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chagmuffdy's review against another edition
3.0
First short story didn't pay off the build up. Characters made odd choices that didn't make sense. Slow to start but ended very abruptly. Second short story was pretty good. Fairly spooky and kept me engaged. Ending could have been nailed home a little better.
zgonzale's review against another edition
5.0
John Horner Jacobs’s A Lush and Seething Hell is a fantastic pairing of two novellas: The Sea Dreams it is the Sky and My Heart Struck Sorrow. Both stories are excruciatingly beautiful and horrible at turns, probing common themes of cosmic horror through the wound of deeply personal traumas. The writing is extremely sharp and rife with everything fans of cosmic horror come to expect: mind-numbing songs, ethereal and unknowable entities (understated but chilling in both tales), eerie tomes, forbidden knowledge... But these stories explore the emotional core of their protagonists in a way that the genre does not commonly do. In this book, Jacobs does so to incredible effect; the characters are real and so their trepidation and fear becomes our own. On top of that, the obvious care and research Jacobs takes with the subject material, plus the efforts of his multiple sensitivity readers, results in a keenly felt and powerful backdrop for the characters and their stories. If this is the direction cosmic horror will be taken in the future, then fans of the genre have a great deal to look forward to!
jay_sy's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
3.0
I was looking for some novellas to read and came across A Lush and Seething Hell by John Horner Jacobs. Though what should have been a short read took me a while to finish.
Thoughts while reading:
The Sea Dreams it is the Sky
-The beginning is a bit slow, but once it gets to the section where the latin book is deciphered, it becomes more interesting
-It’s kinda neat that the original book is lost, and the book is being translated through a series of photographs
-The sections with the poet are interesting, but the sections with Isabel still aren’t grabbing me, even when there’s more action. I’m not invested in her character. During the scenes when she’s driving through South America, I didn’t care enough to feel the tension
-I’d give it a 3 out of 5
My Heart Struck Sorrow
-There’s something about the truncated prose that makes the writing a bit tiresome to read
-I’m finding this story more engaging than the other one. There’s still a lot of back and forth between different time periods, but both time periods are interesting this time
-When the woman, about to sing “Stagger Lee” screams, that made me internally jump
-The section where Bunny went ‘missing’ was sad. Especially since, as the reader, you can sense what happens, while the narrator doesn’t
-I liked the section with the boy who could see ghosts
-It was pretty disturbing to hear how the prison was being run, but I enjoyed Honeyboy’s account
-I liked how information was slowly unveiled as the story went on
-I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5
There are some intriguing elements about both stories, but neither of them really clicked with me, though I liked the second one more than the first. I'd give this a 3 out of 5
Thoughts while reading:
The Sea Dreams it is the Sky
-The beginning is a bit slow, but once it gets to the section where the latin book is deciphered, it becomes more interesting
-It’s kinda neat that the original book is lost, and the book is being translated through a series of photographs
-The sections with the poet are interesting, but the sections with Isabel still aren’t grabbing me, even when there’s more action. I’m not invested in her character. During the scenes when she’s driving through South America, I didn’t care enough to feel the tension
-I’d give it a 3 out of 5
My Heart Struck Sorrow
-There’s something about the truncated prose that makes the writing a bit tiresome to read
-I’m finding this story more engaging than the other one. There’s still a lot of back and forth between different time periods, but both time periods are interesting this time
-When the woman, about to sing “Stagger Lee” screams, that made me internally jump
-The section where Bunny went ‘missing’ was sad. Especially since, as the reader, you can sense what happens, while the narrator doesn’t
-I liked the section with the boy who could see ghosts
-It was pretty disturbing to hear how the prison was being run, but I enjoyed Honeyboy’s account
-I liked how information was slowly unveiled as the story went on
-I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5
There are some intriguing elements about both stories, but neither of them really clicked with me, though I liked the second one more than the first. I'd give this a 3 out of 5
agameofbooksblog's review against another edition
I might try it again another time. Right now I just wasn’t vibing with it
viventium_umbra's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5