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dhasenkampf's review against another edition
4.25
I really, really enjoyed these stories. They were so weird and well written. I felt immediately sucked in to each one, even the ones that were only a few pages long. I can't wait to see what else the author does.
livres_de_bloss's review against another edition
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
<b> Overall Thoughts: </b>I was so excited to read this because dystopian fiction is usually my jam… but this was <I>rough</i>. Barring the final entry, I hated this book. Every single story is about boring, copy-paste cardboard cutouts. The author sacrifices characterization, plot, and coherence for experimental structure/artiness. Structurally, the stories were poor: some didn’t have much of a plot, some didn’t have endings, some were too descriptive, some not descriptive enough. The world-building was a lottery. There was a lot of gross-out and sexually explicit bits (it was an odd focus given how scant the characters and plot sometimes were!). Basically, this is a book of half-baked, first draft, scaffolds of utterly soulless stories. If you’re looking for good bones, well fleshed out stories and characters, or want to <i>feel</i> anything, you’re probably not going to have a good time with this.
I have NO idea why this book is so highly rated on here; it’s objectively poor and there are much, much better dystopian shorts out there.
Also, why did I have it in my head that this was LGBTQIA+ fiction? As another reviewer points out, it’s aggressively hetero (and all the more boring for it). I don’t enjoy reading about women desperate for attention from and lusting after boring and disinterested men which is the “plot” of a lot of these.
<b>Thoughts on Individual Titles, or Watch Me Lose It With This Book In Real Time:</b>
OUT THERE: The concept was intriguing but it didn’t really go anywhere? It didn’t finish so much as just kinda stopped. 🤔/5
THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH: I found this disturbingly plausible and an interesting comment on men’s views of women. 3/5
HEART SEEKS BRAIN: I see what the author was <i>trying</i> to do here and while it’s conceptually interesting, it wasn’t fleshed out enough to be impactful. Bits were a bit 🤢 for me after dinner too. 2/5
THE VOID WIFE: This one was sad but the whiny MC dampened the impact. Why can’t this person do anything without a man? I would’ve stayed with my parents. 2/5
SHELTER: This was too long with too much meandering. Wasn’t wild about the descriptions of torture porn, especially when there was so much sex and so little of anything that would’ve made this a good story. Sex-obsessed MC was annoying and one dimensional. If it had been tightened up, it could have been scary! 2/5
THE HEAD IN THE FLOOR: I didn’t like the structure and writing style of this (particularly the sentence fragments and excessive ‘like’). It also felt unfinished. Maybe I just like, don’t get it. Yet another wet wipe of a MC. I’m getting sick of these boring MCs - they’re all the same! 1/5
TAHOE: A garbled stream of consciousness from the most scattered narrator ever. Was there a story here? 1/5
THE BONE WARD: Horrid insecure women sabotages her own recovery and attempts to murder a kind, warm women she perceives as “competition” to get attention from an emotionless, disinterested man. Yawn. 1/5
DOE EYES: Wetwipe woman hires hunter to shoot her to get her philandering husband’s attention. OMG what is this book?! This is getting pathetic… what’s the opposite of feminist fiction? Whatever this book is. 1/5
THE HOUSE'S BEATING HEART: Group of women discover a house is alive, proceed to try and kill it,get killed by house instead . This wasn’t a fully fleshed out story, more of a brief sketch of an idea... but hey, at least no one was moaning about a man. 1/5
A SCALE MODEL OF GULL POINT: This is the least worst so far. I enjoyed the dystopia and world building. I could’ve lived without the pages devoted to the MC’s introspection on her marriage distracting from the existential threat. The ending was unsatisfactory. 3/5
DATING A SOMNAMBULIST: An increasingly silly list of things a sleepwalking person acquires. The emotionless, direct narration and constant addressing of “you” didn’t help the flow. Again, I can’t help but think this isn’t much more than a very preliminary sketch of a story. 2/5
MOIST HOUSE: I’m so over this detached and emotionless writing style. This should’ve been disturbing but it was just boring with too much focus on past relationships. These MCs really suck too. It’s hard to connect with such loathsome and detestable humans. 1/5
THE TURKEY RUMBLE: Weird premise. Ending could’ve been impactful if the story had been more fleshed out and the writing style wasn’t so detached. I am so over this stupid book. 2/5
BIG SUR: The author’s detached and emotionless writing really comes into its own when they’re writing from a robot’s perspective. This is the strongest of the book: it has a proper structure (beginning, middle, end). The human characters sucked but the robot’s was really compelling:
<Blockquote>He observed two dogs playing, taking turns chasing a rubber stick. The dogs were of equivalent size, though one possessed a shaggy coat and the other a sleek one. The fight was playful at first, but then it seemed to turn serious, the dogs growling, teeth clenched upon opposite ends of the toy. Roger's eyes brimmed with tears. He believed all dogs should be friends, and did not like to see them at odds with each other.</blockquote> 4.5
I have NO idea why this book is so highly rated on here; it’s objectively poor and there are much, much better dystopian shorts out there.
Also, why did I have it in my head that this was LGBTQIA+ fiction? As another reviewer points out, it’s aggressively hetero (and all the more boring for it). I don’t enjoy reading about women desperate for attention from and lusting after boring and disinterested men which is the “plot” of a lot of these.
<b>Thoughts on Individual Titles, or Watch Me Lose It With This Book In Real Time:</b>
OUT THERE: The concept was intriguing but it didn’t really go anywhere? It didn’t finish so much as just kinda stopped. 🤔/5
THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH: I found this disturbingly plausible and an interesting comment on men’s views of women. 3/5
HEART SEEKS BRAIN: I see what the author was <i>trying</i> to do here and while it’s conceptually interesting, it wasn’t fleshed out enough to be impactful. Bits were a bit 🤢 for me after dinner too. 2/5
THE VOID WIFE: This one was sad but the whiny MC dampened the impact. Why can’t this person do anything without a man? I would’ve stayed with my parents. 2/5
SHELTER: This was too long with too much meandering. Wasn’t wild about the descriptions of torture porn, especially when there was so much sex and so little of anything that would’ve made this a good story. Sex-obsessed MC was annoying and one dimensional. If it had been tightened up, it could have been scary! 2/5
THE HEAD IN THE FLOOR: I didn’t like the structure and writing style of this (particularly the sentence fragments and excessive ‘like’). It also felt unfinished. Maybe I just like, don’t get it. Yet another wet wipe of a MC. I’m getting sick of these boring MCs - they’re all the same! 1/5
TAHOE: A garbled stream of consciousness from the most scattered narrator ever. Was there a story here? 1/5
THE BONE WARD: Horrid insecure women sabotages her own recovery
DOE EYES: Wetwipe woman hires hunter to shoot her to get her philandering husband’s attention. OMG what is this book?! This is getting pathetic… what’s the opposite of feminist fiction? Whatever this book is. 1/5
THE HOUSE'S BEATING HEART: Group of women discover a house is alive, proceed to try and kill it,
A SCALE MODEL OF GULL POINT: This is the least worst so far. I enjoyed the dystopia and world building. I could’ve lived without the pages devoted to the MC’s introspection on her marriage distracting from the existential threat. The ending was unsatisfactory. 3/5
DATING A SOMNAMBULIST: An increasingly silly list of things a sleepwalking person acquires. The emotionless, direct narration and constant addressing of “you” didn’t help the flow. Again, I can’t help but think this isn’t much more than a very preliminary sketch of a story. 2/5
MOIST HOUSE: I’m so over this detached and emotionless writing style. This should’ve been disturbing but it was just boring with too much focus on past relationships. These MCs really suck too. It’s hard to connect with such loathsome and detestable humans. 1/5
THE TURKEY RUMBLE: Weird premise. Ending could’ve been impactful if the story had been more fleshed out and the writing style wasn’t so detached. I am so over this stupid book. 2/5
BIG SUR: The author’s detached and emotionless writing really comes into its own when they’re writing from a robot’s perspective. This is the strongest of the book: it has a proper structure (beginning, middle, end). The human characters sucked but the robot’s was really compelling:
<Blockquote>He observed two dogs playing, taking turns chasing a rubber stick. The dogs were of equivalent size, though one possessed a shaggy coat and the other a sleek one. The fight was playful at first, but then it seemed to turn serious, the dogs growling, teeth clenched upon opposite ends of the toy. Roger's eyes brimmed with tears. He believed all dogs should be friends, and did not like to see them at odds with each other.</blockquote> 4.5
abby_campbell's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
yohanna97's review against another edition
dark
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
laurierreads's review against another edition
The anthology is quite bleak and depressing!
jennkei's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but was pleasantly-surprised by this! Kate Folk has a sense of the horrific, at times, that is uncanny. Only subtracted a little as some of the stories end rather abruptly.
There were some stories I really liked. The Bone Ward, Out There (which had the companion story Big Sur), Moist House, were all really memorable.
There were some stories I really liked. The Bone Ward, Out There (which had the companion story Big Sur), Moist House, were all really memorable.
charizard_era's review against another edition
dark
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
lit_laugh_luv's review against another edition
2.0
Unpopular opinion warning: Sorry folks, I nearly gave this one star - I really didn't care for this collection in the slightest. The stories felt generally banal and formulaic - while I don't expect every short story to convey some grandiose meaning or symbolism, with "weird" literature I think the reader will have a natural curiosity towards understanding why the author wrote what they did. A lot of these stories don't really lend themselves to any sort of speculation - several are so short that they feel truncated as soon as they get rolling. There's certainly a few standouts (A Scale Model of Gull Point, Boneless, & Big Sur are all very solid entries) but otherwise it just seems like a collection of surrealist ideas haphazardly assembled.
The narrative voice here is cloyingly sterile and repetitive so that every story feels like they blur into each other in a way beyond cohesion and fully into redundancy. Despite how weird and promising the ideas behind these stories are, they end up feeling largely forgettable. The stories which do comment on broader social narratives (particularly relating to womanhood) feel too on-the-nose and without much depth. Several others just seem like concepts that were weird and quirky so just got slotted in (let's grow a head out of the floor and see if it makes an impression on readers).
I much preferred [b:Bliss Montage|60243188|Bliss Montage|Ling Ma|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650397247l/60243188._SX50_.jpg|94997656] and [b:Salt Slow|42870948|Salt Slow|Julia Armfield|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544789992l/42870948._SY75_.jpg|66660375] which are similarly speculative but executed much better. Kate Folk definitely shows promise in the longer, more fleshed out narratives - so I would consider picking up a full length novel from her, but her short stories just aren't for me.
The narrative voice here is cloyingly sterile and repetitive so that every story feels like they blur into each other in a way beyond cohesion and fully into redundancy. Despite how weird and promising the ideas behind these stories are, they end up feeling largely forgettable. The stories which do comment on broader social narratives (particularly relating to womanhood) feel too on-the-nose and without much depth. Several others just seem like concepts that were weird and quirky so just got slotted in (let's grow a head out of the floor and see if it makes an impression on readers).
I much preferred [b:Bliss Montage|60243188|Bliss Montage|Ling Ma|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650397247l/60243188._SX50_.jpg|94997656] and [b:Salt Slow|42870948|Salt Slow|Julia Armfield|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544789992l/42870948._SY75_.jpg|66660375] which are similarly speculative but executed much better. Kate Folk definitely shows promise in the longer, more fleshed out narratives - so I would consider picking up a full length novel from her, but her short stories just aren't for me.