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rystonlentil43's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I like the characters, and the variety of narration styles is cool. But the writing is pretty heavyhanded at times, and not enough happens for how many pages this book has. I definitely recommend giving it a shot if the description sounds like it suits your interests as it did mine, because in some delightful ways it does not hold back, but somehow I was hoping for more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Transphobia
Moderate: Child abuse and Medical trauma
havelock's review
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror
watchoutforfrogs's review
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
stromberg's review
challenging
dark
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This compact tale, combining elements of science fiction, eco-horror, and body horror, fuses the grotesque with the erotic. It is a story of exploitation, resistance, and liberation, a phantasmical exploration of psychosexual revulsion and erotic bliss and the points of inflection at which the former may cross into the latter. And it is a meditation on identity—where our genders begin and end, how our worth must never be as picayune as our dollar value, the way in which each of us is human via other humans—and how a rejection of solidarity in favour of dogged egoism may invite one’s own destruction.
mifterkim's review
5.0
This was a really excellent sci-fi/horror novella, but extremely difficult to review due to both its experimental writing style and provocative nature.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.
I would warn any prospective readers that any content warnings you can think of probably apply to this book - including violence, death, sexual content, body horror (lots), cannibalism and medical- and gender-related trauma.
Body After Body is a self-published science fiction novella which is based on the concept album Moon Colony Bloodbath by John Darnielle and John Vanderslice. I haven't listened to the album, but was recommended the book as a little-read but excellent speculative fiction piece, and I didn't find myself missing out out due to a lack of context. The book definitely stands on its own.
Body After Body is set in a future earth in which climate disaster has left earth much less habitable, and the rich and powerful live on the Moon, on Mars and on satellites orbiting the dying planet. Medical care has become trivial due to the availability of lab-grown tissues and medicines, but this too is available only to the richest in society. Poorer people can be given all necessary and desired medical care of they sign up to have their memories erased, and to tend one of the earth-based laboratories which grow the organs needed for treatment of off-world patients. The novel is set in one of these facilities, with mind-wiped protagonists navigating the crumbling facility they look after and their own identities as conditions in the lab steadily become more untenable.
In many ways this is a classic science fiction fable, with the conceit of the narrative becoming obvious long before it is revealed in the text. However this seems to me more like a deliberate narrative device, serving to make the horror more horrific, and the eventual climax of the story and collapse of the facility feel even more inevitable. The characters are relatable despite their brainwashed states and the sometimes awful things they do, the writing style is beautiful and experimental, and the themes explored are both relevant to the state of the world as the story was written, and personally-relevant to myself. I have rarely come across a speculative fiction book that made me feel quite so seen, and addressed contemporary issues while remaining an engaging story in its own right.
I would highly recommend this book if you are trans, queer, interested in highly-relevant science fiction and have an extremely strong stomach. It was wonderful and horrible, and it will be in my thoughts for a long time.
apollinares's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
This is a strange one. I don't really know what to say about it. I picked it up for a reading challenge (the prompt was "self published"). The audience for this work is... very small.
Maybe body horror trash fiction just isn't my cup of tea. The body horror itself was written exceptionally - I would get lost in the lyrical prose and it would hit me halfway through a paragraph that someone had just been disemboweled, or maimed, or killed. It didn't feel tacky or cliché, surprisingly. It felt like the book was trying to shock me, but also comfort me into this false sense of security at the same time. VERY nsfw, in every imaginable way.
I didn't so much enjoy it as I quickly devoured it, and then had to sit with the aftermath. I'm still here, sitting with it.
Maybe body horror trash fiction just isn't my cup of tea. The body horror itself was written exceptionally - I would get lost in the lyrical prose and it would hit me halfway through a paragraph that someone had just been disemboweled, or maimed, or killed. It didn't feel tacky or cliché, surprisingly. It felt like the book was trying to shock me, but also comfort me into this false sense of security at the same time. VERY nsfw, in every imaginable way.
I didn't so much enjoy it as I quickly devoured it, and then had to sit with the aftermath. I'm still here, sitting with it.
jphillips2491's review
There's too much graphic sex for my liking and I just can't enjoy it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
10000bees's review
challenging
dark
medium-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? It's complicated
5.0
What a fantastically horrifying read! In such a short time, you're introduced to vividly complex characters and a freaky bio-engineered dystopia where bodies are grown and harvested for parts. While it's mostly a character-focused story, the world has the perfect amount of detail to understand it without bogging down the pace. It moves quickly, not wasting any words as you're taken from mind to mind as they slowly melt together and create one beautiful symphony.
This book will absolutely not be for everyone (as body horror rarely is); it's incredibly graphic, potentially triggering, and just undeniably weird. But it sure was for me.
This book will absolutely not be for everyone (as body horror rarely is); it's incredibly graphic, potentially triggering, and just undeniably weird. But it sure was for me.