is pretty accurate, but wait till you find out who the "new arrivals" are...
Be aware of the content warnings. This is a horror novel and the author really came up with some new and horrible things to happen to these characters. There are scenes of murder, a hate crime, and police brutality that could be particularly upsetting.
And this book was NOT about what I thought it would be. I mean, the description on the book jacket is pretty accurate, but wait till you find out who the "new arrivals" are...
Be aware of the content warnings. This is a horror novel and the author really came up with some new and horrible things to happen to these characters. There are scenes of murder, a hate crime, and police brutality that could be particularly upsetting.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Hate crime, Murder, Police brutality, Grief, and Gun violence
Moderate: Body horror, Bullying, Child death, Kidnapping, Racism, and Violence
awesomejen2's review against another edition
2.0
This started out really good but quickly declined. I liked the idea of ghosts inhabiting all the residents but I think it would have been better to portray the idea of them having a type of symbiotic relationship rather then the ghosts just being a straight up misery to the residents. My other issue is that the story line is not very clear, we just meander around with no clear direction as to where it is going. The description of a dying town was spot on and reminded me of a lot Castle Rock.
happybirb's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
tense
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
5.0
I cried
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Grief, Body horror, Bullying, and Animal cruelty
Moderate: Hate crime, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, and Police brutality
Minor: Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Child death, and Slavery