...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

Here's finally the almost monthly writeup with fresh short reviews! My health has been bad these last few weeks and that contributes to my reading slump, so if you're a fan of the shorts column, I wouldn't hold my breath. Plus, I am starting to read seemingly random books, like high fantasy stuff, just so I can finish my challenges until the end of the year. It's only a month away, it's pervers how fast time goes by. Despite all, please enjoy!

Apart in the Dark: Novellas by Ania Ahlborn

Apart in the Dark is a work which combines Ania Ahlborn's two novellas, The Pretty Ones and I Call Upon Thee.

The first one focuses on a girl, a wall flower living in New York, who is being mistreated and bullied by her prettier colleagues at work (but she has someone vindictive on her side) and the second one's about a woman who returns to her hometown to confront her childhood demons after her sister who was a weirdo throughout her life, committed suicide. The first story is fine and builds up around a surprise twist, which wasn't really hard to guess.

I don't think there are many scary stuff out there published under horror, maybe I've read too much to be scared, but I Call Upon Thee genuinely gives me the creeps.

I'm not sure if this was a re-read, I may have read this before, but it was in my library and I've finished it for the Mount TBR challenge. 

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

I have no idea how I got to this book, I just saw it as a recommendation somewhere and saw that it's made of short stories revolving around various characters dealing with rejection, and thought there's no better time to read this than 2024, this year of perpatual heartbreak. I had no idea what I was in for, I only knew it's not quite horror.

And there was no way for me to know what I was going to read because this book was such a wtf experience, I don't even know what to write about it...

There are seven stories in this book and they are connected to each other through shared characters or events which all reflect some kind of convoluted, but also comical personal crisis stemming from mostly relationship problems or expectations, desires and delusions.

I don't often feel this way about authors, but Tulathimutte is an amazing writer, he's immensely talented and I highly recommend this book to people who don't have specific expectations from a book other than a fun time with little brain as an aside.

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Sloane leads a not so fulfilling life with her deadbeat cheater of a husband when he gifts her for her birthday a weekend away (from him) with her childhood friend Naomi, who happens to be the exact opposite of her responsible and tedious self – a wildly impulsive party animal.

Of all the things they could have done during their getaway, they decide to join an orgy with a group of squatters in an ancient house and end up being turned into vampires, as happens on such occasions.

The husband is quickly disposed of, but there’s this new problem, that unquenchable thirst…

"Naomi is trouble. But she’s the kind of trouble I need."

From what I’ve read from Harrison before, which is everything she ever wrote and I’d read her shopping lists if she published them, I knew pretty much exactly what I was in for from the beginning. And I find comfort in that kind of familiarity. I have said it before and will say it with every new one of her books; I would love to be friends with her characters, would like to go drinking and on vacations with them, get in trouble and fight with them and along them only to, in the end, accept each other exactly as we are, flaws and all. Her friendship stories warm my heart and she did it again with So Thirsty, which is the story of every Virgo/ Sagittarius friendship, being complete opposites, but somehow completing each other too.

Right now my brain feels like it can’t handle stuff I usually read, and Harrison’s part chick lit part horror trope novels always are a welcome stroll out of my comfort zone, quick to read. Will be waiting for her next.

A Crown for Cold Silver (The Crimson Empire #1) by Alex Marshall

"It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre."

The thing is that I needed to read a grimdark fantasy for a challenge and I'm really not in the mental state to start, understand and enjoy a new universe, so I'm re-reading A Crown for Cold Silver which I really liked back in the days I used to avidly read Fantasy, high and low.

Twenty years ago, general Cobalt Zosia led her five villainous captains and their army into battle, and won against an empire. Now, her village has been violently massacred and she needs to come out of retirement, collect her old allies, the Cobalt Company, and get that revenge.

I like that this book picks up every possible Fantasy stereotype, just to make fun of them. It defies and reverses every expectation, plus it features my favorite character Maroto, who after his retirement, became a plaything to rich people, whom he takes to the desert as a tourist guide dressed in lush baroque costumes to give them the adventure of their lives. Of course he's not what he used to be.

Fun!