Reviews and Comments

this book is long. and dense. and incredibly well-crafted. not a light read, but it is the first book in a very long time that i literally, physically, did not put the book down until i could no longer keep my eyes open. it is a helluva book. saying "think Dhalgren meets House of Leaves meets 2001" would be trite, but not wrong, but also not right.

Maybe the timing of this audio book aligns with the movie The Thirteenth Floor, because if you absorb both at the same time just maybe you'll experience something like the kind of mindf_ck both works aspire to produce. Not that there is anything wrong with stories questioning the nature of reality, but this one falls flat. The structure of the book, the order of the narration particularly, sets up the reader to have their mind blown. Sadly, the only thing blown here is a raspberry. This is a two-star story that I gave three stars. The third star is to honor the excellent imitation of living with mental illness(es). That the high quality of the writing and narration only lead to a boring conclusion only makes for more disappointment.

This book is neither inventive nor imaginative. This book is neither awful nor amazing. I would categorize it as a fairly basic ghost story with heavy-handed metaphors for generational trauma. But hey, it's horror: heavy-handed metaphors is where it's at, traditionally. So that's... just fine. I didn't find this story particularly scary -- that's subjective. I did find the climax and ending predictable -- that's also fine, and probably also subjective. Horror fans won't find anything new here, nor will they be terribly disappointed. Hence, 3 stars. Upside: I had never heard of the band Of Feather and Bone, and now I have.

I love VanderMeer. But for my money, this book was too long by half. The back third of the book dragged until the very end, at which point nothing really happens except for the author teeing up the sequel. I suspect I am not the intended audience for this book, or it simply wasn't my jam.