Status Updates From Where We Go When All We Wer...

The Snow Baby

he really lost me on this one.

1/5

Headwater LLC

Basic but affective.

2.5/5

Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone

I'm going to be honest, I didn't like this one at all at first. I spent the first 70ish% of my time reading it wondering why this was chosen to be the title (and centerpiece?) of this collection only for the last bit to nearly bring me to tears...

I wish we got like two more pages on Azusa 2. I love her.

3.5/5

The Rest of the Way

Navigating grief with imagined memories. This was pretty painful to read ): also beautiful.

3.5/5

The Passage of Time in The Abyss

Great symbolism and cool lore, but I'm starting to feel a bit burnt out.

This will probably make little sense, but this story's portrayal of time distortion and memory recollection in relation to grief reminded me a lot of Buffy season 5 episode 16 and season 6 episode 5.

3/5 (extra point for reminding me of the best show ever)

The Inn of the Dead's Orientation for Being a Japanese Ghost

I'm kind of a sucker for the afterlife orientation trope, so I'm pretty easy to please in this space. The cultural context of Japanese ghosts was used in cool ways, but otherwise, there wasn't much to sink my teeth into here. Overall kind of basic, but the tone was fun.

3/5

Peach Boy

cute but i don't have much to say. 2.5/5

Girl Zero

Holy shittttttt my heart is aching. I (perhaps foolishly) went into this collection blindly and had no idea it would center around grief and desperation as much as it has. Girl Zero was like a more emotionally overwhelming and fucked up, folkloric version of Black Mirror's "Be Right Back". This is the exact type of shit i LOVE, even if i'm so exhausted i must immediately put the book down.

5/5

Rokurokubi

Each sentence in this story was more shocking than the last lol. Interesting exploration of the isolation of a secret shame and the emotional distance it breeds. I am unfamiliar with the folklore that I assume the entities in this story are based on, but I'm very intrigued by what they traditionally represent.

This was a weird one, but a solid example of Nagamatsu's famed speculative fiction skills. 3/5

Placentophagy
Ow this one hurt. Much shorter and, in my opinion, MUCH stronger than the last story. beautifully poignant exploration of grief and the desire for connection. 4/5

Passable first story about parental abandonment... kind of basic, but i appreciate how the immense size of the resulting emotions are represented by the kaiju. alexander chee would be proud.

the sexual tension between me and a magical realism short story collection

I do not like this 😭

Read/hear this book at Everand and forgot I has stopped my subscription so now I am stucked LMAO