Laura Eppinger > Recent Status Updates

The only thing I remembered about this one was Lestat seducing a nun. It's still the best part and the best-written. The first half of the book should just be cut. The will they won't-they with David Talbot is also very good!

Vampirism as disability narrative. Daywalker / "in flux" as failing at masking a disability. Demonization of vampire as "virus" -- SOOOO RELEVANT NOW

This could really be brilliant and sensual, and I guess at one point I thought it was. But it is mostly boring fat to trim.

Literally chapter two should have been the actual body switch. Then we get to the shame of a body that needs to piss, that gets cold damp feet in the snow, that hungers and needs money to stay fed and warm and safe. A fevered delirium. All the horrors of being mortal!

Aaaand then it becomes the Silmarillian for this futuristic society?! But the encyclopedia of symbols and groups of people and wildlife is also written poetically.

Oh, what a comfort to be inside the imagination of Le Guin. And to experience a whole language, mythology, and song tradition she made up!

I also suspect this will hit hard in this current moment of agonizing takes over The Gender Divide and the outcome of the US Presidential election -- and all the horrors in store for us now.

Mapping the Anita Hill testimony during the Clarence Thomas appointment hearings and the abominable way Hill was treated in the media onto Octavia Butler's "Fledgling" is so effective that I'm ANGRY reading this.

Parker maps Octavia Butler's Patternist series onto the Black Women's Club Movement and an ethics of care in ways that make me see that a vampire series can be a guidebook for building a better society.

My Halloween read. Absolutely blowing my mind while also reminding me that Octavia Butler was a genius and we may never experience the power and scope of her imagination again. I wasn't familiar with Butler's Patternist series about energy vampires before this.

I feel like the introduction is so clutch to reading these poems -- I so appreciate Henri Cole spelling out that some of these will be too personal to the poet that their meaning is lost. And sometimes the creative grammar and syntax just doesn't work -- no one ever really spoke like this
And that's ok! My brain likes these.

There are also something like six or even 10 mysteries going on at once? Maybe too many mysteries

There's actually a lot of sexual violence and sexual assault in this. I guess it would make sense if rich kids got a hold of magic. But it's pretty damn unpleasant to read

(Hoopla reset where I was in this book so I stayed away one week out of frustration)

When I mention to folks I am reading this author, mostly people tell me they just don't like her work and DNF. I find that fascinating! I think in this series, it does feel crushing that not only is Yale full of old money and Ivy League elite, these pricks ALSO yield magic and experiment on townies. Unjust but accurate?

It's so fun! Alex is a great character. Perfect fall read--the ultimate in Dark Academia

Every bad-boy-monster-who-just-needs-love in this series uses the same two phrases:
"This Woman" (in awe)
And "This Thing Between Us" (casual sex but falling in love)

My brain is sooooo tired. This is fun. Eros is LITERALLY terrifying and is about to kill Psyche but then they have the brilliant idea: let's bang endlessly instead!!

Correction: it takes fully a third of the book for body snatching to actually happen. Lots of sad walks around New Orleans, arguing with Louis in a church, cleaning up clutter in Louis's house.

Sooooo fun. MUCH better writing and less cringe than the biggest name in romantasy. The strongest fantasy element is THEE Perfect Man. He is underworld throne kink daddy and a flawless model of enthusiastic consent, yes. But he also wants to snuggle and he's boyfriend material, girl! He's bi but not polyam and not out out to be cucked. This unicorn is the most magical being this side of the River Styx!

This could still be cut down by a quarter at least, but man do I miss the times when Anne Rice let her work be edited. It's soooooo much better than the ancient aliens era to come.

We don't get the body snatching till a quarter of the way in. It's about God and the Devil, Rembrandt's genius, hunting wild game... Erotic conversations and wanting someone you can't have.

Rereading again because Rice reread Frankenstein to write this and I'm having a Frankenstein reread summer

I'm so intrigued by Monsters in Love and Lust. I wanted to know how this author would handle the disgust of Ariadne in sleeping with the Minotaur. But I should have known--the title of every book in this series is DARK, but this is a romance series, not horror. The monster is a monster because he is strong, has a big song, and is possessive while being refreshingly possessive. The Minotaur is Pro Choice!!

Well, the Texas women who hate their husbands are researching divorce lawyers!

These Texas ladies HATE their husbands!