Reviews with content warning for Slavery - Thirteen Storeys

Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

6 reviews

fionamclary's review

challenging dark inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
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

Johnny Sims is truly a storyteller for the ages with a distinctive voice and clear passion for his themes. As a longtime Magnus Archives fan, it was delightful to experience that distinctive voice in a different format with new subject matter. Thirteen Storeys is terrifying and satisfying, as the best horror novels are. The wide range of characters we meet within its pages should give any reader someone to identify with. Chapter one comes out strong with my personal favorite, Violet, our office-job drone turned anticapitalist militant. The description toward the end of her chapter of her personal haunting had me equally spooked and hyped and in awe of this man's writing. It is clear just how committed Johnny is to making sure that we know that the real monster, the true horror of this world, has been capitalism this whole time. Johnny also makes prolific use of his penchant for sleep disorder horror, with multiple characters experiencing insomnia and other sleep disturbances that make you question whether the things they're experiencing are real, or just an exhausted hallucination...and which option is scarier.

My only complaint is that my copy is bursting with typos. I almost feel bad for the copy editor credited in the back because I'd hate to have my name on something where I don't seem to have done my job. There's multiple instances of missing words or words that shouldn't be there, incorrect or missing punctuation, wrong words, and even one instance where a character's entire name was different. I hope there's other editions out there that don't have this problem, but it was so egregious that it sometimes took me completely out of the story. Which is a real shame, since the story is a masterpiece.

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cardaisy's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.25

Kind of slow to start, probably just because the first couple of stories weren't really my favourite, though it could also be partly because it takes a while for the overarching mystery to properly establish itself as well. I think chapter 4 (Bad Penny) was when it really hooked me. I really enjoyed the interconnectedness of the stories and how events would overlap or how one character would mention another one in passing. You also start to recognise the narrators as they pop up because they've been mentioned or featured in other stories

It was also really fun having gone into this as a big fan of The Magnus Archives, and to see the parallels between the two. Jonny definitely has a certain style and specific themes that interest him and I really love it. If you are a fan of TMA, you'll almost certainly enjoy this, and I'd recommend the audiobook as well (each chapter also has a different voice actor, which is very fun and fits the book really well as a sort of anthology)

I think the last chapter/climax of the story was maybe a bit heavyhanded, but I also think it maybe needed to be, if that makes any sense at all. Overall I really enjoyed this though, and while I don't think any of these stories are incredibly unique or groundbreaking, I do think that they are all well done. That maybe doesn't sound like a compliment, but I think it can be difficult sometimes to really properly write a specific trope or theme, and Jonny does that for most of the stories in this book

My favourite story was Sleepless (chapter 6), I just think it was really masterfully done storytelling, and the end of this chapter was also a turning point for me putting together my theories for the last chapter/what happened to Tobias Fell. I feel like this chapter just had a really great cohesive story and throughline, and was a great example of a simple story executed really well. The different elements of the story slotted together at the end in a way that felt really satisfying for me. The voice actor also did a fantastic job as well, from her characterization of Alvita, which really does come across as an exhausted and overworked single mother, to the voice she does for the late night host, which is such a nice juxtaposition to the rest of the narration

Besides sleepless, my favourites were:

- Bad Penny (4), genuinely creeped me out at times, and I like the perspective of a horror story told by a child who doesn’t realise they should be afraid of what's going on

- Essential Viewing (8), a fun "haunted house" story from the perspective of a sort of real estate agent/building manager

- Inbox (5), this one is maybe a bit more plot heavy, and helps to orientate the overarching story, but I also just really enjoyed the mystery elements of it

Others that I enjoyed were

- A Foot in the Door (7), this was good, centered around a woman who's trying to do a sort of paranormal investigation of the building. We also get a decent amount of exposition and history about the building

- Old Plumbing (11), I really loved Janek as a character, though this story didn't really do much for me, it was good though

- Round the Clock (10), this explored dynamics of masculinity, bystander-ism, and almost a sort of us vs them mentality and the things you might excuse of a close friend. I liked this one well enough, but I guessed the twist at the beginning (or the general idea of it) and I feel a bit conflicted about it. Very tense at times though, Max comes across as very unstable and violent

- Night Work (1), a decent opener and set the tone for the rest of the book, though maybe not the most interesting or compelling

- The Knock (2), this was interesting, and it was fun to see such a different perspective right after Night Work. This had a Pickman's Model vibe to it, that concept of a haunted painting, and I overall liked it, though it wasn't really one of my favourites

- Point of View (12), I'm a bit uncertain what to say about Damien's story, because it's written as a transcript of a video and is more a story that ties everything else together, rather than a distinct short story like the others. I also don't think that the format translated super well to audio, but I do think it was a good transition into the last chapter

Not my favs

- Smart (3), a commentary on AI and smart home technology, not my favourite trope, but I think people who do enjoy it more would like this. I think this one also has a sort of "Black Mirror" vibe to it (though probably just because a lot of episodes center around technology). This was also the first story where the character has a more direct link to Tobias Fell which was fun

- A Stubborn Stain (9), this just wasn't my favourite. I do actually think the concept is interesting, but there were just too many elements of this that felt too heavyhanded and overt. The parallel of the stain and the decline of his marriage was an obvious plot point from the beginning, which I wasn't opposed to, but then the additional parallel of his work and the pollution caused by the company he works for was just a bit too much. I think if just one of those two themes were explored it would've felt more rounded and cohesive, but there were too many elements going on and they felt rushed and overall the story didn't flow as well as it could've in my opinion

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rainbowalcremie1995's review

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dark mysterious reflective sad slow-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

3.75

tldr; The real ghosts were the

capitalism

we met along the way.

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this book. I definitely liked it overall, but it took me a while to finish it. I bought the book a few months back, read the first few chapters, put it down for a bit when the pacing got a bit slow, and finally started over and finished the book over the last few weeks.

The fact that the novel consists of twelve different characters’ separate stories that all tie into an overall narrative that concludes in the thirteenth chapter is, in my opinion, both a strength and a weakness. When I was first reading the book, I had a lot of fun getting into the heads of different characters leading vastly different lives from each other. However, since the characters are largely separate from each other until the climax, it also felt like some revelations kept happening over and over. The book is not at all subtle with its anti-capitalist themes, and for certain characters, I felt like their chapters consisted more of reiterating those themes than focusing on the personal story of the character. The middle chapters struggled most with this balance, and was around where I’d taken a break from reading the first time I read this book. However, I feel that the chapters at the beginning and end of the book did a better job of giving its point of view character an actual arc in addition to contributing to the overall plot.

I have two chapters I would consider my favorites. The first is Carter’s chapter, which works as a great standalone story about an awful, awful person becoming a victim to something he created. Something I love about that chapter is that

Donna is basically working as intended and taking over his life, creating someone to be a better person in his place if he won’t do it himself

. I feel like the chapter is even more timely in 2023 than it was in 2020, with ChatGPT and AI generated art being such hot topics. My other favorite chapter is Janek’s. His is closer to the end of the book, so it's more tied to the main plot. I love the imagery of him

breaking into the middle of the building, seeing the pipes inside, and deciding to join the bodies he’d been following

. Another part of the reason I like this chapter is that Janek feels more personally connected to the harm Tobias Fell has caused than some of the other characters.

Janek went through a traumatic work place accident similar to the ones the ghosts he’s following were victims of, and I found that to be a stronger character motivation than the vague concept of people suffering somewhere else.

I feel like the ending of the book wrapped things up a little neatly, but I didn’t mind. I loved the scenes of all these different characters we’ve been in the heads of getting to interact with each other in a strange setting. It might have been sort of anticlimactic and convenient to

have the characters just use the ghosts they’ve been haunted by to each thematically beat Tobias to death, but it was still pretty fun

. As a note, I was reading the ebook version and listening to the audiobook at the same time. I’d purchased both together, but the audiobook’s thirteenth chapter was different than the ebook in that the audiobook was told in present tense instead of past tense, and each character’s narration was in first person. I’m not sure if that change is strictly for the audiobook version or if there’s another ebook edition that also uses those changes. There were a few words and sentences added and subtracted in addition to the tense and POV changes, but overall, there weren’t any story changes, so you won’t be missing anything important regardless of which version you decide to read/listen to.

As a last aside, I (like everyone else) listened to the Magnus Archives podcast sometime before reading this book. I liked the podcast, but I never considered myself a huge fan of it, and I fell behind and never finished it, either. If you’re a big fan of the podcast, though, I will say this book is pretty similar in tone and themes, with both using the real world horrors of capitalism and class divides in addition to the supernatural elements.

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evelphysicist's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

A tense and intriguing read. I really enjoyed the style of this book.

Content Warnings

artmajorese's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

If you enjoyed the Magnus Archives, you'll probably enjoy this. Jonathan Sims stays true to his brand of spookiness. He also sticks with his characteristic tendency to build slowly on a narrative through small episodic arcs.

While I enjoyed it, it didn't quite hit 5 stars for me. It felt both too fast and too slow. By the time I got familiar with a narrator, it changed to a different narrator in a different chapter. By the last chapter, when all the threads were tied together, I had forgotten which character was which. Things happened fast for each narrator, but the build of all information together was too slow for my taste, so that when we hit the big reveal it felt rushed rather than foreshadowed and earned.

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dogearedbooks's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

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