Heartquakes

by Ramona Meisel

The We were Gods saga started with Sunblind and continued with Sunchoked, but the story of Apollo and Icarus has never been the only one to tell. Heartquakes is a haunting collection of glimpses into side characters, some you’ll never know fully and some you’ll never read about again. The pieces speak about gender identity, unrequited love and the aftermath of what happens to humans when they meet a God.

Genres: Poetry, Romance, Mythology

26 pages, ebook

First published August 1, 2017

About the author

Ramona Meisel is an artist, writer and mythology nerd living in Germany. She’s a strange human hybrid of mended bones and a soul ripped apart at the edges. Her tongue is sharp enough to cut and her mind keen enough to bleed. When she’s not haunting the net she’s perfectly content to lose time in prose and poetry.

Reviews

[MJ Anthony · Rating 1 out of 5]

Updated review 9/22/2023

I found out about R. Meisel's apparent disappearance from the internet this year (although apparently it's old news) and was distraught. I loved her poems! I wanted to get the rest of her books! I finally had disposable income and my adhd was letting me read again! The time had come!
Naturally, I took to the web and started sleuthing. And found out that she had pulled "her" work from the internet... *drumroll please* due to plagiarism accusations. Pretty substantiated ones.
There isn't a lot of information to cross reference since her blogs, payhip store, amazon page, and everything else have been deleted, but I don't feel confident in these published collections of hers being... ethically sourced, if you will. I'm glad I only downloaded her free books and was too broke to give her any money for them, but I also don't want any positive reviews i wrote initially out there currying favor with whoever sees them on her behalf.
I would love to find the actual authors and support their work instead! If you know of any, please reach out, here or elsewhere, and point me in their direction. I've tried searching a few lines from the poems in the collections that I have access to, but haven't come up with a lot.
That's all. I'll be copy and pasting this review into the text of all the reviews/ratings I've left on goodreads.
If you were an author whose work was stolen, I'm deeply sorry. That shit's fucked, and your vulnerability and the stories you were trying to tell deserved better.


11/9/2021: read & gave 4 stars

[Dev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely loved Sunblind, although I haven't gotten to Sunchoked yet. This is a very short collection [about 15 pages] of little snippets [about 1 page each] that are kind of adjacent to that whole story [modern Apollo/Icarus] and mostly feature other characters from Greek mythology. It was a nice quick read and I love Meisel's poetry but I personally prefer something a bit longer and more linear. Still had some good stuff in it though.

[Rita Dias · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the metaphors and imagery that the author was able to form with her words. I like also the way that the 'you' is used a lot in the narration and please forgive me but it is the first time that I read anything from this author and it is not a common thing considering the books that I tend to read. At first it threw me off but I found it very enthralling.

I find it that using the 'you' in such a manner makes the user feel like they are present in the scene with the character. However, I do find that the lack of commas/dots ( during Navy Evenings ) make the text too long winded which might be on purpose but, for me, makes it hard at times to keep up. Sentences that are too long can make it seem that a scene is happening in such a manner that a character feels without breath but I feel that at times the reader needs to breathe as well.

In all, I liked it, some of the subjects written about are not my favourite ( most of the subjects didn't really resonate with me ) but the imagery and the way that the narrative flowed made up for it. My favourite piece out of them all was Untitled landscapes.

[Littlebookterror · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not yours. I am not anyone's. I am mine before I ever am the possession of a man

This is a collection of odds and ends that happen in the same universe of Sunblind and Sunchoked.
While I enjoyed many of the poems and the feelings that I know they can evoke... I thought it to be a little one-sided.
This is full of pain and yearning and anger and resentment and not many good feelings, just be aware of that.

[Sparrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this anthology desecrated the sacredness of Apollo and Icarus' beautiful sorrowful tale. I feel like only they were worthy of Meisel's poetry. Some of the poems did not resonate with me at all, but some truly did and I was delighted to have bought this. I particularly loved "The Tragedy of Pyramus and This" and "Navy Evenings."

[Mona · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's only 15 pages long and yet, it destroyed me so much.
I'm happy we got a glimpse of some side characters, ones who appeared in other stories, others we never heard about until now.
Just like always, I loved it so much.

[Edit · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

Another magical collection of poetry from the amazing Ramona Meisel.

[Sargun Saddhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually can't get enough of this. Favourite poem was about Hyacinthus. I cried.

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I am not yours. I am not anyone's. I am mine before I ever am the possession of a man."