librarymouse's reviews
400 reviews

I came into this wanting something similar to The Night Circus. While this didn't quite live up to expectations, I did enjoy the read. The ending felt somewhat disconnected from  the rest of the novel - unrealistic in the context of the reality the novel sets up for us as readers, and at points it felt as if there wasn't enough page time allowed for readers to come to care for the characters in any deeper way. 

The incestuous rape plotline was unexpected and added to the treachery in disgusting and interesting ways. I would have preferred the novel be more of a character study than ending with Charlotte as a zombified avenging angel, working for a devil, but readers (beggars) can't be choosers.

While reading In an Absent Dream, I'd wondered what happened to Mockery. This addition ties up the lose ends of the novella well and answers the question of what happened to Lundy and her friends that made her return to the world of her birth for the first time. The Goblin Market is a complicated place. It's not made for everyone to live in, and it's not made for everyone compatible with it to live in forever. This side quest explores how sometimes the concept of fair value can lose its meaning when an individual loses themself, and it shows the cost of a life lost in the "eye for an eye" fairness of the market. They're children with minds full of adventure and a strong belief that the market would protect them. It's also interesting to see more of the archivist as a person who can and does fail in her overseeing of The Goblin Market. 
On a related note, the concept of fair value has infiltrated my subconscious. I consider purchases and trades under the idea of "is the price of this worth the amount of time it took me to make the amount of money I'd used to purchase it," and "are the items we're trading worth the same value we're willing to take/share." It makes purchasing and bartering more fun, and I wish I lived in a place where bartering was more prevalent.

Thank you to V. Castro and NetGalley for the digital ARC. I'm sorry I didn't like the book.

 The short stories throw readers directly into the deep end of what should be the climax of a story without any of the build up. It makes it hard to care about the characters and leaves the settings feeling indistinct.

This reads like fanfiction. The plural first person POV, the in-depth description of characters' outfits and bodies, and the pop culture references all culminate in the distinctive voice of online fandom spaces. I really enjoy horror set in liminal spaces, and I was looking forward to the titular story, but I couldn't get through the rest of them to get there. Story one, "The Carnival of Gore" was not well written and felt unnecessarily horny. I couldn't suspend my disbelief for a dying man being aroused by the same type of creature whose bite may have killed him, in such a short amount of page time. Story 2, "The Four Horseman Inn" was fine, for the most part. Not particularly memorable. I don't understand why they let the zombie in, in the middle. There was nothing to make me care about the characters or their plight. Story 3 "Bruja Barbie and her Ken" is a smutty stalker reverse harem. Specific pop culture references and inverting the male gaze in a way that allowed it to stay just as toxic made this an  unenjoyable read. I gave up 2 pages into Story 4 "The Last Halloween." I couldn't follow the plot outside of the general understanding of it being a bacchanal.   

Having a diverse variety of lived experiences and desires available in literature is important and there is an audience for this book, but I am not it.

Somehow, so much and absolutely nothing happens in this book. It's beautifully written and decorated with desire and viscera. Lumen is a complicated, sympathetic character - a little girl fed myths and legends and allowed to play in fairy rings, and then expected to grow into an adult unbelieving of magic. This novel encapsulates that coming of age feeling, in which nothing goes right, everything hurts, and you have to constantly resist the desire to peel open your skin like a fruit to see if there's a realer version of yourself hiding underneath. I adore strange and creepy little girls being written as such and allowed to revel in their existence as is. Lumen may not be a good person, but as she reflects, we may not really know who we are without others upon whom to reflect ourselves, and not all that is kind or loving is good.

This book is incredibly cute! I like to think that when the pet shop flooded, the tank that the lonely pink axolotl and their soup can bed cracked was the tank belonging to their future partner. This is the first example of post humanism/eco crit book explicitly critical of humanity that I've seen with children as the intended audience. Great Eco-conscious message, and the 978 baby axolotls are adorable in their uniqueness! 

In Every Heart a Doorway, Lundy came across as bitter and unlikable as a character. In In An Absent Dream, we get to see what made Lundy that way. Young Catherine Lundy is nothing like the adult version we meet, trapped in a child's body. I don't know that I could have made a decision other than what she tried, in order to be able to live in a world that felt like home, but not have to give up the sister she'd come to love - and through her the family she'd finally come to appreciate. Moon is such a lovable character, and I'm glad the McGuire gives us closure on her life, in that she's grown into a self-sufficient adult working with Vincent at his pie shop. We get to know she's safe and on a good path, rather than on her way back to becoming a bird again.
The archivist is such a good parental figure, and she's so human throughout the initial stages of the story, that her turn at the end, having to enforce the rules of the market despite her love of Lundy was all the more heartbreaking. Lundy meeting Eleanor West at the end was a very interesting start to the story we knew going into the novella. In Every Heart a Doorway it reads as if Lundy had tried to reverse her aging to trick her world, with malice. To know it was a decision made out of love makes her character all the more tragic.

Thank you to NetGalley and Matthew Sullivan for the digital advanced reader copy of Midnight in Soap Lake. This novel is just as gripping as Sullivan's first, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. Sullivan has a fantastic talent for building monsters of incredible magnitude and then tearing down their facade to show the terrible, vulnerable, and complicated people beneath.

As a librarian, I had complicated feelings about Miss Nellie. She is a terrible librarian, censoring books, harassing patrons, and bullying her staff. She's also horrific for allowing her lech of a brother to harass Sophia. However, as a character, Miss Nellie with all her power tripping and judgement, complicated by her kindness/protectiveness towards Preston makes her and her motives through the progression of events before and after Esme's death highly suspect, adding to the suspense around Tree Top. Parts of the actual conspiracy in the town remain unanswered, which, while frustrating, realistically illustrates bureaucratic corruption in small towns like the fictionalized version of Soap Lake.

Abigail and Esme are both compelling narrators. It's hard to read about a character growing up, and coming to love them as they become themselves, knowing all the while how and when they're going to die. Somehow, despite the novel starting with the discovery of Esme's body, I still found myself rooting for her to grow up, get out of Soap Lake, and for George to find help for her in time. Children are often hard to write realistically, but George felt like a real kid, in all the nuance that entails. The detail written for the supporting characters, especially Kevin, Krunk, Sophia, and Silas, and a few moments with Dr. Carla, made them just as easy to care about as Abigail and Esme. Not necessarily easy to love, but the way Sullivan molded them made me care about what happened to them. The only one who fell flat was Eli, but that's mostly because he spent 3/4 of the book out of the country and out of Abigail's life - and because he REALLY lives for the science, not seeking to harm others, but also not seeming to have easy access to his empathy either.

Pastor Kurt's fall from grace (get the pun?) is an interesting one. He ruined his life and destroyed his future in order to keep Silas out of jail, ultimately resulting in Silas's death, the death of the one kid in town with the hope of getting out of there, and forced himself into indentured servitude. And it was ultimately all for nothing.

I didn't particularly like the ending. Returning to Esme was interesting, but the timelines of the alternating perspective had already just about reached her death. It just didn't line up well with the rhythm of the rest of the novel and the dreamlike quality of the chapter did the book a disservice. Sophia's chapter didn't make much sense other than to say that the town still underestimates the marginalized and she's learned how to use that to her advantage. It didn't tie up any loose ends, and it didn't add anything. I read it twice. It just feels like it ends too abruptly, lacking the closure that made Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore such an engaging read all the way through. However, I do understand how integrating actual non-conspiracy law enforcement into the conclusion would be complicated given Daniel killed McDaid and Hal for orchestrating the myth and murders of Tree Top. I think what I wanted was more, not a return to the past to close the novel.

Also, what did George drop in the desert?

This book was a far funnier read than it had any right to be. The way the information was organized made it easy to follow and the intermittent jokes kept it engaging.

Initially, I was having a hard time liking Cora. At points, her anxiety at the possibility of being ridiculed for her size almost made it seem as if she had no other character traits. But, as the book progressed, we spent more page time with Cora, and further information about her past was revealed, Cora felt more and more real, and her internal monologue added to that sensation of reality. Rather than being an archetype or a character defined by her fear, she is a character whose reactions have been informed by experiencing cruelty in situations during which she expects cruelty from her fellow students. Her world was one that valued her for the attributes for which she was bullied to the extreme in our world.
From the summary of the book, I wasn't expecting someone other than Rini to be the narrator. Still, I enjoyed the whimsey and confidence of Sumi's daughter, through the eyes of someone more grounded, and whose narrative stream of conscious could be more easily understood. Confection is a strange place, and this is not my favorite addition to the series, but it was a very enjoyable read! It was especially interesting to get more information on the world building, the worlds compass, and to get to see Nancy again. My major critique of the book, is that the co-ruler of The Halls of the Dead was named The Lady of Shadows, and not The Lady of the Dead in Every Heart a Doorway. I'm glad to have Sumi back! She was, by far, the best of the dead.
Also, great disability representation and diversity of characters!

Jack is such a stoic character in Every Heart a Doorway. It was really interesting to see the childhood glimpsed in the first book, in vibrant detail. While the book is about both twins, it's pretty hard to care about Jill. At the same time, her anger is justified. Jack being encouraged to be pretty, quiet, and nonargumentative let it seem like she was on the side of her parents, even though both girls were trapped in the lives their parents designed. It was interesting to see Jack being deemed the pretty twin, and Jill the sporty one of the two in their youth, and to watch those roles melt away as they acclimated to their respectively chosen roles in the moors. Jack is taught to be an individual with a responsibility to the community and a community to be a part of. Jill is molded into a selfish child of a monster, getting everything she's ever wanted and only learning to crave more. Jack left and chose Dr. Bleak to save Jill, knowing she'd never be able to measure up to the level of decorum expected of them as Jack would be able to - at least not as they were when they were young. She left because she knew Jill would grow to resent her, even as Jill yearned for a relationship with her sister. Alexis's death at Jill's hands, as the person who loved Jack and taught her to love and be loved in return, was also the final blow through which Jack realized she couldn't completely give up on her sister and watch her be rightfully killed by the mob of townsfolk. Jill's delusion that killing Alexis would reconstitute her relationship with Jack shows how much of an influence the Master had on her, and how far she's gone from humanity. I hope we get to see them again, back in the Moors and Jill having to learn how to live like a person again, now that she's dead and cannot be loved by the Master. The possibility of Alexis's second resurrection is something I still haven't given up on yet.
I also really enjoyed Jack's explanation for her masculinized look, as not hiding or dismantling her femineity, but preserving it from the dangers of her work.