Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The Seep

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Seep by Chana Porter

15 reviews

aely's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-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

3.25

It was a good book, I’ll give it that. It made me reflect on my own life, which is always a good thing, in my opinion. I just didn’t care all that much about the characters, other than the boy and he didn’t end up playing that much of a role in the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes dystopia and living in the present. I didn’t connect much with the characters, but I didn’t dislike any of them either. It was a good book, just not a great one.

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itsnicholaslashay's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective fast-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

4.0

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tigger89's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad 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

This book was incredible. I can't think of any other piece of media I've consumed that has featured a middle-aged trans women who isn't particularly femme as the protagonist, so that alone was unique. I also enjoyed the take on a utopia, where you can see how much better things are while at the same time spotting the cracks where maybe there's something less-than-perfect under the surface. Yet there isn't some grand conspiracy to uncover. This isn't the story of how the alien invaders were unmasked and repelled. The utopia is presented as a good thing, probably(though, like all good speculative fiction, it does leave you wondering a little).

Rather, this is a story that deals primarily with grief, as we follow Trina mourning not just the loss of her wife but also that of the world she remembers. She rejects the Seep, choosing to do things the old way whenever possible, a perspective that leaves her unable to cope when confronted with new views on death and rebirth. Her devotion to the old ways is ultimately so destructive that it puts her own health at risk, an apt metaphor for what humanity is doing to our planet and each other with the way we live. It's a sad story, but beautiful as well.

The one thing I thought was a little odd was how Trina's heritage was handled. She's half Jewish and half Native American. My apologies, if the nation was specified I've forgotten it and can't locate it now. While her Jewishness is reflected upon somewhat in the narrative, her Native American heritage didn't seem to be explored to any degree beyond her name: Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka. Now, I'm not trying to say that a character's heritage has to be important to the plot. Of course they can just be Jewish, or Chinese, or Ojibwe, or whatever. What stood out to me here was the lopsidedness of it, where one half of her identity was recognized in the story while the other was kind of just...there. Perhaps this is a fault of the reader, that I didn't know enough to recognize the moments when it was made relevant. It's very possible.

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remimicha's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-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

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nick13's review

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challenging emotional funny 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

4.0

What did I just read? This story had so much going on with a really amazing concept and idea and while I thought the writing to be a little not-so-well paced, i.e. a six year time jump that isn't mentioned until several chapters later, and I found the ending to be a bit lackluster imo, the world in this novel is just astounding. With that in mind, it would be criminal to give this book less than four stars and something I'd recommend to anyone who likes really weird and interesting worlds.

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cheye13's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective fast-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

5.0

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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 a utopia mean for people who don’t fall in line?) Chana 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 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.

Spoiler

"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 other 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.

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cms204's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

I think I would have gotten more out of this if I'd read it slower. There's a lot to think about here.

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ireadinbed's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad fast-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

4.75

Honestly after the first pages I thought I'd hate this book. I don't usually like books with this kind of style, vibe, whatever you want to call it.

But for some reason I was really drawn in by Trina. In so many ways she feels alien to me, but also very very relatable.

I got very invested in all the little elements of this story. Nothing ever really feels explained, like a Miyazaki movie, but in the end it comes together.

I cried a lot reading this book.

I think I would have given it a five if I wasn't briefly worried about the eventual end the book came to. It did work out but I kinda thought it was turning into a dystopia at one point.

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maiagaia's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-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

4.25

What a beautiful meditation on grief, pain, relationships, and humanity. The protagonist is a trans woman which brings up some interesting ideas/questions surrounding the scifi elements.
This is a very allegorical story, so I would really only recommend reading it if you're interested in that sort of experience as opposed to a more action-y or cerebral scifi.

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