Reviews

(If you'll pardon the expression,) this book got under my skin. Not all the sentences, individually, are good. Collectively, they form a prose style that infects my mind and makes the world feel terrifying and wonderful. And that prose style comes in the service of something genuinely magnificent.

I went into this book knowing basically nothing about it: I read one of Indra Das' short stories and decided it was good enough that I'd read whatever else he felt like writing. I stand by that decision. Between deciding to read it and starting it, though, I did see some people online refer to it as "the piss kink book". I feel that this description undersells both the quantity of bodily fluids and the quantity of weird sex encountered in the course of these beautiful intertwined stories. It's all thematically appropriate, and one could argue that it is tastefully done, but I think almost every bodily fluid the body can produce makes an appearance, and most of them are sexualized. You have been warned/enticed, depending on how you feel about that sort of thing.

As someone who dissects mice for a living, I appreciated the accuracy and specificity in the blood 'n' guts. Two of the humans who make appearances solely as terrified prey and then as warm eviscerated carcasses have fatty livers, and there is enough descriptive detail to distinguish that one has metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease due to starvation, and the other has alcoholic liver disease. The level of care, thought, and specificity in this book is incredible and very satisfying.

The other thing I knew about this book before starting (other than "writer good" and "piss kink") was that it was sort of in some way transgender maybe. Honestly, this book's perspective on gender is far too interesting for the internet. It's a look at patriarchal violence and gender-warping transcendence that is lucid and hallucinatory, and, crucially, very fucking cool.

If all that sounds too abstract for you, I told my boyfriend that it's a book about a history professor having a gay werewolf romance and read him the sexy bits out of context, and he liked it a lot.

caitsidhe's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is incredible. Filthy, profane, erotic, sad, thoughtful. It reminds me of THE LAST WEREWOLF (https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/7b7bf378-1763-40d3-bd05-ce27032d9fcf), a book I also very much enjoyed - and if you loved that you'll love this, and vice versa.

haliespages's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.0

laura1980458's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

yrioona's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A lush, vivid, gory, and sexy take on the "undead/shapeshifter" genre(s), dense with historical texture and a profound sense of place. I found this a bit uneven -- sometimes characters make choices or reel off dialogue in service to the plot but not grounded in their personalities/motivations, and sometimes Das's language (which is gorgeously descriptive) trips over itself with overwrought phrasing and flashy word choices -- but when it works it really works! The nested, nonlinear, narrative structure (and the interplay between this structure and all the um, devouring) is beautifully done. There is something a bit first-book-y about this but it's still something really special.

Content Warnings

kitnotmarlowe's review against another edition

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I'm so disappointed in myself for not even finishing a book that's been on my tbr for probably half a decade minimum, however I could not force myself through a single page. Partly this is because the formatting on my ebook was slightly broken so the margins were HUGE, but also because it felt like I read 5 pages for every page. I was super interested in the narrative (though much more in the framing device than the story at its core) but the pace was excruciating to the point where it became a chore to read. I started three other books in the process of reading half of this and it isn't even long. Indra Das does not know how to describe setting or horror without invoking piss and shit. There is more piss and shit in this book than there has been in my 26 years of life.

empoleon's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I realized by the end (and maybe this was spelled out too heavy-handedly by the author), that this book is an allegory about change. We are not static people, we are not necessarily defined by the gender listed on a birth certificate, the name given to us, or the expectations of other people. We can change, and we should change, as we grow into the person that we are meant to be. Sometimes this change will be painful, uncertain, and unaccepted by others, but that's ok. Because as long as you know who you are, that change was meant to happen.

Content Warnings

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