Abby > Recent Status Updates

There was a downright delightful ecological horror sequence right in the middle here. Like ‘Annihilation’ style mutations and dread.

The author, as if to prove a point, then wrote a description in a sex scene that horrified me more than any of the abominations from the previous sequence. Classic Robert Jackson Bennett.

Rolling along surprisingly well, given how much I disliked the first one. Some weird stuff going on with Din’s characterization but honestly not bad. Enjoyable mystery and eldritch abomination science.

It helps that I was mentally prepared for all the spit, vomit, urine, mold/fungi, gross smells, etc. Expectations!

Refreshing despite the dark content. Things this book has that Masters of Death lacked:

1) complex characters that do bad things, but you can genuinely see where they’re all coming from
2) there’s more than one intriguing question for the reader to ponder at the 30% mark
3) characters have inner thoughts, not just spoken thoughts

An unreasonable amount of this book is dialogue. And an unreasonable amount of that dialogue is inane, pseudo-enlightened, pedantic quibbling over the exact definitions and semantics of words.

It’s very:

“Do you believe in God?”

“Well that depends on what you mean by ‘DO’ and what do you mean by ‘YOU’ and what you mean by ‘BELIEVE’ and what you mean by ‘GOD’.”

Oh my god the characters just stand in increasingly abstract rooms and explain their plans and knowledge to one another for extremely long periods of time. Viola is my only hope for intrigue, but the plot is increasingly crack

Both better and worse than I remembered it

The escape plan didn’t make any sense to me except that it goes out of its way to hurt people Elias loves and make him feel bad for existing

Every random enemy: “Oooooo you’re a killer, a murderer Elias — you’re a destroyer you cause painnnnn”

Elias: *instantly emotionally compromised, and also hasn’t done a badass thing on page for the whole series*

Flesh