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Psychopomp
BLOOD AND DREAMS
Sixteen-year-old Marlo has suffered an abusive home life for years. She longs to leave, but in a world ravaged by drought and pollution, she has nowhere to go.
DUST AND BONES
Then she meets an enigmatic man who will lead her on a journey far beyond her wildest dreams. The world is merciless, but Marlo is determined to find happiness in whatever way she can. Nothing will stop her from realizing her desires… not even death.
One who bleeds, one who resists, and one who forgets… Three young women will learn their world takes more than it gives, and just what price they're willing to pay for their desires.
Sixteen-year-old Marlo has suffered an abusive home life for years. She longs to leave, but in a world ravaged by drought and pollution, she has nowhere to go.
DUST AND BONES
Then she meets an enigmatic man who will lead her on a journey far beyond her wildest dreams. The world is merciless, but Marlo is determined to find happiness in whatever way she can. Nothing will stop her from realizing her desires… not even death.
One who bleeds, one who resists, and one who forgets… Three young women will learn their world takes more than it gives, and just what price they're willing to pay for their desires.
- GenresScience FictionNovella
151 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 6, 2016
66 people want to read
About the author
Heather Crews
20 books567 followersArt, dreams, spray paint. Love, death, villains. Awkward but nice. Can't keep plants alive.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heather-Crews/...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lemonadegoth/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heather-Crews/...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lemonadegoth/
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 22, 2016
Excuse me while I sit over here in the corner wondering what the hell this was.
I don't even know what to classify this as. Dystopian? Post-apocalyptic? Sci-fi? The only thing I can settle on for certain was that it was a mind-fuck.
And I mean that in the most positive way possible, because I read this a few weeks back and I am still thinking about it and how it made me feel completely inadequate as a reader and like I wasn't smart enough to get the big picture.
I did have some issues with it - the random Spanish dialogue was a little disconcerting for me and at times the multiple POV's confused me. But overall this dark, chilling and forlorn story was very well written and incredibly moving, even while it confused the hell out of me with its threads of existentialism, the reality of life, death and what is real in the world.
4 truth-bomb Stars
I am friends with Heather here on Goodreads, but this has not influenced my rating in any way because she hasn't sent me any mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.
I don't even know what to classify this as. Dystopian? Post-apocalyptic? Sci-fi? The only thing I can settle on for certain was that it was a mind-fuck.
And I mean that in the most positive way possible, because I read this a few weeks back and I am still thinking about it and how it made me feel completely inadequate as a reader and like I wasn't smart enough to get the big picture.
I did have some issues with it - the random Spanish dialogue was a little disconcerting for me and at times the multiple POV's confused me. But overall this dark, chilling and forlorn story was very well written and incredibly moving, even while it confused the hell out of me with its threads of existentialism, the reality of life, death and what is real in the world.
4 truth-bomb Stars
I am friends with Heather here on Goodreads, but this has not influenced my rating in any way because she hasn't sent me any mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.
March 28, 2020
Several years ago before I joined this site, I never thought I would be able to read a book written by a friend of mine, and be able to text her questions and comments about her book I was reading.
Welp, folks. That's my reality now.
Disclaimer: I am friends with Heather Crews on here. In fact, I am friends with Heather Crews not on here. I was texting Heather while I was reading (rereading) this novella and to be honest, she probably got annoyed by me.
Joking. Not really.
I beta read this back when it was published four years ago, and I remembered certain things about it, but really couldn't remember the core of it, the ending, or how it made me feel. Honestly, I remember the spanish chapters, the setting, and the main character, but other than that, nada. This book is BLEAK, ya'll. Those who like happy tidy "they kiss in the end" books probably wouldn't like this one too much, but damn, its really good.
Like REALLY good.
Like YAYY my friend WROTE THIS! good.
I was messaging Heather this morning and told her to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman because this novella is totally in the same vein as that novella. And I remember not liking the ending very much the first go round during my beta read, but this time, I totally understand what she was trying to do, and for the most part, it worked. This is also a hard book to review without giving away anything, and talking about the plot gives things away. What I will say is this:
Imagine your world if things keep going the way they are now. If Scientists keep playing God and they keep draining the Earth of resources, manipulating genetics and the weather, and everything else they do. Imagine what would happen if the Earth just decided to quit. Animals are gone. The soil is gone. The sunshine has been hidden behind a thick dense cloud of pollution and dust. Now imagine the top: those people who make up 0.1% of the world's population but retain 99.9% of the wealth. Imagine they have become as grotesque and as out of touch as those who live in the Capitol in the world of the Hunger Games. All of us: the working class, the middle class, those who make do and get by, but who don't have diamonds encrusted in our collar bones or houses bigger than a small country, we become nothing. Imagine a world where a woman isn't even valued for her ability to make babies because babies mean more mouths to feed. Imagine working your guts out day in and day out just to earn yourself a few scraps of bread and a mouthful of fresh water. Imagine that this is your life until you can finally manage a way to escape it. And imagine if that only way to escape is death.
This is the world that Heather Crews has created. It is not a pretty world, and there are very few things to like about this world, but it is a world that fascinated and gutted me, and I really loved it. Her worldbuilding is very good, and she has a definite way with words that even some who have been writing longer than she's been alive haven't been able to master. The characterization is a bit on the skinny side, but I can forgive her that flaw in this book since most characters are nothing but empty shells-- easy to fill, but also easy to break.
There are three heroines in this novel: Marlo who has literally and figuratively been fucked by this world in every way. She continues on and has an amazing will to live, despite the shithole that is her life. Claire, a young woman of status, but who has a debilitating mental illness that makes her an embarrassment to her family and must live out her life in an asylum filled with empty shells, and Dominique, a tough working girl trying her best to carve out a life for herself, but one meeting with a dark stranger will change the course of her life.
Marlo has the most real estate, but I wish the other two had more. In fact, that's a prime criticism of mine, that there are two other storylines that never really go anywhere. And its not really even about finding out what happened to the characters, rather, trying to understand the point of their stories, which I still haven't figured out.
My other only criticism is that around 88%, this book suddenly switches genres. And it is very jarring and weird, and a little clunky. This is where Neil Gaiman's book outshines this one. He blends two genres together so subtly that by the end you don't even realize that he blended realistic with supernatural. This book is post apocalyptic, sure, but not supernatural, and that line gets blurry toward the end. It was a very artsy and experimental way of making the point, and the point was a beautiful point, but in my honest opinion, could have been better crafted.
Other than that, this book was haunting, and ghostly, and creepy, and all of the things we don't want to be thinking of right now with this crazyzombie virus coronavirus stuff going on, but it was worth it. I enjoyed it much more the second time around also.
And YAY! My FRIEND WRITES BOOKS
*Also might feel the need to say that my friendship with Heather has no bearing on this review, blah blah blah. I tell it how it is, and if this book sucked I would have said so. But it didn't. It definitely didn't.
Blood is the debt we all must pay.
4 stars
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Beta read.
Audrey approved.
Waiting.......
Welp, folks. That's my reality now.
Disclaimer: I am friends with Heather Crews on here. In fact, I am friends with Heather Crews not on here. I was texting Heather while I was reading (rereading) this novella and to be honest, she probably got annoyed by me.
Joking. Not really.
I beta read this back when it was published four years ago, and I remembered certain things about it, but really couldn't remember the core of it, the ending, or how it made me feel. Honestly, I remember the spanish chapters, the setting, and the main character, but other than that, nada. This book is BLEAK, ya'll. Those who like happy tidy "they kiss in the end" books probably wouldn't like this one too much, but damn, its really good.
Like REALLY good.
Like YAYY my friend WROTE THIS! good.
I was messaging Heather this morning and told her to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman because this novella is totally in the same vein as that novella. And I remember not liking the ending very much the first go round during my beta read, but this time, I totally understand what she was trying to do, and for the most part, it worked. This is also a hard book to review without giving away anything, and talking about the plot gives things away. What I will say is this:
Imagine your world if things keep going the way they are now. If Scientists keep playing God and they keep draining the Earth of resources, manipulating genetics and the weather, and everything else they do. Imagine what would happen if the Earth just decided to quit. Animals are gone. The soil is gone. The sunshine has been hidden behind a thick dense cloud of pollution and dust. Now imagine the top: those people who make up 0.1% of the world's population but retain 99.9% of the wealth. Imagine they have become as grotesque and as out of touch as those who live in the Capitol in the world of the Hunger Games. All of us: the working class, the middle class, those who make do and get by, but who don't have diamonds encrusted in our collar bones or houses bigger than a small country, we become nothing. Imagine a world where a woman isn't even valued for her ability to make babies because babies mean more mouths to feed. Imagine working your guts out day in and day out just to earn yourself a few scraps of bread and a mouthful of fresh water. Imagine that this is your life until you can finally manage a way to escape it. And imagine if that only way to escape is death.
This is the world that Heather Crews has created. It is not a pretty world, and there are very few things to like about this world, but it is a world that fascinated and gutted me, and I really loved it. Her worldbuilding is very good, and she has a definite way with words that even some who have been writing longer than she's been alive haven't been able to master. The characterization is a bit on the skinny side, but I can forgive her that flaw in this book since most characters are nothing but empty shells-- easy to fill, but also easy to break.
There are three heroines in this novel: Marlo who has literally and figuratively been fucked by this world in every way. She continues on and has an amazing will to live, despite the shithole that is her life. Claire, a young woman of status, but who has a debilitating mental illness that makes her an embarrassment to her family and must live out her life in an asylum filled with empty shells, and Dominique, a tough working girl trying her best to carve out a life for herself, but one meeting with a dark stranger will change the course of her life.
Marlo has the most real estate, but I wish the other two had more. In fact, that's a prime criticism of mine, that there are two other storylines that never really go anywhere. And its not really even about finding out what happened to the characters, rather, trying to understand the point of their stories, which I still haven't figured out.
My other only criticism is that around 88%, this book suddenly switches genres. And it is very jarring and weird, and a little clunky. This is where Neil Gaiman's book outshines this one. He blends two genres together so subtly that by the end you don't even realize that he blended realistic with supernatural. This book is post apocalyptic, sure, but not supernatural, and that line gets blurry toward the end. It was a very artsy and experimental way of making the point, and the point was a beautiful point, but in my honest opinion, could have been better crafted.
Other than that, this book was haunting, and ghostly, and creepy, and all of the things we don't want to be thinking of right now with this crazy
And YAY! My FRIEND WRITES BOOKS
*Also might feel the need to say that my friendship with Heather has no bearing on this review, blah blah blah. I tell it how it is, and if this book sucked I would have said so. But it didn't. It definitely didn't.
Blood is the debt we all must pay.
4 stars
ORIGINAL REVIEW
Beta read.
Audrey approved.
Waiting.......
Read
February 25, 2016
I.beta.... and then I waitz.
i-wrote
May 16, 2017
Collage created for me by the lovely Apollo Blake!
3/14/16
I've received feedback from Karly and Jess, who volunteered as beta-reading tributes for me! This book is different from anything I've written, being that it's a little on the weird side and requires actual worldbuilding. Anyway, I'm eternally grateful for this fabulous duo's feedback, including that I apparently use a lot of color description. Like, too much. *side-eyes self*
Now I'm beginning the long, arduous process of revising. IT'S SO HARD. *sobs*
Here's something fun (Note: Your definition of fun may differ from mine). This is an alternate version of the cover. It was actually my favorite of the two, but everyone liked the dark one best, I guess because the story itself is on the darker side.
August 2, 2016
4.5 stars.
I absolutely loved how beautifully this was written. It was poetic, yet I didn't have to put in extra work to separate the story from the lovely prose. It wasn't overly written. The story focuses on three young women, but mainly Marlo. The world building, thoughts and emotions, and dialogue are fantastic. The only reason I didn't give this a solid 5, was because I didn't know what happened to Dominique or Claire at the end. I need more, please. A second novella? A short story? Fantastic. This is sad. If you don't like dark things or can't enjoy a book without a HEA, you may want to pass on this. That's not the case for me. I loved it. Even got to brush up on my Spanish ;)
I absolutely loved how beautifully this was written. It was poetic, yet I didn't have to put in extra work to separate the story from the lovely prose. It wasn't overly written. The story focuses on three young women, but mainly Marlo. The world building, thoughts and emotions, and dialogue are fantastic. The only reason I didn't give this a solid 5, was because I didn't know what happened to Dominique or Claire at the end. I need more, please. A second novella? A short story? Fantastic. This is sad. If you don't like dark things or can't enjoy a book without a HEA, you may want to pass on this. That's not the case for me. I loved it. Even got to brush up on my Spanish ;)
July 1, 2018
*Actual rating: 3.5 stars*
Enigmatic and dream-like, Psychopomp describes a girl's strange journey through a dystopian landscape. It was an interesting read, and reminded me of some of my favorite books from my high school years, such as Ice by Anna Kavan and Days of Grass by Tanith Lee; like these books, Psychopomp combines precise, poetic language with an oddly passive heroine--even when Marlo is making her own decisions, it feels more like she is being swept along by forces she cannot fathom. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who appreciates surreal landscapes in their fiction. I suspect it is one of those books I will be thinking about for quite some time to come.
(Note: Heather is one of my good reads friends and but this has not affected my rating or review in any way.)
Enigmatic and dream-like, Psychopomp describes a girl's strange journey through a dystopian landscape. It was an interesting read, and reminded me of some of my favorite books from my high school years, such as Ice by Anna Kavan and Days of Grass by Tanith Lee; like these books, Psychopomp combines precise, poetic language with an oddly passive heroine--even when Marlo is making her own decisions, it feels more like she is being swept along by forces she cannot fathom. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who appreciates surreal landscapes in their fiction. I suspect it is one of those books I will be thinking about for quite some time to come.
(Note: Heather is one of my good reads friends and but this has not affected my rating or review in any way.)
Read
December 1, 2020This is so hard for me to rate. I loved the writing and the imagination and the downright bizarreness of this story. I just didn't get it, or the answers I'd so desperately needed by the end. I liked it, but also was left saddened by how it changed into something completely different part way through.
I think this is one of those conceptual novels that you'll either love for it's surreal journey, or be utterly baffled by. Sad to say I was in the second category, and I think this is because I was looking for a narrative with a resolution. The beginning of the story was so weird and imaginative that I had to keep going, but where I was looking for an emotional payoff at the end, happy or sad, it got me confused.
The main story follows the girl Mardo, trapped by her abusive brother in a life of poverty. At least she doesn't have to sell herself to the rich folk of Cizel like her best friend Pell, but she still has to sell her plasma so they'll have enough food to eat. Things get even uglier as time goes by and Mardo dreams of escape. She takes a chance on following a strange man who came out of nowhere, a man who makes no sense to her, and ends up caught in a web of strange goings on just beyond her understanding.
This is a dark, gritty dystopian tale chock full of emotional pain and female suffering. It felt to me like reading a bad dream where time slips and slides, events merge, characters instinctively know some things while brushing over the details of how and why. The characters themselves seem like dreamers in that the lead POVs all come across as quite passive with events flowing around them. They're trapped, and it's reflected in the claustrophobic atmosphere the writing creates. There are relationships, but everything is incredibly twisted as our POV girls have suffered so much at the hands of those around them. Don't expect "romance" as such here - these are damaged people surrounded by cruelty.
It made me think of a fever-dream inspired by Tanith Lee's less graphic works.
And ugh, the pain. There's a lot of it. It doesn't need to be described in detail because that strange dream-logic prose really makes you feel for the characters. The writing is hauntingly beautiful at conveying the horrible. While there are trigger warning situations , there's nothing graphic to upset or disturb. Again, like a bad dream, you just get that sense of how wrong everything is. I loved the writing.
I found the world described vague but compelling; the future is a bleak place where water is scarce, wars are fought, poverty is rife and privileged abused. There's plenty of the lore side of things, touching on climate change as well as history and mythology. I would have liked so much more though, there being many things not explained. The slum/city/"metal forest" setup was curious, but never got explained. There are terrorist bombings happening, yet we don't really get a clear sense of why . Physical descriptions seemed a bit sparse, so I wasn't always sure what I should be picturing. I wasn't sure why Mardo occasionally switched into Spanish - was that to do with the setting? The culture? Others didn't seem to do it and all the place names sounded Anglocized, so I couldn't be sure.
So about the plot... Again, it's like a weird dream where everything's teased at but never quite revealed. It was intriguing, but at around 80% I started to wonder how anything could be resolved. Honestly, I'm still not sure what happened and wonder if there's something wrong with me for not understanding the trippy final phase. I'd guess there's a deeper message but it went completely over my head. I longed for some kind of narrative resolution for each of the POVs, yet feel like they were left hanging. I just have so many questions, and while it can be fun to speculate about open endings I really wished for some answers.
Overall I liked the first part of the book as it played mysterious with the world and conveyed so many feelings in so few words, but that strange ending felt to me to be just too confusing to comprehend and colored my experience of the rest of the book. I just didn't understand what happened. I guess someone like me really needed answers about the characters' futures and what was going on in the world to make their lives so harsh to enjoy (if that's the right word for so dark a story) the book more.
I think this is one of those conceptual novels that you'll either love for it's surreal journey, or be utterly baffled by. Sad to say I was in the second category, and I think this is because I was looking for a narrative with a resolution. The beginning of the story was so weird and imaginative that I had to keep going, but where I was looking for an emotional payoff at the end, happy or sad, it got me confused.
The main story follows the girl Mardo, trapped by her abusive brother in a life of poverty. At least she doesn't have to sell herself to the rich folk of Cizel like her best friend Pell, but she still has to sell her plasma so they'll have enough food to eat. Things get even uglier as time goes by and Mardo dreams of escape. She takes a chance on following a strange man who came out of nowhere, a man who makes no sense to her, and ends up caught in a web of strange goings on just beyond her understanding.
This is a dark, gritty dystopian tale chock full of emotional pain and female suffering. It felt to me like reading a bad dream where time slips and slides, events merge, characters instinctively know some things while brushing over the details of how and why. The characters themselves seem like dreamers in that the lead POVs all come across as quite passive with events flowing around them. They're trapped, and it's reflected in the claustrophobic atmosphere the writing creates. There are relationships, but everything is incredibly twisted as our POV girls have suffered so much at the hands of those around them. Don't expect "romance" as such here - these are damaged people surrounded by cruelty.
It made me think of a fever-dream inspired by Tanith Lee's less graphic works.
And ugh, the pain. There's a lot of it. It doesn't need to be described in detail because that strange dream-logic prose really makes you feel for the characters. The writing is hauntingly beautiful at conveying the horrible. While there are trigger warning situations , there's nothing graphic to upset or disturb. Again, like a bad dream, you just get that sense of how wrong everything is. I loved the writing.
I found the world described vague but compelling; the future is a bleak place where water is scarce, wars are fought, poverty is rife and privileged abused. There's plenty of the lore side of things, touching on climate change as well as history and mythology. I would have liked so much more though, there being many things not explained. The slum/city/"metal forest" setup was curious, but never got explained. There are terrorist bombings happening, yet we don't really get a clear sense of why . Physical descriptions seemed a bit sparse, so I wasn't always sure what I should be picturing. I wasn't sure why Mardo occasionally switched into Spanish - was that to do with the setting? The culture? Others didn't seem to do it and all the place names sounded Anglocized, so I couldn't be sure.
So about the plot... Again, it's like a weird dream where everything's teased at but never quite revealed. It was intriguing, but at around 80% I started to wonder how anything could be resolved. Honestly, I'm still not sure what happened and wonder if there's something wrong with me for not understanding the trippy final phase. I'd guess there's a deeper message but it went completely over my head. I longed for some kind of narrative resolution for each of the POVs, yet feel like they were left hanging. I just have so many questions, and while it can be fun to speculate about open endings I really wished for some answers.
Overall I liked the first part of the book as it played mysterious with the world and conveyed so many feelings in so few words, but that strange ending felt to me to be just too confusing to comprehend and colored my experience of the rest of the book. I just didn't understand what happened. I guess someone like me really needed answers about the characters' futures and what was going on in the world to make their lives so harsh to enjoy (if that's the right word for so dark a story) the book more.
January 12, 2025
Psychopomp takes the reader into a dark dystopian world where war and terrorism prevail. The story is told by three girls from the lower, middle and upper classes there. All three encounter death, in different ways.
Different types of dependencies lead to a twisted form of love and affection that meets with a lack of compassion and remorse. And yet hope is the only thing that sustains them all, that drives them inwardly. - They all meet their dark angel.....
This book is a journey through the everlasting cycle of life and death. It's haunting, in a sad and yet (at least sometimes) beautiful way.
Different types of dependencies lead to a twisted form of love and affection that meets with a lack of compassion and remorse. And yet hope is the only thing that sustains them all, that drives them inwardly. - They all meet their dark angel.....
This book is a journey through the everlasting cycle of life and death. It's haunting, in a sad and yet (at least sometimes) beautiful way.
August 10, 2023
I feel like I’m not smart enough to understand what the hell was going on, but I really enjoyed it. Anyone feel like giving me an explanation though please feel free.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews