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

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