Books and Things

Wyrm | Any pronouns | Aroace | Been trying to get into reading again so this is just a place for me to liveblog about stuff I'm reading, I guess. Expect spoilers.

[literarywyrm]

Hello, I'm Wyrm. I'm one of those people who used to read ad nauseum in school and kind of petered out of reading since. This blog exists as a way to try to push me back into reading more often, as well as a way of attempting to start conversations about books because I love talking about stories with other people.

This blog will contain spoilers galore and also contain unfiltered thoughts regarding books. The good, the bad, the ugly. This is a place of honesty and full transparency.

Finished Books: [Link]

Currently reading:

Dune (Frank Herbert) [Owned]

Chlorine (Jade Song)

Let The Right One In (John Ajvide Lindqvist) [Owned]

The Murderbot Diaries 3 - Rogue Protocol (Martha Wells) [Owned]

TBR pile:

2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke)

Carmilla (J. Sheridan Le Fanu) [Owned]

House of Saphir (Marissa Meyer) [Owned]

Katabasis (R.F. Kuang) [Owned]

Lucky Day (Chuck Tingle) [Owned]

The Martian (Andy Weir) [Owned]

Red in Tooth and Claw (Lish McBride) [Owned]

Transitions (Élodie Durand) (English Translation) [Book Club]

The Vampire Chronicles #2: The Vampire Lestat (Anne Rice) [Owned]

The Vampire Chronicles #3: Queen of the Damned (Anne Rice) [Owned]

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

Someday Reads:

American Psycho (Brent Easton Ellis)

Bookshops and Bonedust (Travis Baldree) [Owned]

Compound Fracture (Andrew Joseph White) [Owned]

Conclave (Robert Harris)

The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within U.S. Slave Culture (Vincent Woodlard)

Dracula (Bram Stoker) [Owned]

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)

The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison)

Kill Her Twice (Stacey Lee) [Owned]

Late Night at the Telegraph Club (Malinda Lo) [Owned]

The Lesser Dead (Christopher Buehlman)

Make the Season Bright (Ashley Herring Blake) [Owned]

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Harriet A. Washington)

Night (Elie Wiesel) [Owned, somewhere]

Orientalism (Edward Said) [Owned]

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin) [Owned]

Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)

Second Night Stand (Karelia & Fay Stetz-Waters) [Owned]

We Are The Ants (Shaun David Hutchinson) [Owned]

When The Wolf Comes Home (Nat Cassidy)

Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) [Owned]

When I start finishing reading books, I'll make another post to link to tags relevant to that book. Something something 'Here's the link to books I've already read, they'll be tagged accordingly. Click the link to see posts about that book.' There'll be a chronological option and a non-chronological option. This is a work in progress.

[ohcorny]

Wacom recently asked me to talk about why I make queer comics, and given there are multiple bills right now floating around in congress that are effectively "we will kill your livelihood if we get a sniff of queer" I had some pretty strong, simply feelings to relay.

You can read the interview here, you can buy my graphic novel featuring a gay vampire here, and you can call your congressmen about rejecting HR 2616, HR 8705, HR 7661 using 5calls.org (they don't have these specific bills listed as things to call about, but luckily you can talk about whatever you want on the phone)

[luna-azzurra]

Your character doesn't need to be likeable. They need to be legible. The reader needs to understand every decision they make even when it's wrong, even when it's ugly, even when they want to shake them. Likeable is easy and forgettable. Legible is what makes someone stay with you for years. Make the logic of every bad choice visible. The reader doesn't have to agree with it. They just have to follow it.

[literarywyrm]

Oh, I don't know. I've not seen The Vampire Lestat as a show quite yet and I've barely gotten more than a few pages into the book (been busy), but the few songs or song snippets I've seen I actually kinda love lowkey. I love that they're imperfect, it's this echo of way back in the day when music wasn't perfectly produced for audience tastes, and it honestly appeals to me so much more than a lot of milquetoast modern music you'd hear on the radio. The imperfection adds to its charm, the fact that it can be criticized. I don't know, Lestat also strikes me as the kind of character who'd hear those criticisms and dig his soles in deeper because his current audience already adores him.

[ragsy]

Contemporary art haters will be like "i don't get it" and then not read the title or artist statement or the medium or the year or

[ragsy]

How to "get it":

Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)

Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?

Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?

Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?

Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?

Accept that sometimes, you still might not get it. This is perfectly okay.

[literarywyrm]

Aha, book club book of the month.

Apparently this book was inspired off of a latina author and the book is a poor approximation of her legacy due to its insistence of the work in question being forgotten and the only indication of this inspiration being a forward that wasn't in the original first edition or ARC. The author in question is Ana Mendieta, who incidentally is one of the most influential Cuban authors of the post-WWII era up to and following her death in 1985.

Now I don't know a lot about Ana Mendieta, but her being one of the most influential authors from Cuba and then having this story that's largely based off of her work depicting it as a forgotten art is... to be very kind and vague, rather strange. It's also strange to paint her death as being forgotten when the circumstances surrounding said death were considered by many at the time to be suspicious, and for feminists to be up in arms when justice wasn't served. That hardly seems 'forgotten', especially when said death in 1985 New York (incidentally the same identical setting and year of the fictional Anita de Monte's death) ripples still into discussion, controversy, and action all the way up to at least 2010.

So that's fun. And it's something to keep in mind while I'm reading.

[aughtpunk]

That Time a Published Author Told Me to Un-Queer My Novel

So, I don't think I ever shared this story on Tumblr before.

As you may know I've spent the past ten years turning my old Welcome to Night Vale fanfic into a stand alone novel called Echo of the Larkspur. Now, I haven't been working on it ten years straight. I'd pick it up, do a bunch of editing and rewriting, submit it to agents/publishers, get turned down, put the book away, wait 2-3 years, dust off the book, re-edit and rewrite, etc etc. A cycle that repeated itself far too many times that I would like.

Well, during one of these cycles when I was in the 'get rejected by every agent and publisher I submit to' stage I asked the writing group I was in what I was doing wrong. Because at this point I had reached a hundred total rejections and I was starting to suspect that the issue was with me.

One of the members of this writing group, a male author who was traditionally published, offered to read my first chapter and give his advice on how to fix it. This was, in retrospect, a mistake. But I was desperate. I sent him the first chapter and waited for his response.

Folks. The email he sent me changed my life.

First he said that agents wouldn't publish my novel because it was Sci-fi with hardcore gay erotica in it. This is curious because while the book certainly is queer, at no point in the conversation with this man did I say it was hardcore erotica. Nor did the first chapter feature any. It's almost as if he assumed that just because something was gay, it had to be hardcore erotica. Interesting.

He went on to say that a Human/Robot pairing was weird and that there was "No Way" my story could seriously address the issues of a relationship like that. Once again, he only read the first chapter. He just...assumed I wouldn't think of that? And that my book wouldn't cover it?

The author then said “I also felt that the LGBTQ inclusion really seems to cloud things.” Direct Quote.

And then this is when he said my favorite quote of them all:

The idea of a book being a sci-fi with romance AND a mystery is a Modern Art Marzipan Owl. It's just too confusing! No one can handle a story that is a mystery in a sci-fi enviroment AND has a romantic subplot! THEIR BRAINS WOULD LITERALLY EXPLODE!

Thankfully he had a solution to my book problem. His answer? Turn the book into an Action Spy Thriller and turn S.A.G.E., a robot that identies as a gay man, into a sexy lady robot who needs a MAN to teach her what it means to be human.

(I assume the male lead will teach the 'confused' female robot how to be human via his penis.)

Now my favorite part about this advice is that at no point did he outright say "Remove the gay part". No, instead he sneakily changed the robot love interest into a female robot as if I wouldn't notice. Just sort of swept away the gay bits as something totally unneeded and just mucking up the narrative. Also that's not the plot of my story, I have no idea where this virus thing came from.

(Also note that the female robot can't be robotic-like at all. Must preserve the average straight-man sex drive at all costs I guess)

He then finished his email basically saying that I should remove everything that 'traditional publishers' don't like (aka the queer parts) and make it easier for 'your average reader' to digest and my book will be good as published!

When I said this email changed my life I meant it. Because it made me realize I'd rather be self published and unknown than traditionally publish milquetoast trash like he suggested. Like holy fuck. If I removed all of the "Difficult" to digest stories out of Echo of the Larkspur then there wouldn't be a book left!

So here I am. Self publishing my Marzipan Modern Art Owl of a book. I know it'll never see the inside of a bookstore or top the charts on Goodreads but hey, I'd rather it speak to one person than have a thousand people get excited for the part where the male lead teaches the lady robot how to be human (via his penis).

If a Queer Sci-fi/Romance/Mystery novel sounds like your jam then consider preordering it!

Looking for something to read now? Can't afford the book? Willing to read in exchange for an honest review? You can join my ARC book readers here!

[quinnandersonwrites]

Congratulations! Also that guy was just dead wrong because @hazeldomain published a human/robot gay romance as well.

[hazeldomain]

We need a bookstore that lets us filter with tags like on Ao3, because publishers are losing way too many multifaceted books because they can’t advertise it with three tropes.

[straythoughtshopelesshearts]

Can I get my hands on a physical copy please

[aughtpunk]

For reasons I cannot comprehend Amazon doesn't let you preorder physical copies. They'll be on sale July 23rd, the same day the digital version comes out.

And for those who don't do Amazon (totally fair) my book will be put up for sale on other websites like B&N, Kobo, and Itch.io 90 days after the Amazon release.

Follow me for updates and more general SCREAMING

[aughtpunk]

So uh it has been pointed out that I never actually said what the plot of the novel is in this post so LET ME FIX THAT REAL QUICK: “The sole survivor of a massacre, Dr. Ciro Kwakkenbos, has spent the last six years in intensive therapy. He’s finally capable of working with Artificial Intelligence again—and comes to the Ceres colony determined to prevent robots from committing any future atrocities. When he arrives, Ciro realizes the robot in charge of the colony’s security, S.A.G.E. (Sentient Automated Geo-sentinel Engineer), is dangerously close to complete sentience. S.A.G.E. is more interested in observing the colonists’ everyday lives (and matching them with appropriate musical soundtracks) than following its intended programming. Robots aren’t supposed to be charming, kind, or compassionate, either. But as Ciro investigates, he discovers S.A.G.E. has learned how to lie and—possibly—harm and kill humans. Worse, S.A.G.E.’s memories have been hacked, deleting a deadly secret. Despite the danger S.A.G.E. poses, Ciro can’t deny the feelings growing between them. Now Ciro must unravel the truth behind the missing memories—before S.A.G.E. and the colony are doomed.”

I hope y'all love Ciro and S.A.G.E. as much as I do.

And Huggabot. But Huggabot is a whole 'nother thing.

[aughtpunk]

ATTENTION! Due to a slight hiccup the physical copies of Echo of the Larkspur will be released on July 26th! The ebook will still be available the 23rd! Mark your calendars! And if you want a signed copy drop me a line!

Thank you for your patience!

[aughtpunk]

ECHO OF THE LARKSPUR IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

[aughtpunk]

Echo of the Larkspur is now Darn Near Everywhere! Click here for the list of websites its now available at!

Paperback and Hardcover now available at Barnes and Noble!

[literarywyrm]

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Let me preface this: The story itself is good. The quality of writing, just okay. Nothing to write home about. The book is depicted pretty much solely in dialogue, save the last 5, 10% or so, which follows more typical descriptive writing. A vampire gives an interview to a young man on the story of his life, beginning as a vampire and ending with the loss of his ties to his humanity, which is something that gave him great pain over the course of the century. The interview element inherently breaks the story periodically for unneeded interjections a la Kvothe (The Name of the Wind) between interviewer and interviewee, which is a little interesting but heavily disrupts the flow of the story. There were several scenes where Louis describes things in such abstract and flowery detail that I just couldn't understand the symbolism or wrap my head around the scene, which crop up several times in a work whose writing is otherwise much more simple.

The characters.

There is Lestat, the vampire who turned him; Claudia, the child he and Lestat raise; and Armand, the oldest vampire that they become aware about. Lestat and Claudia both put pressure on Louis to abandon his attachment to the human world, a suggestion that Louis greatly resists, and Armand insists that this value for humanity and morality and passion is what makes Louis unique. The utter irony of the story is that Lestat and Claudia both place emphasis on leaving human notion, yet they themselves are hypocrites who can't help but cling to it in their own way; and the answers that Armand offers for Louis, on the nature of vampires and immortality, is nothing but his own opinion and observation. Despite being 400 years a vampire, he himself knows little except what exists within himself, and vampires are as varied in personality and desire as humans.

Now let's address the elephant in the room.

Claudia.

The 5-year-old girl who is turned into a vampire. Whose body remains the same even as her mind continues to develop. Who is raised as Louis's and Lestat's daughter over the years and struggles greatly with the curse of being trapped forever within such a young form. There is nothing wrong with exploring this element of her story---it's a very interesting concept, this immortal mind in an immortal body, and it in itself is worthy of exploration. Claudia's character is wonderfully interesting.

The issue comes with the perspective character, Louis, frequently describing her in ways that flirt with a pedophilic angle. He thinks of her as his bride, his love; he describes her, once, as his paramour, which Armand echoes back when asking about her; Claudia herself seems to indulge the idea of them being in this sort of... Intimate relationship.

I walked into Interview with the knowledge that the series itself has this problematic element, and I came in assured that it wasn't that bad in the first book. Maybe this awareness made me more sensitive to these moments; maybe if I were younger, these themes would have passed me by. I do believe that a piece of media can be enjoyed in spite of problematic elements if those elements are acknowledged for what they are. (I do not extend such notions to series like Harry Potter, whose creator uses income from the series to fund anti-trans legislation. She herself is problematic and still benefits from the income and royalties; she doesn't deserve my attention.) And I do believe that media can be consumed despite problematic elements to get to the gold that's underneath.

But the way that Claudia is written in this book, and by extension, children in general, is incredibly peculiar and predatory. I'd still hate the occasional moment or two but I'd be able to look past it. I could deal with Lestat putting his fucking mouth over the nipple of a drugged-out boy before biting his neck and drinking for him even though I'd still think it's really fucking weird. But for Claudia to be a main character and described in such a way, as a cherubic bride worthy of dedication---I can't get past that discomfort, and it (spoilers, for this book that's been out since the 1970s) makes me care about her death so much less than I would have liked.

Claudia was raised as Lestat and Louis's daughter; this is expressed multiple times, explicitly, in the text. I love this element. This is what makes me care. So why, then, must she be romanticized? To show how evil vampires truly are? I don't care---there are other ways to show this 'evil' in vampires, and the story would have lost nothing from this romantic element being lost entirely. In fact, relegating the relationship solely to the father/daughter relationship would have anchored their story further in loss and grief. As I said, the romantic element made me not care about Claudia's death, and I wanted to care.

Tell me why Claudia is written in such a way when Anne Rice herself has stated that the main trio are based off of her own family? She is Louis; her husband, Lestat; Claudia, her dead, 5-year-old daughter who died of leukemia. That context just adds an extra layer of weirdness that just ruins the story for me, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth over half a day after finishing the book. The romantic element alone would have lost it a whole star, but it affected my enjoyment of the story so badly that I lowered it by two.

This book was written in 1976. I guarantee that if it were released in the modern day, there'd be a deeper discussion about this. People would tear into the contents of this book and rip it to shreds. With how bad it is in the first book, I dread what the next installments of the series might hold.

[literarywyrm]

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A relatively average book, not awful by any means for a debut novel, but it certainly has its fair share of problems. I expected Evelyn and Emily to be the only ones who were trying to investigate Violet's death, but within the first few chapters, the other girls are well aware of it as well. I expected the séance to happen much sooner in the story and I expected Emily to be jealous of Evelyn for being the one Violet 'chose' to possess, though I'm not opposed to the way that particular plot point ended up. The first half of the book to me is painfully slow; the characters felt like the most they did was just talk to each other about solving the problem. The first half of the book also very badly needed an editor to go through it---I found multiple writing errors that a line editor would have been able to catch. These issues showed much less at about the halfway point of the story onwards, but still showed up periodically from time to time.

The entire séance with the fortune teller is an unnecessary scene, considering the characters already have a book that has all the information they need and she never makes a reappearance again.

There are about four themes in the book and of the four, only three of them can hold hands, and only tangentially: I can see what the author is trying to say and the themes she wants the book to explore, but the themes struggle to relate to each other and don't have enough room to breathe. It makes the whole story seem confused over whether it wants to talk about bodily autonomy and choice, or if it wants to focus on nationalism, or if it wants to talk about the harmful effects of traditional English values and how it takes away that autonomy of choice from young women, if it wants to talk about the many ways a girl's body can be violated.... I can see there are threads between the themes, but making out the actual connections is difficult.

I also don't understand why Spoiled Milk is the title of the book when rotting apples carries so much more relevance throughout the story. I also wish that the whole concept of the rotting food had been more thoroughly explored and examined throughout the book.

I do think that the story drastically improves halfway through once an early plot point is closed: Emily begins as a very unlikable character but once that plot point is resolved, she shows a steady capability to change for the better. I think that the secondary characters were okay---I at least cared about them as the events unfolded, and I do feel as though their characters indicate a relevancy to the themes of personal autonomy/choice and societal expectations attempting to strip that away from you to become the 'proper woman'. That's how I see the latter part of the book, at least---as a sort of physically-manifested metaphor. I feel the second half is better than the first, and I appreciate that the book attempts to let us end with unanswered questions to ruminate over.

All told, the book was okay. I'm not sure if I'd pick it up for a re-read, but there were parts that did make me tear up and there were parts that melted my heart a little. There were parts that I genuinely liked. It just kind of sucks that it took pushing through the first half to get to the main meat of what the author obviously wanted to write.

[literarywyrm]

Words cannot describe how little I cared about Claudia's death in Interview With the Vampire simply because of the confused enforcement of her implied intimacy with Louis throughout the book. I would have cared a lot more if it'd just stuck to the father/daughter dynamic. I would have cried. Instead the whole experience is tainted by that whole aspect of the story and I just couldn't feel anything about it other than a mild 'oh that's sad' and a less-than-mild discomfort.

I don't know what I expected of Armand. For some reason, I was under the assumption that he'd be a chaotic and unstable vampire, somebody who causes problems on purpose, but instead he's the most level-headed character throughout the whole book and is the only one who treated Louis with any sense of compassion from the get-go. It's interesting how his passivity parallels Louis's passivity, and how they are two sides of the same coin, essentially, just on opposite sides of their opinions about vampiric existence. The horrible irony that is Louis clinging to his humanity when it was Lestat or Claudia pushing him to abandon it, and that love only being lost when he finally finds somebody who appreciates that aspect of him.

[literarywyrm]

Ugh

[literarywyrm]

Uhhhhh formatting error??? Help

[literarywyrm]

These pages are one right after the other. Excuse me, what the hell??? What the hell do you mean there are literally missing pages in the deluxe edition of Katabasis??? But the pages are numbered properly---70 and 71. The writing is really good and I'm interested in the story and world building, in how the lore of various cultures regarding each of their own underworld is treated as historic accounts of undetermined reality.

This is so abrupt and disappointing. I don't want to read any more just because I hate missing the context of what happened in whatever it is that's missing. Where else does this happen in the book? I don't know that I even have the receipt for the book to trade it out for one that might not be so compromised. How does this even happen, legitimately?

[literarywyrm]

As it turns out, the formatting for my deluxe edition of Katabasis---with the nice, thick pages and the sprayed edges, and the golden yellow embossed cover beneath the dust jacket, is a printing error that's located in most of the US deluxe editions. It seems most US deluxe editions has one of two printing errors: One where the map depicting Hell as a 'pizza anus' (as Alice so eloquently describes it) is flipped with another map; and one where the correct map Alice offers is there instead, but its inclusion bungles up the formatting of the following couple of paragraphs.

Evidently, the one I have is the latter, which is the less preferred one because it interrupts the reading experience rather significantly. The hypothesis is that the publisher realized that the pizza anus was the wrong image for the second map and they replaced it with the correct one without bothering to check if it messed up the formatting.

This is incredibly bemusing. You'd think that if a deluxe edition is published for a rising, popular author that they'd do a better job with quality control in the first place, but apparently that's not the case. Assumedly this is the only error like this in the book, and on surfing the pages, I'm inclined to believe it: The only other images in the book (that aren't chapter headers) are similar maps of Hell that're more detailed than the ones the characters draw in the narrative at the very end, so there's no chance of them warping the text.

Did that stop me from getting a paperback copy of Katabasis because I don't like missing context in books? Nope. You're talking to someone who tries his hardest not to skip books in a series if he can help it.

[literarywyrm]

'I'll post my review for Spoiled Milk on here as soon as I get on my computer' and I haven't been on my computer in quite literally a week. Smh

[literarywyrm]

Frank Herbert's raging homophobia showing in the main villain describing his 15-year-old relative's body as 'such a lovely body' or whatever the fuck the actual phrasing was, by the way. And that man being obscenely fat (again, fat = evil being a shorthand in media, even today; though I think much less in more modern times, even if it still exists) to top it all off with fatphobia. Incidentally Baron Harkonnen is described physically in such a way as to imply a physical disgust, selfishness and greed and then adding gayness to that element explicitly is designed to associate homosexuality with dark, malevolent morality.

Baron Harkonnen's sexual proclivities is hinted at within his very first introduction and is inextricably linked with his moral bankruptcy and physical fatness: The reality is that by associating fatness and homosexuality together with this man, the implication is that anybody who are either of these is morally bankrupt. Which, obviously, is very untrue. Yes, there are gay men and fat people who have done horrible things, but it has nothing to do with them being fat or gay.

Frank, your politics are showing in this book about and inspired by what is essentially white saviorism.

[literarywyrm]

I shan't harp on it much beyond this because I'm sure that people have discussed it over the sixty-odd years that Dune has been in publication, but wow.

You've just got to love how the main villain, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, is fat, and how that fatness is used to emphasize his grossness of character, corruptedness, gluttony, and greed. The Baron is fat because he consumes, because he is the villain: He's so fat that he needs suspenders to walk. His hinted, creepy fucking desire for Paul's body is emphasized because he's fat. Fat people are creeps. Fat people are rude and cruel.

Essentially: Wow, fatphobia. Wow, using fat as a shortcut for moral bankruptcy and political corruption sure was a shorthand back then. That sure was a choice. It can't even be said that Frank Herbert made this choice because it's the opinion of the perspective character---Dune is a third-person omniscient book, and it isn't afraid of head hopping.

It just makes me think about how fatness is still used in more modern works of media to exhibit very similar notions---fat characters being either stupid or bullies, fat characters being cruel and corrupt mob bosses, the writer's fatphobia shining through in the writing clear as day.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, except to say that Dune is something of a product of its time, and that specific element still stubbornly persists to this very day, and it's all very unfortunate.

Is the Baron the only fat character in the franchise? I feel I read somewhere that this was the case, though I'm not 100% certain.

[literarywyrm]

There's definitely some kind of love triangle going on between Alice, Peter, and Professor Grimes. Or, at least, Alice has some kind of emotional history with both of these men in a way that's. Actually written very interestingly?

I think what greatly helps with that is Peter unabashedly showing himself to be a genuinely nice guy (not 'nice guy' that tries to befriend women with the goal of getting with them), who respects Alice's boundaries. And, despite current events, whatever they were before their falling-out was incredibly positive.

What also helps is that Professor Grimes is 100% written to be a cruel and thoughtless character who is unquestionably in the wrong, who's abused his students liberally and used them to further his own research. Alice doesn't go to Hell to save a cruel man that she loves: She goes to Hell to get a letter of recommendation that will guarantee her career. Her relationship with Grimes is first and foremost career-oriented, and whatever it is she and him developed ultimately manifested from that.

With how careless Grimes is and how cruel he is to his own students, I wonder whether he actually wanted to die and go to Hell. I wonder if it has something to do with his own research. I wonder if he pushed these students on purpose to get sent to Hell. And I wonder whether or not, if Alice and Peter find him, he will even give Alice her letter of recommendation. After all, even if she ultimately gave him what he wanted, she still made a careless mistake and killed him.

I wonder, too, if Peter really only came to Hell with Alice because he worried about her safety and didn't want her to go alone.

[literarywyrm]

Uhhhhh formatting error??? Help

[literarywyrm]

These pages are one right after the other. Excuse me, what the hell??? What the hell do you mean there are literally missing pages in the deluxe edition of Katabasis??? But the pages are numbered properly---70 and 71. The writing is really good and I'm interested in the story and world building, in how the lore of various cultures regarding each of their own underworld is treated as historic accounts of undetermined reality.

This is so abrupt and disappointing. I don't want to read any more just because I hate missing the context of what happened in whatever it is that's missing. Where else does this happen in the book? I don't know that I even have the receipt for the book to trade it out for one that might not be so compromised. How does this even happen, legitimately?