kirisuna

God this one was so good. I literally could not put it down. Addictive, enthralling, mesmerizing, fantastic. This book has shown the power of humanity when it bands together towards a greater purpose. Just so damn good.

I liked the 4 part structure of this. Everything felt related but like solidified arcs. I appreciated that the expansive parts weren’t those I expected. There was a lot of heart and a lot of hurt in this one. And I’m both dreading and can’t wait for the next book to see how this all pans out.

2.75 stars

I was so excited about this one, and I can verify this was a super unique read. But a lot of it fell flat for me.

The writing utilizes very specific stylization such as large, frenetic paragraphs with no punctuation beyond commas to represent a sort of stream of consciousness of either emotion or observation; em-dash notation for alternating lines of dialogue; and non-traditional chapter breaks. I feel like it was done very intentionally, but for me didn’t come across entirely successfully.

Also, even tho I understand that we saw many different random people’s last moments and circumstances in order to drive home that the MC was death and was ever present, the watcher of passing for all, I felt like so many fragmented stories took away from the main arc. I think they were only sprinkled in to detract from the main “Old Woman” twist being Dalia. But after a while they just detracted from the overall work rather than adding to it.

I did appreciate that it began with the reaping of her brother, and ended with her own reaping at 90. That was an incredible twist that took me by surprise and honestly totally wrecked me. There were other moments where I teared up here and there but that one shattered me and I was bawling. But, honestly? I was also angry. Travis was willing to bend the rules for Dalia when she was ready to call it quits, but if he truly cared for her why wouldn’t he have intervened the night Layla got sick? He politely excused himself when he could have just said something. Suggested the bath or noted she seemed off and should get checked out. Anything. Because he knew. He knew it would crush her. It would make her kill herself. But he didn’t stop it. If he was going to stop it anyways, why couldn’t he have saved her? And then Dalia wouldn’t have had to live with that mistake and wanted to end her life in the first place.

Also there were a few non-sequiturs that honestly just felt out of place. A scene earlier on where he writes about a deer protecting her fawn and then running off when he was killed anyways. The end chapters about the nymphs. I did not understand those, and they may just have gone over my head. But I felt like they weren’t well integrated.

Overall, this was a very sad work that made you think. If you like those types of things, you may like this. For me, it was a miss.

3.75 stars

The ending on this one made it for me. I love how Carl is taking action against his circumstance, how he’s using the plight of earlier crawlers to do what they couldn’t. And Beatrice being alive? Ferdinand too?? Gave me chills. This next one is going to be so good. I really enjoy this series. It’s fats paced and action packed but it’s easy. It’s so easy to enjoy. It’s a great palate cleanser form heavier books. And having already had so much world building from the earlier books makes it easy to drop into. I will be sad when I finish this series.

This was a puzzling read. The writing style was great, the narrative was definitely interesting. I don’t feel like there really was a concrete ending. I’m not totally sure I got the point. But I didn’t hate it. Really unique writing style.

2.75 stars. This was super mid for me. I did enjoy the alternating chapter pov and that each section was one year later.

I liked the intertwining of the stories. I did not see the twists coming but I also wasn't very impacted by them. Probably wouldn't recommend.

This book entirely lived up to, and possibly surpassed, the hype. The writing was superb — Barker has an eerie ability to make even the most gruesome scenes almost beautiful in the description. I could see the entire narrative playing out behind my eyes like a movie, which at times was shocking and disgusting. I loved the completeness of each time period’s version of their world. I loved that the turtles were woven throughout, that we were given tastes of the reality behind the illusion as the characters themselves became more aware. I appreciated that the relationship built between the two MCs wasn’t romantic but almost like a soul bond. It was fascinating to me that both of their mothers attempted to murder them at least once. And with the final chapter’s explanation everything became so clear, with the breadcrumbs appropriately placed throughout to not make it feel like the rug was ripped from underneath you.

That being said, my only criticism is that final twist. If the turtle loved the children so much, why would she try to kill Sen to protect Lee? Even if she was losing them to each other, there was no clear reason she’d have that favoritism. And it made sense that she was able to save Sen when she was slain by her father — she was super close by the house. But assuming, based on the fact that she whispered to Lee’s father to go to the house behind the sword ferns implying that the actual location of the house in Japan mattered and her admission that with the tide going out her magic waned, how did she save Lee when he overdosed? I understand that he supposedly fell over the stairs, or was meant to originally. Which makes me think that maybe Matt wasn’t a person at all but was her stepping in to save him. But that wasn’t explicitly implied, so how could her reach extend so far to America when she can’t even stabilize the house when the tide goes out? This was the only weak link in this story, and the only thing knocking it down from a 5. But it is not a small thing, unfortunately.

Regardless, this story was a win. I will absolutely be reading the rest of her work and know I will be thinking about this novel for a long time.

2.25 stars overall

1.25⭐️ WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WORSHIP? BY AUGUST LAMM I have no idea what the point was here. And I couldn’t tell why she seemed afraid at the end.

3.5⭐️ THE TABLOID MAN BY YIGIT TURHAN This was actually well written and interesting, if a little rushed. We needed more time for CJ’s terror to build. But other wise, good.

1.25⭐️ TERROR AND REGRET BY AMBER LATER The beginning/end and middle stories felt totally disconnected. They didn’t inform each other at all. Whatever was being attempted here was not successful, and there was a continuity error midway that pulled me out.

2⭐️ MARLITA BY NICOLE SELLEW This was written in a frenetic way the felt distinctly stylized. It was definitely a creative choice and I think was successful for the character, I just didn’t really enjoy it.

1.25⭐️ OBEDIENCE BY RYAN D. PETERSEN This guy definitely fucked his dog. The writing was actually good but the slips the character experienced weren’t fleshed out enough for me to understand the weight of it.

4⭐️PRINCESS BY ERIN SATTERTHWAITE This was definitely the best out of the bunch. I thought it was a successful satire on essentially hipster-like people who think they’re too cool and interesting for normal people, but are just as vapid and boring themselves. I really enjoyed this one, but I wanted the ending to be that she was finally with her own people, but they didn’t like her.

4.75 stars. This was so gripping I could not out it down. I adore stories with intricate scientific bases, and this one delivers a seemingly plausible narrative that expanded how I think about time, space, and identity. I know I will be thinking about this book for a long time, and likely will read the rest of his work very soon.

As I was reading, I just kept thinking to myself that I am so glad I get to be the me who lives in the reality where all my choices paid off to a happy life.

This was an interesting read that I received from TBR, which is a now-defunct book subscription service that chooses books for you based on your Goodreads history.

It was very interesting to read from the perspective of a gay Indian woman for a lot of this book. It made me realize that being a multi-minority is truly all-consuming. It's something that that individual has to think of all the time, experience all the time. It colors all of their interactions and tragedies and successes and every part of their life in a way that those without those aspects don't have to think about. That was a really interesting and enlightening perspective that am not privy to often.

I thought the point of view shifts were good. They're frequent but they were successful. I thought it was interesting seeing the before, middle, and after of this traumatic experience that they went through. I thought it was very interesting to have all this play out during the time period of COVID. Overall I thought this was a good read.

I really enjoyed this one. I guessed some twist but not others. I think the writing was super solid and I appreciated the live story woven within the thrill. Will look for more of her works.

2.25 stars. This was a bit of a slog to read. I had a genuinely hard time getting through this book. I considered not finishing it more than once, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why at any point in time. Just found myself not wanting to open it.

The nonlinear structure was definitely a large part of the problem. This was not simply a story moving between childhood and adulthood. It jumped constantly between Gwen at five, eight, six, eighteen, four, thirty-one, seven, twenty, and so on, often without enough reason for the timeline to be that fragmented. Instead of creating suspense or deepening the story, it made everything feel scattered, overly elaborate, and unnecessarily difficult to follow. At some point in the middle, I felt like I had lost the point entirely.

The book also spends most of its time straddling an awkward line between literary fiction about childhood trauma and a fantasy novel about literal soul-sucking magic. For most of the book, the fantasy is so lightly woven through that when the supernatural explanations become explicit, they did not feel fully plausible or satisfying to me. There are some fascinating ideas here, especially the idea of creativity as something that can be stolen from a person, leaving them unable to write, draw, or create in the same way afterward — then being given to another to make the talentless talented. But we only get a tangible taste of that throughout the book and it’s not really explicitly clear until the last 50 pages or so where it feels kind of like a last-minute effort to tie up the story.

My biggest issue, though, was the damn Children.

First, Guin. Having a traumatic childhood is not her fault. Being emotionally damaged by her mother and losing her brother is not her fault. But Guin still repeatedly chooses to treat the people around her badly, and the book never really asks her to reckon with that.

She keeps Hank in her life despite knowing that she cannot or will not give him what he needs. She “loves” him, but she refuses to tell him that. She uses him as stability while offering him almost nothing emotionally. The irony is that she resents her mother for reducing her and her brother to material, but she treats Hank like a supporting character in her own trauma. She gives him as little as her mother gave her and never meaningfully acknowledges it.

Ennis is just as bad — he abandons her for 20 years to protect her and then just rolls in with some huge grand gesture and suggests to fuck everyone just to serve themselves. And Guin is more than happy to agree, when she had been agonizing over him doing that very thing for 100 pages!

Edith is the person who stole their childhood. Edith stole other people’s talent in order to write the books. Edith used her children as subject matter because she apparently could not even create a god damn plot of her own in spite of that stolen talent. Edith took the little bit of love they got from their father from them, exploited them, and prevented them from ever having normal lives all the while abusively neglecting them.

Some of the readers were obsessive, invasive, and inappropriate, but they were still just readers. They consumed a story Edith chose to publish. They did not steal Guinn and her brother’s childhood. Edith did by being a terrible mother and by using them directly as the main characters in her books.

So the decision to begin siphoning from readers to feed Mother because readers “took so much” from them seemed like totally convoluted and misplaced blame. The readers did not take their lives from them. Their mother sold those lives to the public. Redirecting that anger toward readers does not feel like reclaiming power. It feels like repeating Edith’s abuse using a more convenient target. And for gods sake, they literally already killed her — what more revenge can they take? To some significant degree the misery of their adult lives is on them — not Edith, and not the books. The final scenes in the publishers office seem written with a sense of new found empowerment, like they have finally taken control of the lives they lost, and I could not tell whether they understood how ugly their choices actually were. That they were a huge part of the problem. That they had hurt each other so much over time. And no one was to blame but them for those choices.

Also, side note — Ennis stayed away from Guin for 20 years to protect her “light” from Mother, but then was willing to bring her directly to Mother? What happened to that danger? It had seemed like as kids it wasn’t an option for Guin to become one of Mother’s children because she had a light. What the hell changed? And could he not have shown up earlier then if there was no real danger? Or never left her at all?

There was a point near the end, when the truth started being revealed, where I briefly thought the book might pull everything together. The writing itself is often strong, even if it is wordy and occasionally difficult to follow. But after all of the buildup, the payoff was two deeply damaged people continuing to live badly, hurting others, and choosing to preserve a fake version of a mother who never existed for them. They do not really heal. They do not meaningfully take responsibility. They just find a way to turn exploitation into an inheritance. And pass it on to the readers so they can willfully live in a fantasy world. Honestly it’s just… sad.

I do not think I enjoyed this. I would rather have read The Ninth City.

This is an interesting concept that could be really well done, but feels like it’s a work still in its infancy.

There are 3 major themes going on — an individual’s psychological rupture; burnout at a societal level causing a fundamental shift to an energy based economy; and a sort of commentary on sociopolitical values being productivity and profit over human existence. Because of these varied ideas being shoved into a 68 page novella written in lyrical prose (and thus with a very small word count), this novella feels disjointed and fractured where it could be a fascinating instance of world-building if given the focus it deserves.

That being said, the theme of perpetual burnout on a societal level stuck with me. The author writes about the idea of a society built on input and output of energy rather than money or commodities, and in doing so shares some interesting points about how one cannot fill or give to others if they are so depressed they have nothing to give. It also speaks to the idea that once someone is so depleted, so empty, you cannot even fill yourself, and thus are in this state of almost helplessness. That fundamentally, once someone is there, it requires the output of others to fill you back up enough that you can contribute again — that you have something to give.

Some of this is written and presented in a convoluted way, and I think gets overshadowed by the hyper-emotionality of the psychological breakdown the MC is having, and the heavy-handed, pseudo-meta commentary on “the world” and its political movements and values.

But the core concept really hits home.

I have personally been struggling lately with having given all I have, and being so far in a deficit I couldn’t crawl out of the resulting hole. It took falling so far to realize that I was sacrificing everything I needed in order to meet the needs of those around me first and foremost — I was running myself ragged overworking to get a project done, finishing work at 6, 7, 8 pm and then immediately having to code switch to wife, cat mom, friend. There was no time for me because I put every possible need before myself. For me, this is something I’ve been taught by my upbringing, but as a woman in this world I can’t say it hasn’t been reinforced by society. And only recently have I forced myself to realize that when I am on empty I have nothing to give; that I am not helping anyone else by harming myself. And so I’ve been working for a month to prioritize my needs intentionally, even over the needs around me, until I can build a reserve from which to be able to give to others again without over depleting myself.

All that being said, I get this theme in this novella. I understand living in a world that you have given so much to — that has taken so much from you — that you feel like you can’t even exist in your reality anymore.

The author writes of a woman so depleted, “She looked like someone who had given everything she had — and was still expected to give more.”

The author later describes the concept of the energy system and the self: “Think of the collective as a stream of aligned energy. Everyone here emits a unique harmonic. When you’re in sync, you generate enough output to interact. To receive. To connect. But if your energy fractures—through depletion, trauma, overload—you can fall out of phase… Most people realign gradually… They rest. They receive input. Eventually, they re-synchronize. But some… go through what we call a total frequency drop. Their system detaches completely. The output drops to zero. And when that happens… The world shifts.”

These are things I have experienced — that I am experiencing. And I think the author captures them beautifully in this world’s energy-based economy. Where the underlying principle is that we cannot survive in isolation. That sometimes, through no fault of our own, things happen that deplete us to nothing, and it requires others to refuel us, to support us, until we can re-synchronize and become something capable of output.

So overall, this book gets a 2.5. The ideas are a bit cluttered, and I think would be strengthened by focusing in on one area (ideally, focusing in on building this world and these concepts around burnout in a more consistent and well-paced way — then, building from that foundation to the larger ideas, and to give weight to the emotional state of the MC). I think that could be strengthened by intentional use of lyrical vs normal prose — ie the more frenetic the MC feels, the more out of sync with reality, the more lyrical the prose becomes. The more harmonic, the more the prose should flow into long form. And also, I think this is too complex a story to live in a novella. I know the author specifically notes that this is a “part one” novella that is really a sneak peak of a larger work, but I think that if you are going to create a short self-constrained version of this story, it needs to accomplish that within the limitations of the form. It shouldn’t be a shortened chapters 1-8. It should be a complete taste of that world. A completed arc in short form. Something that makes the reader want more of that world, but that is a finished work in its own right. This did not accomplish that.

But the ideas themselves, the concepts and the world this could be, I think really have something there. They spoke to me at a very specific time in my life. And I would’ve very interested to live in that world during a longer story and see what the experience makes me feel.

I read this as my “Z” for my 2026 Books A-to-Z challenge, but would read a longer work if one came out.