peripetyy's reviews
4 reviews

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia

adventurous emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

The pacing toward the end was a little slapdash and sometimes lagged in the middle. I didn’t quite understand the villain’s motive by the end— or maybe it left me wanting more. I think it’s a wonderfully written mystery and the amateur detective energy wasn’t full of coincidences. The protagonist really put in the work to figure out what was going on and suffered the consequences. 

Captive in the Underworld by Lianyu Tan

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Definitely not for everybody. This book has a lot to say about abusive parent/child relationships, the impact and isolation of trauma, and very hot lesbian sex. 

I wish there had been a little bit more world building and plot, but overall a very solid read. 

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

challenging dark 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? It's complicated

5.0

The strongest quality of this book is the writing, characterization and world building. We follow the main character through his days in a world where cannibalism is legalized and humans are genetically modified for commercial use. Every person in this story interacts with the cognitive dissonance of this world differently. Some revel in it. Others are in denial. Many have used the Transition to rise to power. That’s what kept me reading.  I was searching for anyone with a shred of compassion for the domesticated humans. By the end, I had my answer. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Cannibalism, and Murder

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexual violence, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This is a very charming story that appealed to me because of the tension government and workers and their clients. What I got was something a little different, a little problematic, but not unpleasant. It has to be said that the author took from the historical use of Indigenous Residential Schools across the western world. The setting is somewhere between an orphanage, a group home and a residential school, but the way these allegorical racial tensions resolve is really not good. 

The allegory falls apart for a lot of reasons. Magical people are treated as separate species all together which doesn’t sit well for me as a parallel to race, sexuality or disability because minorities are people despite our differences. Maybe that’s the point the author was trying to make— people treat minorities as subhuman, but they aren’t and being a minority can certainly feel like being a different creature all together. These differences were reconciled with the MC, but this brings me to my main point of contention.

The villagers. There were a complete caricature of real life bigots. A flimsy straw man. This story is intentionally light-hearted, so I don’t know why the author felt like it was appropriate to have an entire lynch mob form outside the port and have the children face down microaggressions and put violent trauma in the past of many characters. Why? This was such a bad choice and clashed outstandingly with the fluffy cute shit that filled the rest of the story. 

I’m not exaggerating. Maybe this has to do with our current climate, but it’s extremely bad taste to have characters deal with such profoundly violent and traumatic issues in order to build tension. I wish the difference between magical creatures had been lightened up to cultural difference more than outright racism and ableism. This isn’t the author to write this story and this isn’t the story to tackle these subjects. The resolution was just “and everyone clapped” moment and “do bureaucracy the RIGHT way”. Just not a good plot.

Tl;dr This was a really cute romance with a quirky found family and older adult men finding love despite the MC’s duty to be objective and uninvolved. The plot and setting was very disappointing to me as a disabled black person, but I can’t speak too extensively on the allegory on indigenous struggles.