Marth Muffins
Contains spoilers
These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
Whilst I had a lot of fun with this one, especially with the Esek and Chono focused sections, sadly the book never fully clicked into place for me to truly love it. The main stars here are the aforementioned Esek and Chono. They're easily the most nuanced and multi-faceted characters present here and their relationship, with the added third wheel complication of Six, is what kept my attention throughout. Esek is who shines here, her manipulations, her violence, and her whole attitude to life stand in such stark contrast to everyone else in this book. Where pretty much everyone else here is rather solemn and/or withdrawn into themselves Esek really is the Burning One, blazing through the story with so much glee and murderousness and plots on plots. Chono meanwhile does feel somewhat undercooked, we focus a lot more on her relationships to other people than necessarily who Chono is which, whilst integral to her character and how she behaves, leaves her with less foundation to build from than Esek. I do worry that Six replacing Esek will lead to the sequels losing me as the series will no longer have 90% of the reasons I enjoyed this novel but we'll see whenever I get around to reading the rest of these whether that's the case.
The other half or so of this book, centred on Jun, Liis, and Masar, loses me though. I just don't really care about these characters? I did find Jun and Liis as a couple very solid and compelling, plus at one point Liis straps Jun which waow @-@ I don't care if some readers find it out of place Jacobs wanted to write some ladies fucking and I will always support a lesbian with this goal o7. Ahem anyways besides their actual relationship I just did not find their characters compelling on an individual level, nor did I find their plotline or struggles nearly as compelling as the events unfolding around Esek and Chono. This changed somewhat in the last third or so as the book's plotlines and characters began to converge but I was still reading Jun's chapters patiently waiting to return to Chono's or Esek's chapters.
World-wise I was never super engaged either. It's there, there's some interesting ideas peppered throughout but they're never explored in enough detail for me to really become interested or invested. I know there's a Kindom and Ruling Families and a religious system but I really don't know much about them beyond the dealings of the Nightfoot family. Despite two of our main characters being Clerics of the central religion, one of whom who actually cares deeply about said religion, I don't really know anything about that religion besides the names of the gods and where they're worshipped. Similarly the Kindom is just there as a vague "Interstellar Empire" with no real insight into how it operates and despite being the central confilct of the book the conflict between Jeve and the rest of the Kindom is quite underbaked. It's a fun sandbox to play around in but nothing stands out as particularly compelling element, but rather a series of sketched out ideas which haven't been filled out yet.
Overall this review has been a lot more negative than I intended. I would like to reiterate that I did enjoy this book, the sections with Esek were genuinely super good, but it did just leave me somewhat cold by the time I reached the final page. I do still think the book is worth checking out though, and I do plan to hop into book two at some point in the future!
Gwendy's Magic Feather
The sequel to Gwendy's Button Box is a curious book. Like Stephen King's foreword says it wasn't ever really meant to exist, Button Box was intended as a standalone and it works perfectly as that in how self-contained it is and how neatly it wraps itself up. But here we are with a second (and later third) book expanding Gwendy's story and as of right now I'm wondering "why?" Magic Feather feels like it's repeating a lot of the same beats as Button Box and whilst its shorter timescale, it takes place over about three-ish weeks compared to the first book's decade or so, does help focus it and more satisfyingly build Gwendy's relationships I'm still left with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu in terms of the themes and situations it's exploring. We get the same exploration of responsibility with the button box itself, more examinations of pre-destination and such, and I'm just left wondering why we're looping.
The actual plot doesn't help with this either. It's very perfunctory: there's a serial killer in Castle Rock who needs to be stopped but the book barely dips into that storyline and when it does it's very half-hearted, and leads a truly terrible and disappointing resolution. There is a subplot about the president who's not based on anyone at all antagonising North Korea which is interesting but it never comes to anything either, and the whole book feels far more open ended than the first in a way that's just unsatisfying and obviously setting up for a sequel.
What does shine here however are the character relationships. Gwendy's relationship with her parents is explored much more here and it's really good to see, especially the whole struggle dealing with her mother's cancer which becomes the book's primary focus. Her parents are kind of distant forces in the first novella and it's nice to see them as a warmer, more human presence here. But even the relationships that are less focused on are good: Gwendy's husband Ryan is absent for much of the book but his presence is always felt, Gwendy's relationship with new sheriff of The Rock Norris Ridgewick is solid, and there are a host of minor characters that stand out. Taken as a "slice of life in Castle Rock" story this is enjoyable, and it draws on The Rock's history in King's work without it ever being overwhelming or feeling like fan service. It also takes a lot of King's ideas about the town from his Castle Rock novella Elevation, released the year before this, but where Elevation feels sterile and I never really got a sense of the town Castle Rock feels lived in here.
But yes, whilst I definitely enjoyed a few aspects of this book it does leave me wondering why exactly it exists. Overall I had a good time, and I'm still excited to get to the third book when I do, but this was a definite step down from Gwendy's Button Box and I hope Gwendy's Final Task can bring the series back up to the first book's level, or exceed it.
Closure, Limited and Other Zombie Stories - 1.5/5
Aside from the solid title story you have a really weak, insubstantial story in 'Steve and Fred', an conceptually interesting but poorly executed "Vampires in the Zombie Apocalypse story" in 'The Extinction Parade', and what feels very much like a cut story from World War Z which was removed for good reason in 'Great Wall'. So yeah, 'Closure, Limited' was decent enough but it really doesn't save the collection from being painfully mediocre, although I am interested in checking out any other stories with the same premise as 'The Extinction Parade' but which are executed far better.
Spock Must Die!
I largely read this book because it's the first original adult Star Trek novel released telling a story that wasn't first broadcast as an episode of the show, which as a fan of Trek and tie-in media I was very interested in seeing the origins of original Trek books + it kinda acts as the origin of original tie-in media, as such a thing didn't really exist until Trek started putting out licensed books inspired by the fanfic culture that was built around the series in the 1970s. So from that perspective the book is a really interesting piece of literary history, but how is it as an actual reading experience?
Look, it's not great alright. It's aged incredibly poorly in a few ways, especially when it engages in some casual what I would call "liberal racism" whenever Uhura is on page or has this weird aside about why white women wanna fuck Spock which is kinda interesting in that it's lampshading the fandom but also just becomes weirdly racist at the end. The series also just makes weird, out-of-left field "scientific" claims like people only develop stutters because they were forced to go from being lefthanded to right which, huh? And whilst I do think the character voices are fairly well realised (well, the Scotty dialogue is very painful to read due to all the fake Scots gibberish but anyways) their internal logic just doesn't match up a lot of time and they make dumb decisions in service of not resolving the plot too quickly.
However I did enjoy some aspects of the book, specifically how weird it got in the back third which felt very in keeping with Star Trek as a whole and was a fun read. I also love how bold the ending is, it puts it way out of ever being actually worked into Trek continuity at all but it's very fun in how it just changes up the whole universe.
Anyways, a fun book to check out, and one I do not recommend.
Darth Maul - 3/5
Usually Cullen Bunn's tie-in/comics set in established universes don't work for me, his awful Pumpkinhead miniseries for Dynamite for one notable example, but this is pretty fun! It doesn't shake up the Star War universe at all, we get a few reveals about Darth Maul's training and Sith life pre-Phantom Menace and that's about it, but it focuses on what Bunn is good at and does that really well within the confines of the IP. There's some cool monsters, a few slightly creepy moments, and a good characterisation of a pre-Clone Wars Darth Maul to round it out.
This is all helped by Luke Ross' excellent artwork which really manages to capture the Star Wars galaxy pretty well and compliments Bunn's writing really well. It works especially well when there's a cool creature on page or during fight scenes but it manages a consistent quality in the rest of the comic as well.
Overall, a fun little miniseries!
Tied to the Waves - 4/5
First, please ignore that I was reading this from late July to early November, that's not a reflection on the quality of the book at all honest!
So, I really enjoyed this one: it's an angsty queer monsterfucker romance that manages to encapsulate a lot of both the inherent queerness of monsterfucking as an artform and also just manages to be queer af regardless. Our enby protag Ness is filled to the brim with delicious delicious angst and so is our merman MMC Echo as they struggle with family, friendships, who they are, and all that real fucky stuff. It's fun to see them drawn together even as they conflict and explore how they're different both in body and mind in a way that really works for me, although like in many of these books I think the relationship drama and sometimes the angst gets a little overbearing and repetitive at times I know that's what this kinda story needs so I can largely forgive it.
I also really like the side cast, June and Dusk, who really stand out here for me and I believe Dusk is the protag of book 2 which is exciting (I think a few hints may have been dropped towards that near the end of this one
Black Dog - 2/5
Some contractors came in to do some stuff in the flat so I ran away to the library and decided to read Neil Gaiman's novelette Black Dog there. I was interested in it as it's the second novelette following on from American Gods but didn't want to give Gaiman any money so it felt like the perfect opportunity to just sit down and blast through this 60ish page story. Like the first novelette sequel to American Gods, the Scotland set The Monarch of the Glen, this basically reads like one of the tangents which American Gods likes to go on but isolated into its own story.
Also like Monarch this wasn't great, and acts as a pretty standard Gaiman story: the main character Shadow remains boring and very much an expy of Gaiman himself, there's a really hot magic woman who inexplicably wants to have sex with the Gaiman stand-in (although minor twist on the formula is this time she was faking it to get revenge on the man who murdered her!), and there's a lot of mythology gags and references this time centred on the myth of Black Shuck. It just doesn't feel all that interesting enough a story to tell and whilst it still deals with some of the ramifications of the end of American Gods is mainly quite forgettable to be honest.
Apparently Gaiman is writing a 3rd story to finish Shadow's journey through the UK before he writes American Gods 2 but I doubt I'll be picking it up, both because of Gaiman and I just have less and less interest in Shadow as this goes on even if I did really like American Gods in spite him. Maybe I'll check out the end of his UK adventures if and when that's released but it's not something I'm anticipating much, and I'm definitely not interested in American Gods 2.
Star Wars: Dark Empire (Dark Empire #1) - 3/5
I mean sure, it's goofy with all its superweapons and silly the Emperor comes back (hope that doesn't happen again...) but I love the watercolour somewhat psychedelic Cam Kennedy artwork and the strong gothic vibes it gives the Star Wars universe, feels very Dracula and Nosferatu in a Galaxy Far Far Away, and I do genuinely like what it does with Luke, Leia, and Han, even if the comic format doesn't necessarily give enough internal elements or time to really develop that out much.
I assume it gets goofier in miniseries two and three but I'm enjoying the ride neverthelesss.
Split Scream: Volume 2 - 5/5
Finally got around to finishing this collection of 2 novelettes from Cynthia Gomez and M. Lopes da Silva. The collection structured in a way that's meant to evoke the feeling of a horror film double feature and it does the is pretty effectively, even if I read both stories 25+ days apart rather than as a pair. I loved both of these stories a lot and found them really effective, engaging, and interesting.
The Shivering World by Cynthia Gomez
A young woman, Nayeli, desperately wants to get out, to escape living in her uncle's garage with her unstable mum and withdrawn little brother to go to college, but a line of abusive men stand in her way. She feels trapped until she encounters the supernatural, and a bloody way out.
I loved the way this managed to tackle mythology in what feels like an very fresh way than what I've often seen in similar stories where racially marginalised and indigenous people use, or are used by, mythological/folklore stories to fight back. it's more in conversation with the story in play, what it means and how it can be interpreted in Nayeli's context compared to how men talk about that self-same tale. This is integrated well into Nayeli's college life and really enhanced that element of the story. Most of the novelette is centred on overcoming these abusive men though, from their landlord who can throw them out at any time cause they're undocumented, to her mother's abusive boyfriend, or the abusive neighbour next door etc. It's both gratifying, seeing what happens to these shitty dudes, but still emphasises the toll it inflicts on Nayeli. Just a real solid story, loved it.
What Ate the Angels by M. Lopes da Silva
Moving into their girlfriend Heather's flat, November starts to hear an intoxicating heart beat that echoes from the city itself. Meanwhile, Heather's insecurities (and vore fetish) are heightened by something lurking in the subterranean tunnels that lie forgotten in the city's guts.
This was my favourite of this two story collection, which shockingly centres queerness, kink, and fetish (as well as a lot of body horror) as its main focuses :3 Specifically, it largely focuses on a sort of othering effect in kink/fetish, of feeling gross and weird because you're into, well, vore or getting off to the sound of heartbeats or whatever, that you're feeding this disgusting monster inside you that shouldn't be fed. This of course links to queerness too, similar kinds of experiences are definitely felt by the most vanilla of queer people just due to how queerness is often conflated with fetish or is fetishised through queerphobia, but it's primarily centred on kink here. The story does this really well, and also manages to emphasise the strain, insecurity, and toxicity that can inject into a relationship and also how a partner can take kink way too far with you without your assent or consent (even if this is all heightened by the horror element). If I had any complaint it's that the prose can be a little too eager to just go “this person did this, then this person did this” but aside from that? Loved it.
***
Overall, a really worth reading and enjoyable collection. I love what Tenebrous Press (even if this collection was released pre-Tenebrous publishing the Split Scream series) is doing in the weird, queer horror space and I'm definitely gonna be checking out more editions of Split Scream and their other titles.
The Mimicking of Known Successes - 4.5/5
This is a really fun sci-fi Sherlock-style mystery novella featuring a yearning lesbian investigative duo looking into a mysterious disappearance on a sprawling set of platforms around Jupiter, all connected by a planet-spanning rail network. Both the world and mystery are very fun. It's written in a very well done pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes story, with the internal dialogue of our Watson, Pleiti, being very Watsonian indeed, whilst everyone around her speaks in a Victorian style in a world that broadly evokes upper class Victorian London but in SPACE. Think a Gaslamp Victoriana style story but set around a gas giant instead. As I said, the mystery is also fun and manages to tie into the way the world operates and the character's dynamics, backgrounds, and skills in a really neat and satisfying way.
That connection between Pleiti and Mossa, the Holmes here, is what really sells the story. Their dynamic is so fun, both evocative of Sherlock and Watson whilst integrating a Jupiter-sized amount of good old-fashioned lesbian yearning into the mix. They play off each other in such a fun way in their back-and-forth with both being able to show huge amounts of vulnerability, which feels especially rare for a Holmes type character in Mossa but works SO WELL (Mossa is so cute at times), and manages to pack so much into the novella length.
Overall, a really fun novella that I enjoyed a lot! Yearning, murder, mystery, even more yearning, and public transport, what's not to love! Excited to read the second novella and to get to the third novella when it releases on the 10th.
Eleanor Among the Saints
I liked this one a lot, especially the first and third sections! Section 1 centred on Eleanor Rykener, who lived in 14th century London and is often classified in modern historiography as a transgender woman (although, as the book points out, that's kind of a thorny way to look at things as transgender/transsexual etc are fundamentally 20th/21st century western ways of looking at gender and not how anyone would conceive of gender historically but that's a whole thing). Mann manages to weave a form of mythology and create a saintly story for Eleanor in a way that is incredibly engaging. I specifically like how it comments on creation and change, weaving together Eleanor's gender and sex with their work as both seamstress and sex worker to comment on these as interlinked processes of transformation and transfiguration.
In saintly mythologies and in the story of Jesus in Christian works, alongside other stories in Jewish and Islamic texts, transformation is an essential cornerstone which manifests through spiritual and physical changes. Jesus dies, is reborn, and is transfigured into his God image, St Perpetua becomes a man as they die, Adam and Eve are fundamentally changed when they eat the apple, etc. Saints often become saints through the change they cause through God on themselves and the world, so what is more saintly than changing ones sex? This is one of the central building blocks for Mann constructing this myth image of Eleanor Rykener as a patron saint of transgender women.
My favourite poem of the collection is “Eleanor and Rolandina In The City Of God”, which consists of a conversation between Eleanor and another known historical example of a 14th century transgender woman and sex worker, Rolandina (they lived in Venice and was executed for sodomy). They comment together on their lives and sex, God, money, and Rolandina's death and it's such a well written poem. Other standouts from section 1 include:
Eleanor's Boast
Eleanor Among the Saints
Eleanor As a Sixteen Year Old Murdered Trans Girl, What is Known
Blood Sport
Section 2 I was less a fan of. It's still good, the poems are well written, but it's a lot more broad and centred largely on more standard Christian poetry, specifically Praise poems. I do like the ones that centre on Mann's relationship with her dad or on the landscape around her but it wasn't entirely what I was looking for after the first section. Standout Poems include:
Whitsun
Earth to Earth
Feast of the Epiphany
Fylde Coast Apocalyptic
Section 3 returns to transness in a more personal way for Mann, and these are some of the best poems. I can relate to a lot of them, I remember being so fascinated with change in the Bible when we studied it in religious class at school and the feelings of dysphoria and what it can do are definitely 100% relatable. “Seven Proof Texts on a Transitioned Body” is probably my favourite poem here, being the most personal in terms of how Mann relates her transness to her faith and tackles her dysphoria and the change she has carried out to combat it, but the 3 part “A Charm to Change Sex” is so good too whilst #TDOR (Trans Day of Remembrance) made me cry, the list of names is oh so long. Standout poems:
A Charm to Change Sex (1)
Seven Proof Texts on a Transitioned Body
A Charm to Change Sex (2)
#TDOR
A Charm to Change Sex (3)
Envoi
Overall, a really good collection of poetry. I don't think it'll work for a lot of people, it's definitely not gonna work for people who dislike or are ambivalent to poetry, and the Christian aspect will of course put people off, but I really enjoyed slowly working through a few poems a day with this and I'll probably reread a few over and over (also, they're pretty fun to read out for voice training, so affirming Rachel Mann, very cool!)
The Lives of Dax -3/5
Been distracted last week or so irl so decided to finally get back to and finish the Lives of Dax anthology when I had some time to read. This is an anthology with a story that focuses on all of Dax's hosts and overall it's mixed like all multi-author anthologies but still solid tie-in fiction.
The stories which really stand out to me are the ones focusing on Lela (Trill's first contact with alien life, the Vulcans), Audrid's (ties the Trill symbiotes to the weird worms in the TNG episode Conspiracy which actually really works for me as it keeps it vague and very horror tinged), Joran's (his serial killing and the investigator tracking him down), and Jadzia's (centred on Jadzia's relationship with her very infrequently mentioned sister and the return of Verad, the guy who stole Dax that one time). Tobin's story is also a pretty fun action set piece if not that interesting besides.
Sadly, Ezri and Curzon's stories aren't that good. Ezri's is just somewhat dull, both in the framing story with her and Vic post-DS9 S7 and in the main bulk of the story which explains exactly how she was joined with Dax. Curzon's story however manages to be grossly misogynistic, vaguely racist, and completely fails to capture Sisko's voice in any way (it's written from Sisko's PoV).
The last remaining stories, from Emony and Torias' PoVs, aren't awful but also not that engaging either, with Emony's being written from a very horny Dr McCoy's PoV which felt pretty gross and Torias' just about how he got blown up in that shuttle accident so Jadzia could snog their wife later.
Overall, decent enough and really excels when it focuses directly on the Trill and on the implications and ideas that they put forward as a species.
Sidenote: Jadzia gets a little uncomfortable when her sister teases her that getting joined with Dax will be sorta like a sex change which I thought was kinda funny.
Binti: Home (Binti #2) - 3.5/5
I read the first Binti novella last year alongside the short story Sacred Fire which follows it in the collected edition and rounds out a lot of that story (reviewed here).
I honestly think I liked this novella more than the first, even if it feels fairly disconnected from the first story outside of it's consequences and two of the character's dynamics. But it manages to centre more on what was really good in the first novella, namely the focus on culture and being excised from a culture, morseo than the first novella whilst also making the main character Binti a lot more interesting to follow. I do wish we got more of the big space uni both because it's a really cool setting and also there's a muscly trans lady there who does backflips everywhere for some reason which is a little silly but kind of endearing and she's barely in this one compared to Sacred Fire which is sad. I do get the impression that this whole story would've worked better as a cohesive novel instead of as the fix-up of 3 novellas + a short story that it is but I'll get more on that when I read the third and final novella, Binti: Night Masquerade, next.
The Sun Down Motel - 2/5
It's... fine? Despite how it's advertised this isn't really a ghost story, the ghosts end up playing a pretty minimal role outside of the beginning and the end, and it's more about one character, Viv, in the 1982 investigating a serial killer whilst running parallel there's a 2017 storyline featuring the niece of the 80s character, Carly, investigating the disappearance of Viv in 1982. The thing is, we know who the killer is for most of the book so there's no real mystery there, and we spend big chunks of the 2017 section relearning things we just found out in the 80s section AGAIN which leaves the general impression that the book would've been stronger focusing down on just one timeframe instead of splitting it's attention over 1982 and 2017 (preferably the 80s section because it better realised and had a better side cast).
This would also allow the book to focus more on it's main thematic core, men's violence against women. Instead, this theme is only very lightly explored whilst being generally poorly realised as commentary, with most of it very painfully coming from a solidly middle class white lady's PoV. There are one or two decent scenes, specifically one of a creep at the start of the 80s section, but it largely doesn't really step beyond “sometimes individual men are real shitty y'know?” or occasionally boldly going “institutions created by men sometimes don't believe women about things sometimes maybe” which leaves the book feeling pretty hollow. Also, there's some weird comments about lesbians in both sections for some reason and two of the “scary men” in horror media that get brought up are specifically either read as or intentionally coded (whatever the piece of media actually says) as trans women which was not the best (specifically Norman Bates which is fair for a motel setting but also Buffalo Bill). I admit I am sensitive to references like that though.
Overall, a fairly meh read for me.
The Vampire Prince (Saga of Darren Shan #6) - 3/5
These vampires really are big dumbs huh? Thank goodness they've got boy genius Darren Shan to save them. I like the big resolution, and reading these last 3 Shan books together as the “Vampire Rites” trilogy was a lot of fun, big childhood flashbacks and such. Wolves are still cool.
Books of Blood, Volume Three - 2.5/5
I understand that Barker was an 80s horror writer but it's really starting to grate on me in this reread how he talks about and describes women. There's one specific “type” of woman he does decently, specifically the repressed middle aged woman who is in some way “unleashed” at some point in the story, but otherwise he has a very gross and icky way of writing about women and from women's PoV. Whereas other male horror writers manage to make the misogyny so extreme or over-the-top that it can cross that line into ridiculous semi-comedy, Barker manages to reduce women to their organs, their “holes”, their fat or lack of it without much else to comment on. Barker is writing a lot of body horror sure, but with men he builds more onto the body rather than leaving them as twisted versions of some strange interpretation of mystic Second Wave Feminism's interest in the body which a lot of spec fic writers seemed to write from in the 80s and 90s.
Men have motivations, themes, arcs, character. Women have body fat, tits, and the ability to shit out kids (or feel sad they can't).
Idk, this is hardly a unique issue to Barker or this era of writing at all (or now), and even amongst female authors this kind of writing was not uncommon, it's just something that really pissed me off rereading these stories again. I think because it doesn't feel cartoonishly mean spirited it comes across even worse, but maybe I was just in the wrong headspace to push past it.
Cradlegrave - 3.5/5
One of the most effective one-off stories in 2000AD, with a really great atmosphere that really lets you feel that humid British summer time and hothouse horror of all the body horror grossness that slowly creeps into the Cradlegrave Estate. I do think Smith maybe overdoes the accents a little to where it feels like parody, but I also know folk who speak like this so what do I know, and the ending is a little rushed and a letdown. Still, it really is one of the best one-off stories in 2000AD and really sets the tone for the golden age the magazine kind of reentered in the 2000s and is still sort of in to this day.
Doctor Who: The Sontaran Games - 2/5
Sontarans do a killer Olmypics. It's a fun concept and its a, like the rest of these Quick Reads, surprisingly brutal read but it never really amounted to all that much. I do like the idea of the Sontarans using sports to test human capability and it all feels very Sontaran but it doesn't really go anywhere that interesting, although of all the Doctor's recurring monsters the Sontarans are one of my least favourites so that definitely doesn't help. I also felt the characterisation of 10 felt weird, even if it still felt more 10 than any other Doctor, and I really did feel the lack of a companion (sadly no Quick Reads featuring Donna). Overall? Fine. Only got one more Quick Read with 10 before we get to some stories with 11.
Set My Heart on Fire - 3.5/5
Whilst I do prefer Izumi Suzuki's sci-fi short stories in Terminal Boredom and Hit Parade of Tears I did still like this a fair bit, being a light fictionalisation of Suzuki's life from her early 20s to a few years before her suicide in 1986 when she was 36 (with a small probable sci-fi element in the final chapter/epilogue). I don't actually know how this was originally released: it feels like a number of vignettes written over years and then stitched together as “A Novel” not long before Suzuki's death to make a sort of fictionalised autobiography of her life (especially as one chapter specifically references a previous one as published years earlier in a magazine) but I don't know for sure.
I do get the complaint that it largely treads water: Izumi listens to music, talks with someone, gets into a shitty relationship with a man, sex scene, talks with someone, listens to music, repeat, multiple times throughout the book but that repetitiveness worked for me (maybe because I read it over a longer period of time than a lot of folk) in reinforcing what was happening. The focus on the ennui and apathy Izumi is experiencing, the intense self-loathing, the constant repetition of Izumi thinking she's a bad woman morally, sexually, and emotionally, and the awfulness of all the men she meets, feels raw whilst remaining detached as if Suzuki is writing about someone else. Whilst it's something so many people write about, I do think the book captures it in a unique way and with a unique voice.
Gender comes up a lot here, like in Suzuki's sci-fi, and like many 1960s-80s works (and even into the 90s-now) there's both a very prescriptive and binary view of gender whilst simultaneously the characters obviously feel very uncomfortable existing inside that binary. Izumi feels out of place, but she can't entirely imagine a world outside of the rigid confines of WOMAN and MAN and instead just glimpses at vague possibilities beyond it, articulating her discomfort in ways that push a little at those walls without being able to entirely chip through them to see the possibility of something else.
I rated it lower that Suzuki's other work because I do miss the campiness and silliness that comes with her sci-fi stories (plus I just generally have a better time with spec-fic) and the repetitiveness is a genuine issue reading this quickly, but I still really enjoyed this and am definitely gonna look out for whatever work of Suzuki's gets translated next!
Welcome to Dorley Hall - 4/5
Look, gender is real fucky. It's gets all weird and tangled up in expression, perception, expectation, and prescription that I'm honestly shocked anyone anywhere can even claim they have such a handle on their own that they can enforce gender “norms” on themselves and others. But isn't that, in the end, what Dorley Hall kind of does? The Sisters who come out of Dorley after their unwilling transitions are prescribed a very rigid view of femininity by Aunt Bea, forced to act and behave and dress in specific ways that fit what Bea believes validates their change from shitty little cis men into reformed women who can be let back into society. Yes, most of the Sisters are, in the end, happy with their transition, or at least content enough with the changes that when they finally escape the walls of Dorley they don't “become men” again, instead embracing a myriad of gender outside of that. But how much of that is because of the trauma of Dorley? Of being locked in a basement for a year, of another year forced into a new box of “correct feminine behaviour” in the Hall itself, and a third year perfecting that behaviour of learning to enforce it on yourself? How would being subjected to forced feminisation perfected over decades remove the concept of masculinity in your brains as anything approaching acceptable?
I should say, I have an extremely negative view of, and very unhealthy relationship with, masculinity, and if I learned of somewhere like Dorley and was given the choice Stef was I would skip into that basement and lock myself in for as long as it took to change me, whatever the other consequences. But is Dorley any less restrictive in its enforcement of gender? Or is it just a literalised encapsulation of how gender is enforced in reality; that to be the woman the programme deems acceptable you must conform to this very narrow and prescribed view of what “woman” is to finally graduate? Most of the Sisters aren't, or weren't, trans women when they woke up in that basement but they are made into women nevertheless, women the programme deems acceptable to allow out into the world, even if they move away from that label once they are free.
I don't know, I don't have much else to say about how gender is discussed without getting into spoilers and gender theory so I'll leave it at that, but I do think that there is some interesting shit here which is very y'know, Internet Trans/Tumblr/A03 (of course) coded, but in a way that examines and deconstructs and reconstructs those tropes which have existed in fandom and internet queer spaces for a good while now in honestly engaging ways for someone who's been in out of those spaces on and off over the years.
And I also like the fun Sapphic dates and cute shit and yeah, maybe that is tonally discordant with the forcefem and the trauma talks and all of that but I like the contrast, I like the humour of the coffee mugs with their boomer humour forcefem jokes and the fun and ironic little bits and lines and whatever. I like the dates and the Sapphic Yuri stuff, and it adds so much for me that the dark content is contrasted with the happiness which yes, is still filled with fear and confusion, but in different ways.
Sure, this might fuck the pace up, but it's a webnovel and I don't think any author on A03 has ever heard of the concept of pacing, plus the “book” does just kinda end because it wasn't written to be divided into two like it is for print publication (I believe what makes up book 3 was released later and 4 is currently being released chapter by chapter rn) but eh. Shit will happen for as long as it does and its honestly kind of freeing that so much can just be fun relationship “fluff” and hangout vibes without needing to drive shit forward necessarily. Idk, it's been a while since I really read anything on A03 or a webnovel generally but it's nice to come back after so much in my life has changed lol. I think the last webnovel actually I read was the first couple chapters of this back when it first released in 2022 and I was entering my peak regression/repression phase around my gender, which in retrospect is wild and kinda fun despite how shitty that time was for me (“Give a trans woman an inch and she'll steal 10 years from herself” etc).
Anyway, ramble over. I liked this a lot basically.
Read here on A03, idk if the printed version has any changes.
Brainwyrms - 5/5
Brainwyrms probably isn't something I can really recommend but it hit on a lot of things for me that are going around my head. It's intense, both in the body horror and in the kinks/fetishes throughout, plus most of the book is focused on either externalised or internalised forms of transphobia, queerphobia, transmisogyny etc, both from the main characters and the rest of the cast. It's not something I would probably feel comfortable discussing much further in detail here, I already wrote a review that's perchance too personal on a smaller platform, but it definitely hit a lot of beats I found interesting and relevant to me. Plus it was really gross, so big plus for that.