Saturnalia

I think that I interpeted the social clubs in the book differently than a lot of others. I found them very plausible, especially when it's paired with the climate crisis(es) that plague this book, or rather the background of this book. I can see clubs, fraternities, like this being very popular in times of such uncertainty. I do find that the whole “secret” parts of the clubs are less so about “secrets” and more about what the people in these clubs get up to when left to their own devices.

Despite this above defense I still would have rather given the book a 2.5 because of the clubs . They are the least interesting part of this book. The coupling of magical realism and climate crisis made for an interesting atmosphere. I wanted to hear what these little guys had to say so bad. I wanted to see care for these human made creatures. I wanted to know more about the magic in this world so badly.

Her relationships were also complicated, interesting, and felt real to me in their messiness, more so the ones with the other women in the book. East, is painted very slowly and I could feel the betrayal of him to her character. Still I had gotten the idea that East had used her in the creation of the homunculus and was disappointed when this was not the case, I felt like he had already committed such evil against her it would have not surprised me if he had done so. He had been shown to have more obsession with magic and the club as well I felt it would have been fitting. A relationship, in the sense that they are two humans, with one abusing the other, taking advantage is hard to write on a technical level and I didnt see Feldman quite pull it off here.