Book review: All These Sunken Souls
Re-read it for the first time because I just got a physical copy, which took me nine days to read. It was published in 2023. It's a horror anthology.
Chapters listed in most to least favorite: All My Best Friends Are Dead, The Landscape Of Broken Things, Be Not Afraid, Lights, The Teeth Come Out At Night, Papa Pearlie, I Love Your Eyes, Mother Daughter And The Devil, No Harm Done, The Consumption Of Vienna Montrose.
"But," he begins. "But you are an angel." Her mouths open. She speaks her first words. "No," she says from her many throats. "You named me that."
- Anthologies are cool because you get to see so many different writing styles and how they contrast with and compliment each other.
- Devil as an allegory for abuser sometimes gets weird but it's done well in Mother, Daughter, And The Devil I think. I really like that Lily kills him.
- I like that most of the stories aren't romance focused and that in the ones that do include that, the romances are absolutely doomed.
- I love social commentary horror. Be Not Afraid is such a perfect story.
- I think The Landscape Of Broken Things and All My Best Friends Are Dead are the scariest to me, because they play on fears I have I guess lol. The Landscape Of Broken Things is so cool to me also because too often when psych wards and the like are involved in horror, the horror is based around the fact that mentally disabled people live there, and in this one the horror is directly tied to the loss of self and autonomy associated with being in one.
- It's so hard to pick a favorite. They're all so well written and there are a lot of really powerful stories in this. A lot of them are pretty relatable, too.
- I wish that Zeke would've killed Papa Pearlie instead of himself, or found a way to safely destroy the dolls or something, but it makes sense why he would do what he did.
- Lights does Not go how you think it would, or at least I didn't expect the twist the first time I read it. I really like the biased narrator trope, he's giving us hints at the danger and he's completely misinterpreting them.
- No Harm Done is just sad all over. The title is lying to you, there is very much harm afoot.
- Small pointless detail but I enjoy that more than one of the stories featured has a scene where characters eat soup.
- The cover art is so pretty, by the way. I don't normally mention the covers when reviewing them (never judge a book by its cover yk) but for this one I have to because I really really like it.
- The only chapter I don't like is The Consumption Of Vienna Montrose. It's gross to me lol, which I guess is the point but it makes me dislike it. The like, taken by/manipulated into loving a monster trope isn't fun for me.
- There's a lot of good foreshadowing in I Love Your Eyes, and reading that while knowing what's gonna happen is the best thing ever. The dialogue gets kind of eccentric after the masks are dropped but it's pretty fun.
- There's a nice balance of tragicness and creepiness throughout the book that I enjoy.
- This book introduced me to one of my favorite authors, Liselle Sambury. Her writing style is awesome. All My Best Friends Are Dead jumps from past to present, which was a little confusing the first time I read it, but it made reading it this time so fucking fun?? Books with shifting narrators and/or times are cool.
The book does really well on the tests, passing all of the ones it qualifies for (the only other one being the Ali Nahdee test). Whether or not the sick dog test is applicable depends on whether we're counting Clairvoyancy or persistant tooth pain as disabilities. If we are, then it passes.
10/10. Here is the Storygraph for the book !!
