sophee_568's reviews
471 reviews

Made me nauseaus..not for me

When I saw that Cyan Waters was a story inspired by the poolrooms, one of my favorite urban legends, I knew I had to read this. The cover art is stunning, and the contrast of the white font of the title with the dark background gives it a cyberpunk, computer glitch kind of look.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of the Backrooms – that is an online urban legend that originated from a creepypasta posted on a 4chan thread in 2019. The original Backrooms look like empty office spaces with musty yellow wallpaper spread out almost infinitely. Backrooms are a type of liminal space – areas that look staggeringly different when vacant and evoke a feeling of nostalgia and sadness. The only way to enter the Backrooms is to noclip from reality, which means to accidentally discover a glitch in reality and fall through it. At this moment in time, the Backrooms have their own Wiki page with extensive lore. They have hundreds of distinct levels connected with elevators and stairways, and the Poolrooms are on level 37. According to their wiki page, the Poolrooms are an expansive complex of interconnected rooms and corridors slightly submerged in undulating, lukewarm water. As you might have guessed, the events in Cyan Waters happen in the Poolrooms. The writer respected the original appearance of the Poolrooms and decided to build his own story from the original legend.

The main character is Vuk Petrović, a Belgrade-based tycoon, owner of PetrOil, an oil company inherited from his father. He is a disgusting character. Vuk is a filthy rich capitalist who looks down upon his employees and seems revolted by them. He thinks of himself as a wolf, which is the literal meaning of his name. That was a clever little gimmick since most English readers likely would not figure that out. The basic premise is that Vuk noclipps out of reality during a board meeting. During the meeting, he announces positive news to his employees, but one of them is acting weird. That employee, Mirza,  constantly referred to as that fucking Bosnian, kept looking at Vuk and smiling at him. In the end, Vuk blames Mirza for his disappearance from the real world. Melonio did a great job making the reader dislike Vuk, but I wish we could have spent more time with him to truly see how cruel he can be. I did not mind Melonio making a Bosnian character the alleged villain because the writer is Bosnian (as am I, and I thought it was funny).

Once Vuk finds himself in the glaringly white tiled rooms with nothing but a pool of cyan-blue water that does not feel like water, he slowly loses his mind. He notices the absence of any physical needs except thirst. When he drinks water from the pool for the first time, he empties his stomach moments later. As he gets accustomed to the taste of pool water, the state of his mind alters, and he begins to hallucinate. Vuk's story ultimately becomes the story of Sysiphus. Just as Sysiphus cannot escape his task, Vuk cannot escape his aqueous prison. Surrounded by the everpresent dripping sound of water, Vuk desperately seeks the exit.

Overall, I enjoyed this weird, fantastical dream-like story. I knew it was only a matter of time before someone utilized the unsettling atmosphere that the Backrooms provide in the literary world. There are a few cool video games set in the Backrooms, and now bookworms can get a taste of the dizzying, eerily alluring world of that parallel world.

Thank you to Booksirens for the free review copy!

I honestly don't know how to rate this. This book will stay with me for a long time. I have such deep love and affection for the protagonist.

I'd feel bad giving this lower than 3 stars. I think it's an okay book but I didn't care about Margaret and Michale's story. It was distracting and simply boring. I read this for the post partum depression/psychosis representation. I haven't read many books that deal with that topic. I read Die, My Love by ariana harvix, which was great and better than this.