Reviews with content warning for Blood - Plutona

I was looking at my bookshelves and realized that I didn't know why I own this and that I haven't actually read it. My best guess (if my memory serves me correctly) is that I got it from Barnes & Noble sometime in late 2017 or early 2018. It was a fast and absorbing read, and deeply fucked up. I think the dark premise is interesting but the characters are kind of irredeemable pieces of shit, especially Ray (and not Diane or Mikey). There's truly no reason for Ray to be in this story, he doesn't add anything to the overall message nor does he contribute anything worthwhile to the group dynamic. He uses slurs and verbally abuses the other characters throughout the entire narrative. The characters all regress throughout and Ray has almost everything to do with that regression. The superhero story interspersed throughout the main narrative is dull, shallow, and ultimately pointless. We simply do not spend enough time with Plutona to understand her motivations or opinions or to grow to care about her so the pages that tell her story feel like a waste of time that simply take us out of the main story. We could have understood Teddy's fascination turned morbid obsession with obtaining super powers and feeling entitled to Plutona's dead body. There are definite comparisons to be drawn to how the white supremacist patriarchy creates entitled men and boys who flaunt misogyny with carelessness and weaponize their privilege to get what they want simply because they can and feel entitled to women's bodies. Then there's the cliched sentiment about how you shouldn't meet your heroes because they'll disappoint you echoed here in the most literal, obvious fashion. The very last panel of the story, with Mikey and the fly symbolizing his internal rot, Mikey is collateral damage. A child influenced by the fucked up older person who swayed him into believing that harming others was the right thing to do. If I think about it in terms of the misogyny metaphor, it demonstrates how misogyny and entitlement are taught to boys by the boys and men around them until it becomes a normalized reality. It's not their fault, but the harm they inflict will be their fault. It's tragic and cyclical.

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fungivibes's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

2.5

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