A review by choirqueer
The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez

4.0

This was an excellent Halloween read. Brilliantly constructed and interwoven array of stories drawing upon the author’s characteristic blend of humor and dead-seriousness, poking at the boundaries of mildly grotesque to absolute what-the-actual-fuckery. As with any collection of short stories, I liked some better than others, but I especially liked how the stories in this book tied together in ways that became more obvious toward the end of the book. I also appreciated how clearly the author’s unique voice came through -- I read another book of his recently, which was very different in tone and was very much a children’s book whereas this one definitely is not, but I would have recognized that they’d been written by the same author even if I hadn’t known that they were.

My biggest complaint about this book was that several stories included a disabled character and it always felt like that character had been given a disability just to make a point, often in ways that seemed pretty ignorant about the realities of living with that disability. I enjoyed the book a lot nonetheless, but could definitely have done without that.

cw: bestiality (portrayed as consensual), suicide, murder, political execution, a few stories where disability is used as an awkward plot device, 2 stories where an animal whose personality we’ve gotten to know is killed and eaten. There was definitely at least 1 story where I skipped a page or two to avoid triggering content; I don’t remember what that content was.