graveyardpansy's reviews
557 reviews

i picked this up for research regarding the section on zines, but ended up wanting to read the whole thing, and i’m glad i did! this isn’t light reading, but it’s not difficult to understand even though it’s largely lit/film analysis. so many valuable observations and discussions in here!! i was especially delighted by the section on vampires (i had just read fledgling when i started reading this) and the bits on zines.

the plot, setting, and and some of the imagery were all pretty good, but the characters were FLAT and it is painfully obvious that all of this was written by men. there was a lot of racism and misogyny that i suppose could be written off by arguing it was the characters and not the authors, but i am not one to give a collective of white men the benefit of the doubt on that front. when i skimmed the author discussion section at the end of the ebook and found that the initial motivation for this book was money? not at all surprised.

Spoiler

i will say that i enjoyed the ambiguity of the ending.

i also think some of the imagery was pretty weak. i felt like there were times when guns, chainsaws, and explosives were described with more craft and care than the blood and teeth were. I know it’s likely influenced by the fact that so many people worked on this, but the way that the draculas are described in almost the exact same way through each character’s focus gets incredibly boring. i know they have claws! i know they have impossible teeth! tell me about the depths of their eyes, the pattern of their torn-away flesh, the precise colour of the spot that one fang ripped away their gums and lips, the way that blood soaks into the clothes that remain. the dracula description was too repetitive for my tastes.

i would like to propose a litmus test for what type of person you are based on why you dislike twilight. do you dislike twilight because of the author’s racism that is built into the book’s lore? we can be friends. do you dislike twilight because it has sexy vampires or because a lot of tween girls like(d) it? we probably can’t be friends.

the authors wanted to take the idea of vampires away from the alluring image they often have in YA horror, but they do it in the most pretentious way possible. as someone who’s read a lot of old vampire fiction (including dracula!) it’s incredibly disingenuous to say that original tales of vampires lack sexual tension. one of my personal favourite aspects of a lot of older vamp stories is the allure of vampirism and the layered things that vampirism can imply about society. these authors abandoned all of that for pure blood and gore. and i like blood and gore! i enjoy to be grossed out by the horror that i read! but blood and gore doesn’t mean your novel has to be one-dimensional.

really powerful, i love how the artists sometimes let wojnarowicz’ words speak for themselves. the watercolour is really effective and the horror elements are fitting, especially with the fantastical aspects of wojnarowicz’ essay considered.

“as each t-cell disappears from my body it’s replaced by ten pounds of pressure ten pounds of rage and i focus that rage into nonviolent resistance but that focus is starting to slip…”

wavering between four and five stars, but very very good nonetheless. gory, enthralling, heartwrenching, and overall really gave me what i wanted from a trans horror. lots of t4t sex and love and friendship, sometimes all beautifully entangled, lots of really strong world building, and goddamn a lot of characters.

the premise of this novella is so creative and fascinating !! the characters were kinda weak imo, but I think as a whole the story is more focused on worldbuilding and the really unique setup. the back and forth time-skips were easy to follow, which i think is impressive for something as short as this. i would love to read more stuff set in this world, i'm so taken by the premise and i love fiction that isn't made for cis people to understand or be comfortable with. if it sounds interesting to you, give it a shot, took me less than an hour to get through!

update as of may 2022 - bumping up to 5 stars. reminds me a lot of Manhunt!

2.5 stars — i enjoyed the story, but oh boy the writing is repetitive, stylistically very odd, at at times incredibly unnecessarily detailed.