Ellie
SO GOOD SO DARK SO WEIRD SO QUEER !! I loved this book and the three women at its center <3 (and not just because one is a duty-bound lady knight although that IS my fave of all time). My main gripe is that I felt a bit disappointed by the fuzziness of the worldbuilding towards the latter half because the setup was SO fire. I also agree with the tongue in cheek reviewer who pointed out that she could have gone gorier and gayer for great effect (à la Locked Tomb series my beloved, no one does toxic yuri like Tamsyn alas). But I had an absolute blast the way through and will absolutely be reading her other works.
DNFing at 50% which is far enough to call this one read. This book isn't terrible, but the fact that it has a 4.2 GoodReads rating is baffling to me.
It truly isn't bad, so I'm struggling to articulate why I felt so disappointed, and so dreaded picking it up at every opportunity. The flatness of the characters, for one thing. Abitha is a respectable, hardworking, slightly-witchy character thrust into a bad situation and making the best of it all with optimism, grit, pluck, and determination. This is incredibly boring. I had high hopes for a subversive, interesting, richly painted female character based on the cover and description, and I was deeply disappointed. The villain is a cardboard cutout personification of Greed itself and does things like ride our MC down on a horse laughing maniacally as he plots her demise. Boring. The horror at the start had promise but devolved into a lot of hapless shenanigans and vaguely suggestive hints and dreams. Also boring. There is an ambiguously demonic goatman - not a spoiler, he is quite titular - but I could tell the author was not going to take him in an appropriately messed-up direction. Boring. Next.
I also found the setting disappointing. 17th century Puritan New England is the kind of setting that deserves to stand as a character in its own right, but I never got a sense for it here other than the nearly universally evil bickering and gossiping of the villagers. Sutton feels paper thin. I learned very little about the times, the customs, the larger world. The land and its history is clearly intended to be a key component of the story and plot, yet we get very little sense of it. How it feels, how it looks, how it tastes. What the light is like. How the people bend beneath its weight. IMO all witchy feminist historical horror about this period stands in the long shadow of Robert Egger's masterpiece film The VVitch, in which the director and producers took extraordinary care to nail the exact nature of the period, down to drawing dialogue directly from historical texts and crafting clothing with era-appropriate fibers. That movie creates such a powerful sense of the time - of the loneliness, the suspicion, the struggle for survival, the distrust, the communal self-loathing. Brom might do well to watch it again (he's obviously seen it let's be real) and ask himself how that story does what it does, and what he might learn from such reverent attention to the source.
.... and yeah the fact that the author chose to go by his last name alone (which having just now discovered he is a man makes me wonder if that was a an intentional marketing choice, sus) like I'm supposed to recognize him à la Cher is not helping his cause
Absolutely gorgeous and gripping. I never would have read this were it not recommended in an interview by Karen Russell (an all time fave) and I was enchanted. Delicate, mysterious, luminous, bittersweet, and deceptively easy to read (her writing is the opposite of purple prose and I'm awed by anyone who can do that). Reminded me quite a bit of my favorite novel Piranesi: the characters' quiet, lonely, aching sorrows, its toeing the line between madness and magical realism, and its overall themes.
More mixed feelings!! I loved the in-depth Irish folklore and history, and she did a fantastic job of creating female protagonists who didn't feel shallow or tropey (Gormflaith in particular had a really intriguing Cersei Lannister sympathetic women's wrongs vibe). But I found the prose mid, like so incredibly plain and straightforward I don't think there was a single sentence in the book I found pleasing or beautiful, which is kind of table stakes for me at this point, especially with an epic fantasy that is trying to conjure a world of beauty and darkness and mystery. I also think with such a massive cast of characters it's essential that the supporting cast feels really rich, and many of the male players did not feel fully fleshed out or interesting to me. So overall a decent book but likely won't read the sequel.
Taking the rare step of DNFing at nearly 90% (which tbf for this book means there's still almost a hundred pages left but still) with wildly mixed feelings.
Johnson is an amazing writer and I loved The Orphan Master's Son, but this book is unnecessarily long and wildly digressive. Like sure you did your research, we get it, but here it starts to feel like a distraction from the core of the narrative. Also, sexual violence is an ongoing driver of plot, which I was not prepared for and deeply did not enjoy. He sure can write a sentence but this is just not the book for me.
I loved this book, love love loved. I went out and bought all his books of poetry before I was even finished. I liked the micro (the prose, good lord, the prose) more than the macro (plot, characters) but I thought it was all brilliant. And I really appreciated his (minor spoiler) willingness to be opaque / uncertain with an ending. This book will haunt me for a while, I'm sure.
Outstanding. I don't usually like modern fantasy or most fairy tale retellings, but even before I got to the Afterword and saw that she had thanked Angela Carter and BTVS I already knew this author was For Me. Gorgeous but never overly purple prose - I could tell every word was chosen with great care. The climax was brilliant. The house's interludes were brilliant. The Longshadow Man was genuinely terrifying. All the applause.
Also apparently she's friends with Kelly Link? Another genius? How do I get into their book club please??
Bought this because of the Christopher Buehlman blurb on the cover and was not disappointed. The characters left something to be desired but the structure was interesting and the digressive bits were fitting for a fairy tale / mythologically inspired story. The prose was excellent, most notably some of the best descriptions of magic I've ever read in a book - 10/10 guy can write spells being cast in super cool ways 🪄 Also, I love a good romance subplot, but it's nice to read a fantasy book that doesn't force a romance when there's no need, Willem p unromanceable and that's okay
Good but super, super dark. I recommend finding a list of TWs online before reading, I had to skim the last quarter because I felt so stressed out. The fact that the magical system resembled my job as a software engineer with their magical little spellograph keyboards did not help matters 😆 Very creative and great, tight plot & character development though!
