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ergative's review
4.0
[I read this a while ago, but am only reviewing now because of Reasons.]
This collection was organized in such a way that I bounced off the first story or two pretty hard. The voice was abrasive in particular, and the violence seemed gratuitous. Once I realized that the whole point of the book was to set up a situation in which gruesome things happened--usually in the form of one person eating another, or one thing eating a person--I was able to settle back and get into it. Sort of oddly cathartic to know that all that I had to worry about with each new story was 'Is this character going to eat someone or get eaten himself?' The poetry is doggerel, though, and the author doesn't seem to realize that 'hath' is a singular verb, so you can't talk about 'a pie made of children who hath offended thee.' It's 'a pie made of children who have offended thee.'
This collection was organized in such a way that I bounced off the first story or two pretty hard. The voice was abrasive in particular, and the violence seemed gratuitous. Once I realized that the whole point of the book was to set up a situation in which gruesome things happened--usually in the form of one person eating another, or one thing eating a person--I was able to settle back and get into it. Sort of oddly cathartic to know that all that I had to worry about with each new story was 'Is this character going to eat someone or get eaten himself?' The poetry is doggerel, though, and the author doesn't seem to realize that 'hath' is a singular verb, so you can't talk about 'a pie made of children who hath offended thee.' It's 'a pie made of children who have offended thee.'
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