Enjoy the latest short reviews!
Opening and closing with two separate scenes of outrageous violence (and the middle section not falling behind on depictions of gratuitous, senseless, sweltering brutality, drugs, sex, sexual violence et al.) Otared follows the dystopic life after a failed revolution in Egypt, and the subsequent invasion of an order called the Knights of Malta, and then life after that invasion too. In this future, eveyrone wears a paper mask with someone else's face and violence is just romaing in the streets while the new generation has to battle a new illness, during which their faces, their noses, eyes, mouthes grow closed, and they are unable to sense things anymore.
To say that the future Rabie imagines for his country is grim would be a gross understatement, this is fatalistic, post-apocalyptic hell, this is all nine circles of hell combined, and they're recurring. The lead character Ahmed Otared understands this and becomes a suitable hero helping people break out of this cycle of hellish life, by killing them.
I am not at all a squeamish reader but this book got me, it was heavy and impressive. I never want to read it again though.
For Human Use by Sarah G. Pierce
Investor Tom Williason is speechless when he finds out about his next project that his boss approved; a dating app where you can swipe right on corpses, who then are delivered to you in a box (after a sort of enbalming/ plastination procedure), and you can live with/date/sleep with/ cuddle with your corpse. Initially there are mere personal concerns, like a majority of men not being able and not wanting to date and connect with living women anymore because they find them too complicated; but then legal and ethical questions emerge when the app names Liv takes the world by storm.
Against this backdrop we follow a love story budding between Tom and his arch nemesis' step sister Mara Reed. But then there's Auden White, the brain behind the app and Mara's step brother but also ex-lover.
If the backstory of this book were its main
plot, it would have been one of my favorite books of the year already.
But that would be a different book then. For Human Use begins
amazingly, a five star intro, because it is about that background, but
then it kind of fizzles out for me. Still, really great ideas and
meditations on death, the dead, and misunderstood equality. Oddly
entertaining.
A very very in depth analysis of the horror movie, up to the 90s, and how gender played a role on their way to the summit; How Carrie made a bunch of nerdy boys root for a girl being bombarded with tampons? Is horror nothing but voyeurism of the female body? Is the Final Girl as revolutionary as we all think? Many questions will be answered in this iconic work, even the ones you weren't aware of.
Iconic indeed.
Though too much Freud gives me
a headache and some things I don't understand from today's perspective,
like you really need to look from a 50s or earlier POV to call the
final girl, and the actresses who played them "masculine". Interestingly
I preferred reading the analyses not about gender, like the
city-country comparison or the importance of gaze in horror cinema.
Nevertheless a very worthwhile read for anyone interested.
Cruelty Free: A Novel by Caroline Glenn
Former A-list actress Lila Devlin is returning to LA exactly ten years after her baby daughter has been kidnapped from her home and killed, she has been blamed for it in all the press, and her marriage fell apart over it. Now she wants to realize her vision of a radical new skincare brand, but before she gets there she wants to tie loose ends and close old chapters. But during her visits to everyone involved in what happened ten years ago, she discovers that her rage is still very much alive and an encounter with a parasitic blogger ends in tragedy. She discovers that forgiveness isn't really her thing and what really heals her is bloody revenge. Together with her extremely loyal publicist Sylvie she begins her hunt.
Cruelty Free starts with great oomph, and does a wonderful job in pouring that initial power into the following chapters, but I think I'm a little tired of unhinged characters running around and doing crazy things. So it comes a little too late, I guess? Other than that, I mean, if you can't get enough of the unhinged trope, this is a good example.
We follow Triple-Six, who is an outcast initially planned to be a freak project, lovestruck with his first ever girlfriend Mallory who loves him despite his crab-hands and for whom he'd do anything. Unfortunately he manages to reanimate and free from Hell her undead mother, an infamous pyromaniac serial killer and thus the two of them need to get rid of the one person responsible for both their suffering and abusive lives.
My second book by the fantastic Drew Huff, and again – I love the dynamic prose and original style, love the knife-sharp distinction between the heroes and the antagonist, the evil being so deeply evil, almost caricature-like while main character Triple-Six and his girlfriend, the one person who loved him despite his crab-hands, being very lovable despite them also being train wrecks. But I rooted for them all the way through this wild ride of a story.
A longer middle section sags a little, in that it reminded me too much of Divine Flesh, a book I just recently finished. Maybe I should have put some time between the two books, other than that it's fantastic and hilarious too. I'll keep on reading Huff, love this author.
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