laudateluna's reviews
60 reviews

Gun Love by Jennifer Clement

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Jennifer Clements prose will find your heart and take deadly aim. and i am unsure if it's saying something complex about guns, violence, gender, ableism and class. Clements can weave together leitmotifs in brilliant ways to make a bleak world seem true, but i am not of the usa-working class to question how much truth her story covers. while there's alluring to the absolute inhumane condition poverty in the usa causes and how it's classist healthcare together with the unrelenting racist core of life can make a whole culture obsess over weapons to use for solution. ultimately it reads a bit superficial to me. 
gun love is amazing and rightfully loved! Pearls story captures childhood in poverty so well. while you know it's not good or okay, if there is no other way -- there is always love of community to relish in. even when the trailer park becomes a fucked up crime scene, Clements won't let you forget about the love.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna

challenging emotional funny reflective slow-paced

kathleen hanna's authobiography is just as good as grown feminists expect it to be. her prose is captivating in your gut. just screams it the fuck out. she takes grace to her past and embraces it in all it's difficulty. white guilt/savorism and all. 
most important of all, she takes her time trying to demythologize herself and her part in feminist history. and she gives credit where it's due. 

yet kathleen hanna remains an idea to my reality. she exists and lives! but i probably wont get to know her. it's what she had to say that remains with me. the struggle, honesty, believe in going out and doing the fucking work and having fun doing it. 

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt

challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

a literary horror masterwork. alison rumfitt took one look at the contemporary horror fiction landscape and said, i'm gonna go the moon with this shit. except she doesn't. rumfitt found a place by writing exceptional vile scenes made for dissecting it's layers of themes.  it is being overshadowed by what readers want to read into it. as correct as their readings might be, brainwyrms can walk between ambiguity and certainty. what carries it to such length is it's commitment to reality and portraying it honestly in the best way artists do.

Fake It by Lily Seabrooke

funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

fake it by lily seabrooke is exactly what it wants to be, optimistic romance indulgence. i have a hard time describing genre fiction in a way that does not sound reductive or negative. because i adore genre fiction, at least in genres i like, in others they scare me away. fake it makes a review hard because it's confidently genre fiction, and i won't get you to care about this book if you hadn't already considered it and here i am desperately organizing thoughts about it's themes without misrepresenting it.

i adored my time with it, because it gave me something utterly unique in sapphic romance. a trans story that is oozing in positivity. seabrooke might have said she does not consider this a trans story, but i disagree wholeheartedly. fake it does everything exactly like a good trans story often does. the risk taking, radical change, emotional toll and most importantly not feeling good enough. all this does not make it unique oh no; seabrooke said fuck it, i'll make it so optimistic, emotional intelligent and loving story i can, because trans love is exactly this magical!
that is what makes fake it such a lovely time for a lil tranny like me. i'm no expert on trans fiction, but i try as much of it as i can. i love the brutally honest prose trans authors have in often hard to read novels like stone butch blues or nevada. lily seabrooke took all the truth those carry and made it in a genre that was greatly missing it.

Views by Marc-Uwe Kling

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No

Marc-Uwe Klings Krimi 'Views' war wohl überraschend für viele, wie sonst wird es vermarktet als 'Ein ganz anderer Kling'. Dabei hatte ich nach Qualityland schon das Gefühl er würde sich langsam von seiner Komedie weiterbewegen und mehr sich auf seine Gesellschaftskritik fokusieren. Ein Krimi ist nach Spekulativen Science Fiction nur ein weiteres Genre dem sich Kling widmet. 

Wäre dieser Roman nicht von einem Autor dessen Sichtweise ich bereits ein klein wenig kenne würde ich ihn nie anrühren. Als Person am Rande der Gesellschaft, mit Hintergrund in 'Extremismus' bzw. 'Accelerationism' Forschung in Online Kulturen, ist die Vermarktung und Anspielung auf was wir 'Rage-Bait', also 'Wutköder' nennen, ist dies abstossend. Und bis zum letzten Drittel war ich mir nicht sicher ob ich es für gerechtfertigt halte. 

'Views' ist eine Zeitgenössische Einschätzung der Deutschen. Sie ist keineswegs übertrieben, da vieles davon schon stattgefunden hat. Dabei fokusiert Kling sich nicht auf die Graussamkeit oder der sexualisierten Gewalt, eine wahre Einzigartigkeit in diesem Genre. Dabei erinnert alles andere an Stieg Larsson. 

Die KI, welche die Videos generiert ist zwar etwas Wunschdenken von Tech-PR, aber generell zeigt es ein gutes Bild wie diese KI's eingesetzt werden und werden würden. Dabei sind wir längst an dem Punkt vorbei an dem sich etwas verändern liesse, denn mit den KI-Gesetzen und Chatcontrol im Nacken bleibt die Beschleunigung von Faschismus bestehen. 
Ich hoffe ein linker Blick wie es Kling auf Technologie hat, führt zum besseren Verständniss der Dynamiken die sich aufzeigen. Wie es der letzte Satz besagt, der Hass ist echt. Die Folgen von Faschismus sind es immer. 
Auch das Versagen der Behörden wird angesprochen, allerdings bleibt das Bild der guten einzelnen Polizist*in. Im Genre leider normal und für den Roman auch ein zu grossen Thema um es näher zu behandeln. Vielleicht ist Kling auch der Falsche Autor dafür. Was mit aber fehlt sind die Verbindungen zwischen den Rechten Netzwerken und der Polizei/BKA. 

Wird der Roman zu einem besseren Verständniss von den drohenden Gefahren von Social-Media führen? Nein, aber diejenigen unter uns die eh schon dieser Arbeit machen haben ein Unterhaltungsmedium auf das wir hinweissen können um Menschen diese Konzepte näher zu bringen.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, and Xenophobia

We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

living on the edge of society made me very aware about what happens there. my attention to public discourse and political developments with a focus on online spaces has been invaluable and deeply traumatizing.
this is a novella about the necessary work of moderation and evilness that is capitalism. with no support is the work being sold to the lowest bidder. dont underestimate the truth hiding in this sensationalist(compliment) story. bervoets understood the mechanics of accelerationism on social media and how easy it is for us to find comfort in fantasms. 

Old Enough by Haley Jakobson

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

this is a book about the day after. about all the pain they caused and the wounds that we try our best to sew up. it is about the effect of communal love. 
and god how desperate i am for these stories. the revolutionary aspect of it all. jakobson coming of age romance is kind and funny. it's for us survivors in the exact way we don't get to see all to often. old enough isn't about our abuse, it's not about victimhood. 

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

challenging dark informative medium-paced

5.0

Natasha Dow Schüll's incredible research into gambling maschines is one of the base text any sociologist and designer should read. It is a long damning account on the extreme exploitation of people for profit. It's dooming but necessarily so. Schüll decades of field research is timely even now, as we see more of the same tactics being used by tech and gig working companies.

We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns

emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

priya guns debut is smart, funny and fucking amazing. she writes smoothly about gig economy, exploitation of poc, complicity of the middle class, white guilt and the very weird shit white people say. guns prose is succint, like a knife to your throat. read it if you too want to go squat in abandoned buildings and are the only one who takes the damn trash outside.