neixin's reviews
189 reviews

i rarely say that i wish a book had been longer (usually it’s the opposite) but this really could’ve used another 50-ish pages to further flesh out the characters and their relationships. like, i understood why everyone felt and acted the way they did, i just didn’t really feel it. the writing was lovely though..

this was such a delight i’m even willing to overlook the britishness of it.

i jest i jest (or do i…) but this really was a fun time; it’s very much a historical fantasy romance after my own heart, the characters are easily lovable, the plot is solid, and freya marske’s prose is so charming. i’m also excited to pick up the rest of the series which is a feat in and of itself tbh.

i’ll come back to it at some point; i can tell it’s really good, i’m just currently not in the right headspace to fully get into it, so it doesn’t seem fair to push through the rest of it right now.

like most short story collections, this was a mixed bag for me, but ursula k. le guin’s writing is beautiful and i vibe with a lot of her themes, so i’m glad i read it, and i’m definitely looking forward to reading more of her work.

favorite stories: unlocking the air / the diary of the rose / direction of the road / gwilan’s harp / may’s lion / sleepwalkers. i also really enjoyed “brothers and sisters” and “a week in the country”—the orsinian tales manage to capture a very specific eastern/central european atmosphere that just hits in a way i can’t quite articulate—but i don’t know if i’d call them favorites since they did feel a bit meandering as i was reading them. they do stand out (in a good way) when i think about the collection as a whole though.

not gonna lie, i’m surprised by how much i liked this, considering dystopian scifi really isn’t my thing, like, At All. but an zhe is such a lovely protagonist <3 he’s very kind and clearly cares about people, while also being disconnected from their plight and just wanting to get his spore and leave thank u very much, and that contrast is balanced really well. he's just so dear to me, and he really makes the bleakness bearable.

i’m also surprised by how much i’m liking the dynamic between an zhe and lu feng so far, considering Head Of Fucked-Up Military Organization is an incredibly hard sell for a love interest, personally.

i did have a few issues though. firstly, there was too much infodumping for my tastes (i love minimal explicit focus on worldbuilding, and am also not a science girlie so all the talk about mutations and technology and whatnot is just so deeply uninteresting to me). that said, i do think it fits an zhe’s pov; he doesn’t want to question the deeply unsettling aspects of the human settlement because he needs to blend in and not get caught, and finding out what the humans know about xenogenics and how their technology works is important to him. it’s just kind of exhausting to read in the moment. also, there were some translation errors and typos that should’ve been caught in editing. they weren’t detrimental to my enjoyment but they bear mentioning. and lastly—not a flaw, really, just my own issues and problems impacting my reading experience—the amount of creepy bugs in this? i demand reparations….

what a gut-punch collection!

i rarely review each individual story in a collection but this one’s short and i have distinct enough thoughts about most of the stories so let’s gooo

1998 : it felt like a literary version of a nightmare room story (the bizarre short-lived children’s horror series by r.l. stine), which is to say it was one of my favorites in the collection.

gretel : not gonna lie, “all men in the world have died” is a premise that generally makes me uneasy as soon as i hear it because more often than not it’s way too bioessentialist, but this story pleasantly surprised me, both with the aspects of the premise it focused on, and with featuring a trans protagonist.

blindness : one of the only stories i really hated…yeah yeah the blindness is a metaphor for repression and blah blah blah i get it. however, Disability As Metaphor makes me viscerally sick to my stomach, and the literal magical healing only made it worse. honestly, i was close to giving the whole collection 1 star just because of how vehemently i hated this story.

fellow’s gully : i loved the first half so much; it felt very shirley jackson-esque in the sense that you can feel that something is deeply wrong even if you’re not quite sure what or why. the reveal didn’t quite stick the landing for me but i have to respect the ingenuity.

1740 : solid piece of climate fiction. the only thing that brought this one down for me was the ending. like, i got the protagonist’s motivations, i just fail to see how those motivations led to the specific choices that get made.

mama : the only other story i actively disliked. it was gross and rancid and i failed to see the point of it. at least it was mercifully short.

the abduction : oh, what a breath of fresh air after the previous story! it’s about the horrors that capitalism inflicts upon bodies and art and pleasure, and i ate it up!!

Δάφνη, or daphne : this sure was…a story, i guess. it could just be that the oversaturation of greek myth retellings in publishing has turned me incredibly jaded but i failed to grasp what the point of playing with these particular mythological figures in this way was supposed to even be.

mcsb : i may be stupid

dorica kastra : thematically pretty interesting but it just didn’t grip me.

the sorrows of young lotte : werther haters of the world UNITE! <3 (in other words, this was another win, and also sweet, sweet vindication for high school me who kept angrily muttering “leave lotte alone u miserable little creep” while reading the sorrows of young werther)

one of the most beautiful, brilliant, and unique books i’ve ever had the pleasure of reading

temporary dnf purely bc the mass market paperback is tormenting my eyes and wrists </3 i’m looking forward to picking it up in a different format as soon as i get the chance though, it’s very fun so far