Mel > Recent Status Updates

I’m gratified by how pathetic she is. I like that we are not romanticizing the love sick heroine who ruins lives in her attempt to get her magical brooding man. I sincerely like that we are subverting this.

Moth and her kid are incredibly unlikable which usually isn’t a deal breaker for me if the story is compelling enough. But her motives are also annoying. I’m gonna keep on chugging and hope for a twist that saves this cus I want to like it.

This is not horror. It’s not even uncanny. It feels more Greek mythology than Appalachian folk story. The story itself is fine. It’s doing semi interesting things with timelines and generational trauma. It’s just not doing what it said on the tin.

I’ve seen this repeatedly categorized as a horror. Is the horror in the room with us?

It’s good to be back (:

I don’t understand what the point of including or introducing us to the modern characters was if 90% of this story is a flashback. Why not just tell that story? I hope this becomes clear cus rn feel like this could have been heavily edited.

This is incredibly slow going. But I feel like it’s going to be worth it.

Took me a bit to build into this story, but I knew my girl wouldn’t let me down.

Quick question: what the actual fuck? 😭

Teenagers are already dumb. Teenagers with crazy traumatic things happening are a whole other ball game. Coming of age novels are not for the weak.

I’ve cried three times. I also had to stop what I was doing to immediately make a grilled ham and cheese sandwich because the way homie describes the cheese toasty his mom makes and its placement in the story rocked me to my core.

Opal is mildly relatable but not spectacular as a character. The prose, format, atmosphere and the mystery around the town and Starling house are catching my sincere interest though! I want to know what lives in the mist/fog. As far as our mmc? I think Arthur is an archetype who so far doesn’t have a personality outside of the bones of his character trope.

I feel like three chapters in we have already reached the precipice. So far it’s been really strong and compelling. But one small wobble and we are falling into derivative and trite territory.

I hope I have not guessed this. But I think I’ve guessed this. Burned houses and “The bigger ones” “crow tattoos on the lady in the rival pub? Plus the names…but then a lot of those names are still common in Ireland so????

I’m only 5 (pretty short) chapters in and this completely and totally slaps. Isolated island, somebody waking up buried alive (alive?) some fucked up fraternal situations, a plague of some sort, a depressed 20 something outsider who thinks he’s a poet, dark Celtic seaside folklore? Let’s goooo.

I’ve been in a sci-fi and space opera groove and the complexity of that and the drama of the World Cup has left me in a slump. Time to scare/disturb myself into feeling something.

Irreverent scifi art heist novella, please help me out of my reading slump. Please clear the cobwebs.

Bruhhhhh this woman is unwell.

The nonlinear structure and full cast of completely unreliable narrators is REALLY well done. Naming a baby in a book that is strongly leaning on water faery lore, “Undine” ???? Meh.

I don’t like Tug anymore.

This feels like the Robin Hobb I know and love shook hands with Ray Bradbury and that handshake produced this. And I love that. I am also reading like four pages a day rn cus it is World Cup time and may just put it down until the end of July so I can give it what it deserves.

Okay, Robin!! Hearing her narrative style in a hard scifi and not a high fantasy was jarring at first ngl. But I love this. (Yes, I know it is Megan. But my brain won’t give up Robin. Sorry)

Deckensons hair being long and pale and flouncy and his stature being described as fine boned??? Only recognizable as male because of the pronouns his secretary used to describe him??? Is this a prototype for Beloved?

Obsessed with this unseen alien who talks shit about the human captain to the only other human on board via the intercom. Very fun. Tug is my favorite so far.

Realizing at 6:30 am on a Sunday morning that two of the main characters in the book you’ve been waiting for have the same names as your exes? Dope lol

My first Hobb as Megan Lindholm! My first Hobb scifi!! Its copyright date is the year I was born!!! Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Okay, final stretch of this audiobook. I need strange and horrific happenings.

Bruuuhhhhh I’m so stressed and claustrophobic and on edge. It’s so awful. I love it.

I love books that speak complicated science at me. I also love the blunt single sentence reminders that the shutter tests are failing before the story pivots. It’s delicious anxiety in a controlled setting.

I’m still trying. I understand why this book is beloved. I was super excited about it when I started. But this reads more like an anthropological/evolutionary journal than a novel. It’s interesting, but I don’t feel like Ive had enough time with any one character to be emotionally invested. And there isn’t really any rising action/relief of tension. Cus there isn’t really tension. Idk. I’m trying.