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jayisreading's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
3.75
I feel torn about this book. I absolutely loved that Takács drew so much from eir identity as a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person who is also neuroatypical to craft a very queer speculative world that explored an array of topics and spaces (in some cases, quite literally, stories were in outer space). I also loved the worldbuilding that e accomplished in so many of these stories, even the ones that were only a few pages long. Also, how could you not love a title like The Trans Space Octopus Congregation?
I think the issue I took with this book is more of a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation. One, I shouldn’t have approached this as a conventional short story collection since a lot of them weren’t quite short stories. (I mean, even Charlie Jane Anders, who wrote the introduction for the book, called it a “spellbook.”) I think Takács leaned heavily into crafting atmospheric and conceptual stories as opposed to your typical short story having fleshed out characters, plot, etc. In addition, I admit that science fiction doesn’t always work for me, and it was the case that I couldn’t get into more than just a handful of these stories. That’s not the fault of the author by any means.
I’m glad to have read this book despite feeling torn about it (which, again, is more of a me problem). Oh, another great thing about this book is that Takács took the time to write all the content warnings for specific stories in the back. I would love to see more authors practice doing this!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Ableism, War, Body horror, and Colonisation
Moderate: Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Drug use, and Racism
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