Reviews

The Fungus by Leroy Kettle, Harry Adam Knight

Only show reviews with written explanations

magnetgrrl's review

2.0

This book wasn't bad... it was, OK. It's pretty dated, so there's just a lot of crappy characters being casually misogynistic to one another or dropping pretty cruddy generalizations all over the place. But, the actual fungal horror part is kinda cool - the start of the book is a bunch of disconnected people and then how they like, get taken over by mushrooms, and then about 1/3 of the way in I realized they were all people who had some contact with one of the first characters we met, and I was like "Oh! That's a great setup" - it was like, what is the term, inciting incident? It was like the BEST part of every SVU/CSI type crime procedural show, you know the first short bit before the credits where they show how someone dies or how someone finds the body, and kinda set up the scene for what this episode is going to be about? That part - it was like a bunch of those strung together. Very satisfying.

The ending was OK to pretty good, too... at least, it was a sufficiently horrific climax kind of scene.

Everything in the middle and all of the characters were terrible. The end.

I got this from the library, I am not sure when I read it but early in March, and I'm disappointed that Clive Barker, who I generally like, blurbed this with "I had a damned good time with this book."

miaandherbooks's review

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fast-paced

3.75

silvermist_22's review against another edition

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adventurous informative fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated

4.0

djbagwell's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

matthewmgordon's review

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3.0

“Jaws” but with mushrooms instead of sharks.

synthscore's review

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2.0

the line "they wandered out into the meadow and got down on all fours. the grass tasted especially good at this time of the year." has haunted me for months now and it's by far my favorite thing about the book.

otherwise i really struggled with this one. i really liked the beginning but the middle was so tough to get through. it got a little better towards the end but it could never live up to the hype i created for it. is it my fault? idk. i just wish it was better and way way WAY less misogynistic.