Emiel > Recent Status Updates

Not being able to talk about this book for 2 months is going to be rough.

"I'll be as convincing as I was on the day of the Examination. Fruit ripe for the picking, dad called me that day. I still don't understand what he meant, but it's how I see myself now. I am bright, ripe fruit: shiny on the surface, but rotten at the core."

😭There is no fucking way, man.

This reads like an author who, having finally broken free from the constraints of comic book speech bubbles, is now determined to write the most elaborate, adjective-laden sentences he can get away with. I'd quote one for fun, but it wouldn't fit within the character limit. Most of the negative reviews call this book "completely unreadable" or "incomprehensible," and they’re right—but it rules.

When someone inevitably asks me what I am reading, I am pleading the fifth.

The book is OK, it just pisses me off.

This book... it is so concerned with appearing smart. Nonstop academic name-dropping, Ready Player One style, but for debate club nerds instead of Funko Pop nerds. It is quite the achievement to make hell this drab. It is hell. Stop talking about formal logic. She pisses me off so much. She is smart, but the book is not. It is all aesthetics without substance. Show me something clever instead of telling me! Aaaaaaaa

The plot is engaging, I like the unapologetic snobbery, and this certainly has less of an over-explaining problem compared to her other books, but what is this dry ass writing? How are you citing Susanna Clarke, Vladimir Nabokov, and Kazuo Ishiguro as influences and then write such soulless, sanitized prose? It comes across as shameless pandering to her Swiftie-like audience: simplify and it will sell, and so it does

It's not like I was doubting it, but I don't think the serf life would have been for me. Those witch trials must have gone hard though; the relatable urge to want to throw your (upstairs) neighbors in a pond.

"'An the galoot got a lash o' the pike in him, yep? Sketch the green eyes on it. Fucker spat, flexed, and glared at Cusask. Business wan' doin', ' he said. 'So don' min' the aul' bitchtalk, Cusey-gal'. Eyes turned to his hissing mob and smiled and danced a wee skank."

Is there such a thing as "too Irish"?

Apparently, yes. It is 300 pages of this; I am not kidding. It rules.

Noooooooooo, my G.O.A.T. needs to retire, why is it so bad 😭. What the fuck, man.

New book by my (maybe) favorite author! Hope it is as amazing as his previous full-length book.

The writing is really charming. It is REALLY similar to Gaiman(his books! his books!)/Barker, but they are great so I don't mind. Cautiously optimistic about this one.

I don't know why I ever stopped reading Discworld, it rules. A funny, smart, low stakes christmas story where the guild of assassins is commissioned to take out Santa.

Reading 1000 pages about cows for something different. It is amazing.

I think the writing here is good (especially in comparison with certain other books 🙂), but holy fuck she needs to stop spamming metaphors and similes every other sentence, chill.

This is the one; I can feel it.

I read this one 13 years ago in school and remember absolutely hating it. This year I read Franny and Zooey and From Esmé with Squalor, also by him, which were both among the best books I have ever read (certainly with the best dialogue). I am excited to see how much of a fucking moron I was back then (and still am to be fair, but with some more books under my belt). I can't even imagine it actually being bad.

This book is giving Stardew Valley for lonely mentally ill women, like next level demographic pandering.

"a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love."

God have mercy

Naaaaaaaa, but it was so good until Murray decided to stop using punctuation at the 25% point. Give me back my commas you pretentious piece of shit; this is unreadable.

It reminds me a lot of my favorite movie of all time (Yi Yi): different points of view from the same family all having their own crises. Hope the punctuation comes back again...

This is getting pretty high up on the "What the fuck is going on scale", from human bone soup to immortal group boning and uhh necrophilia. I am pretty sure the flashback chapters are implanted memories to give Harrow a fake account of what happened in book 1 in order to stop her from remembering Gideon. The absence of Gideon is felt (positively), the moment she inevitably gets brought back I instantly DNF.

So many names for different bones...

What the actual fuck. If the first book was anything like this I would have given it a 4+ Why is the writing, especially in the second person chapters, suddenly fantastic? It also leans way heavier into the weird parts of the first book, abandoning any semblance to generic sff. The dialogue is still horribly written but there is less of it, so I can stomach it (for now). Interested to see where this goes.

This is way better than I thought it was going to be. I might actually have positive things to say for once.

Resurrect this man and have him write a 1000 page book about Franny absolutely losing her shit about her shitty boyfriend and meaningless life; what an amazing short story, absolutely perfect. Style makes a book and this has all of it. You can write about anything with dialogue this good and it would be a 5/5.

I have been trying to get through this godforsaken book for 6 months now. Why an author already infamous for being borderline unreadable decided to write his book in 18th century English no one knows. Pynchon is the first author I have ever come across that makes me feel genuinely mentally impaired. No one mixes genres like he does though (why is there a talking dog in my historical fiction?) so I will finish it!