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foldingthepage_kayleigh's review against another edition
dark
emotional
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
4.0
The novella expertly blends themes of horror and grief together. You can just feel the tendrils of alienation wrap around you and pull you down into Rita’s psyche. But by the end, you come out the other side in reconciliation with life and death, and how despite your dissociation, your depression, Creator loves you and you are always at home on the land.
Overall, I liked this novella and found Rita relatable. The combination of eco-anxiety and Indigenous identity made for an engrossing read. Although the writing was a bit too literary and flowery for me, thus why not a full 5 star read for me.
Overall, I liked this novella and found Rita relatable. The combination of eco-anxiety and Indigenous identity made for an engrossing read. Although the writing was a bit too literary and flowery for me, thus why not a full 5 star read for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail
bladebailey's review against another edition
dark
emotional
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
4.75
While staying in a remote lakeside cabin to create her latest painting collection, Rita faces terrifying phenomena and her own emotional turmoil.
Green Fuse Burning blends together achingly beautiful prose, descriptions of art pieces relating to the story, heavy subject matter like climate change and grief and suicidality, and the vicious, gnashing natural world to form a truly unsettling piece of literature. Rita struggles with the recent traumatic death of her father, her rapidly failing relationship with girlfriend Molly, alienation from her Mi'kmaq community, and mental illness all while buckling under the expectation to produce excellent art. Graphically violent imagery of gored animals and mycelium-infested burning women haunt Rita by day so that she paints them at night. While I sometimes struggle with true horror, Green Fuse Burning employs such gorgeous prose and raw dialogue in a single character study that I find it an exquisite contribution to the genre.
Green Fuse Burning blends together achingly beautiful prose, descriptions of art pieces relating to the story, heavy subject matter like climate change and grief and suicidality, and the vicious, gnashing natural world to form a truly unsettling piece of literature. Rita struggles with the recent traumatic death of her father, her rapidly failing relationship with girlfriend Molly, alienation from her Mi'kmaq community, and mental illness all while buckling under the expectation to produce excellent art. Graphically violent imagery of gored animals and mycelium-infested burning women haunt Rita by day so that she paints them at night. While I sometimes struggle with true horror, Green Fuse Burning employs such gorgeous prose and raw dialogue in a single character study that I find it an exquisite contribution to the genre.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, and Grief
sapphicbugs's review against another edition
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Gore and Sexual content
Minor: Child abuse and Injury/Injury detail
anyaemilie's review against another edition
4.0
This took me a while to read (my fault, not the book), but I really liked it. Super creepy climate horror novella, with metaphors for grief and musings on identity and connections to culture. If your brain is cooperating it should be a quick read for you because it’s just over 100 pages 😊
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror
Minor: Gore and Vomit
bookishbyjennaavh's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.25
I was deeply excited for this book but this was a major let down. If I drank everytime she used an analogy or a metaphor I would have died of alcohol poisoning.
There was so many words and so little said! There was no plot. It was supposed to be about grief but we spent most of the time describing the taste of the horizon and our relationship with our girlfriend. This would have made more sense if it was in first person. It being in third really did a detriment to the story and the character. She was confusing and unlikable because you couldn’t understand her thinking.
There was so many words and so little said! There was no plot. It was supposed to be about grief but we spent most of the time describing the taste of the horizon and our relationship with our girlfriend. This would have made more sense if it was in first person. It being in third really did a detriment to the story and the character. She was confusing and unlikable because you couldn’t understand her thinking.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Mental illness, Racism, Vomit, and Medical trauma
rorikae's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-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
'Green Fuse Burning' by Tiffany Morris is a reflective horror novella steeped in one artist's grief.
After her father's death, Rita is wallowing in her grief. To help her, Rita's girlfriend Molly applies for an artists residency for her. When Molly surprises her with the accepted residency application, Rita isn't completely sold but she decides to go anyway. Alone in the forest by a large pond, Rita delves into her grief through her painting but her feelings threaten to overwhelm her, especially when she starts to see strange things.
This is an excellent, evocative novella though it comes with strong content warnings for grief, loss of a parent, and suicidal ideation. Though we only spend so much time with Rita, Morris does an excellent job of helping us to understand her grief and how it is affecting her. She accomplishes this through a mix of beautiful and horrific nature writing with a slightly supernatural aspect. Rita is deep in her grief and since we are seeing the world through her eyes, it's unclear what is just a hallucination and what is real. One of my favorite aspects of the story is that each chapter starts with looking at one of the paintings that Rita created during the residency. These paintings help to inform our view of Rita's experience and how she is coming to terms with her grief.
Morris' writing is lush and horrifying at the same time. I will definitely be looking to pick up more of what they write next.
After her father's death, Rita is wallowing in her grief. To help her, Rita's girlfriend Molly applies for an artists residency for her. When Molly surprises her with the accepted residency application, Rita isn't completely sold but she decides to go anyway. Alone in the forest by a large pond, Rita delves into her grief through her painting but her feelings threaten to overwhelm her, especially when she starts to see strange things.
This is an excellent, evocative novella though it comes with strong content warnings for grief, loss of a parent, and suicidal ideation. Though we only spend so much time with Rita, Morris does an excellent job of helping us to understand her grief and how it is affecting her. She accomplishes this through a mix of beautiful and horrific nature writing with a slightly supernatural aspect. Rita is deep in her grief and since we are seeing the world through her eyes, it's unclear what is just a hallucination and what is real. One of my favorite aspects of the story is that each chapter starts with looking at one of the paintings that Rita created during the residency. These paintings help to inform our view of Rita's experience and how she is coming to terms with her grief.
Morris' writing is lush and horrifying at the same time. I will definitely be looking to pick up more of what they write next.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Body horror
obscurepages's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-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
4.0
"Life was a like a language I couldn't speak."
Wow. I dove into this book not knowing much other than it's an Indigenous horror novella. What I got now is a brilliant character study of a woman struggling with her mental health, insecurities, Indigenous identity, her drive to create art, and her reconciling nature with life and death.
I have to say, the imagery and the prose in this book is something else. Something entirely its own.
Overall, this was an incredible mix of both unsettling and profound.
Wow. I dove into this book not knowing much other than it's an Indigenous horror novella. What I got now is a brilliant character study of a woman struggling with her mental health, insecurities, Indigenous identity, her drive to create art, and her reconciling nature with life and death.
I have to say, the imagery and the prose in this book is something else. Something entirely its own.
Overall, this was an incredible mix of both unsettling and profound.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, and Blood
Moderate: Grief and Death of parent
Minor: Body horror and Sexual content
atlastheninth's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-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
3.75
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
CW: Suicidal ideation, parental death, animal death, gore, blood
Synopsis: After Rita won an artist residency, she decides to spent a week in an isolated cabin in the woods, hoping for inspiration for her artworks. During her first night there she hears strange noises coming from the pond close by. And the things she sees and hears, all seemingly connected to the pond, only become stranger in the following days.
Thoughts:
This book is very atmospheric and uses very poetic language. I would describe it as artistic, which fits very well to the story and to our MC Rita, who is an artist. She is a great main character with lots of flaws, but still so very lovable/relatable.
Each chapter starts with the description of one of Ritas' paintings that she draws on her retreat, and for rest of the chapter we follow the events that inspired said painting, which I found really interesting.
There are a lot of flashbacks from Ritas' life, explaining how she got to this point in her life, explaining why she feels the way she feels. Later in the book, these did feel neither out of place nor confusing, but at the beginning they did. It seemed unorganized and took away from that first feeling of wrongness when Rita hears noises during the first night. Together with the many descriptions and the author spelling out things, that you can already understand from those descriptions, the beginning was all over the place.
Here it may have been good to go sort the flashbacks better and to expand on the happenings in the first night.
However, once we get over this, when it became more horrorish, it got a lot better. It felt more focused.
This is a book about grief: grief over her dead father, over the declining relationship with her girlfriend, over her barely existent relationship with the rest of her family, over not being connected to her culture as much as she wants to be.
"She'd become alien in her own body, alien in the landscape she and her ancestors had called home, transformed into some unearthly being."
Rita feels disconnected from life, has been doing so since a while and during her time in the cabin, for the first time, she admits it to herself.
"She could do it. She could die here."
We watch her accept this, embrace this and wanting her life to change; to be reborn, no matter how.
"She was ready to be remade in the waters, to meet herself in the sludge of unbecoming."
This transition was written very well, how it was shown through her hallucinations of dead rabbits and a burning woman.
(There was also grief over the destruction/loss of nature because of climate change, however that part felt a bit out of place, like it was just put in there, to be there. It didn't really do anything for the story.)
The horrorish parts were right up my alley. They were not really scary, but just really unsettling and also written so beautifully and poetic.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Gore, Blood, and Death of parent