Cassandra Khaw

I adored this book, from the initial (incredibly) violent opening, to the chaotic ending. I would not claim to understand what was going on for significant parts of the story, and I absolutely did not care. The shared past of the characters, the darkness they were either surviving or were drawn back to, these were sketched in minimalist detail, adding to an atmosphere of unreality.

The viewpoint characters are regularly unreliable, not least because at least one of them has had some kind of control put on their thoughts. It is coercive and, at times, downright terrifying, in how one character is forced to respond to another.

Viewpoints vary between humans and AI. Because it is a far future in space, sometimes those are closer to each other than to current humans, and are joyfully alien.

I'm not putting in content warnings, but recommend people who are cautious about violence and body horror to check what other people have said.… (más)

Violent, gory, sadistic. Almost incomprehensible prose. It took about a quarter of the book for me to start piecing together what the hell was going on.

$10 words every other paragraph, sometimes every other sentence, sometimes every other word:

“The tenebrosity doesn’t, however, linger. With every invocation of Verdigris’ name, it sallows, lightening to the juvenile colors of recent ecchymosis, that suppurating purple-yellow of ruined capillaries and beat-up flesh, an exhausted pigment which, fortunately, does not linger.”

There are three or four lines of dialog that advance the plot interspersed between dozens of paragraphs about each character’s internal state, world view, history, whatever. We get it, we get it already. Maya’s totally in thrall to Rita, even though Rita’s a monster and doesn’t give a shit about Maya. And yes, the writing’s luscious, even though pretentious, but honestly, let’s get this show on the road.

Grungy, obfuscating, irritating as hell. Finally, at the end, I loved it.… (más)

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this even though it was a bit odd. This story is an extension of the The Little Mermaid fairy tale and takes place after the traditional fairy tale we know. This was written in a very prose-like almost poetic way.

The mermaid married her price and he was a vicious man. They had two daughters together and the daughters took after their mother rather than their father and devoured the prince's kingdom. As her daughters ravage the kingdom, the mermaid decides it is time to journey on. She is joined by a strange plague doctor on her journey. Together they stumble upon a strange village of children. They will have to embrace what it means to be a monster to make it through.

This was a crazy story that is told in fairly dense and lyrical prose. I enjoyed how unexpected it was and how it showed the main two characters having to embrace their monsters to survive an odd situation. Aside from dark fairy tale vibes, this has a lot of horror elements to it as well, with very gory descriptions.

I liked the writing style and the imagery was very well done. If you don't have a broad vocabulary, this will definitely broaden it...I had to look up a couple of words I didn't know throughout. This whole book, both the writing style and the story were unexpected and intriguing to me. I love reading something a bit different that stretches my imagination and this fit the bill perfectly.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. No complaints. I do think because of the dense prose I would have enjoyed reading this more than listening to it. However, the audiobook production was well done.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this was a very beautiful and dense prose-like extension of The Little Mermaid. It crosses the line between dark fantasy and horror. I like how unexpected it was and really enjoyed the monstrous characters. Khaw has been a bit hit or miss for me, but I do love her creativity and I think this was one of her better stories.… (más)