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A review by cynicaltrilobite
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder
3.0
Could have the subheader, "That time, I caught the Cthulhu Virus, and it turned me into a lesbian!"
There's a lot here that I like and a lot that I don't, a real middle of the road experience overall.
Our story follows three women dealing with the outbreak of a horrible virus that causes some who survive it to develop a need for human blood and brains. It opens with our first POV, a woman named Erin, whose life is thrown into chaos when she contracts the sinister polymorphic viral gastroencephalitus (PVG for short). This results in her needing to consume human brain tissue for sustenance and eventually ends in her transformation into.... something else.
The next section follows Savannah, a sex worker who is infected by a client and realizes she is tasked by eldritch entities to slay the unworthy. When she does so, she has the most eye rolling insane orgasms of her life. I'll talk on it more later, but this was my least favorite section.
Finally, we close with Mareva, a coworker of Erin's who ends up in a hellish situation where she is expected to singlehandedly usher in the Earth's new inhabitants after all the old ones are gone. This was my favorite section.
So, the things I like. There's some really good horror here and some stuff that legitimately made me cringe in discomfort (specifically the brain licking). I also enjoy the mystery aspect of everything being set up and slowly revealed. Even once we know what all is going on, we still don't know WHY any of this is happening. I also didn't dislike the sudden ending, as it felt like it absolutely kept the door open for a sequel.
The squiddo, Gregory 2.0, is a neat little thing and I appreciate how, despite being this fucked up monstrosity, he's literally just a baby. A baby with a ton of tentacles and downy fur covering, but a baby nonetheless. On that point, there's some absolutely fantastic creature design and body horror to boot. I'd love to see someone with more artistic talent than me take a stab at the Archivests. I also loved the last section when Mareva is watching the world fall to complete chaos and then settle into eerie quiet over the course of many weeks.
Onto what I didn't like. This book is preachy as all sin. For the record, I actually more or less agree with everything the author is getting at. However, when you're interrupting a horror novel to talk about assaults against women on college campuses in comparison to people killing folks so that they can eat their brains, the resulting tonal whiplash could constitute a real world example of psychic damage. I get the vibe that the author doesn't trust the reader enough to notice any parallels she may put in place and so feels the need to spell it out plain as day. It just feels a bit like being talked down to.
I felt a lot of the Savannah sex segments to be extremely gratuitous and a little much for my liking. I'm not a prude by any means, but the phrase "slick with girl goo" takes me out of any kind of scene you may have crafted. I also found quite a few of the scenes with Savannah to be extremely mean-spirited and cruel, ESPECIALLY the Leela bit. Speaking of mean-spirited, man, this book treats Gregory (the original) so fucking awfully. They're just a super nice person trying to do their best, as a partner and as a closteted transgender individual, and it feels like at every turn, the narrative beats the shit out of them.
Final complaint, I wish we could have had more hints/lead ups to this Yellow Sign business.
If a sequel to this book comes out, as I suspect it will, I'll probably seek it out. Give this a look if you like weird shit with great cosmic horror and monsters at the expense of some soap-boxing and AO3esque sex scenes.
There's a lot here that I like and a lot that I don't, a real middle of the road experience overall.
Our story follows three women dealing with the outbreak of a horrible virus that causes some who survive it to develop a need for human blood and brains. It opens with our first POV, a woman named Erin, whose life is thrown into chaos when she contracts the sinister polymorphic viral gastroencephalitus (PVG for short). This results in her needing to consume human brain tissue for sustenance and eventually ends in her transformation into.... something else.
The next section follows Savannah, a sex worker who is infected by a client and realizes she is tasked by eldritch entities to slay the unworthy. When she does so, she has the most eye rolling insane orgasms of her life. I'll talk on it more later, but this was my least favorite section.
Finally, we close with Mareva, a coworker of Erin's who ends up in a hellish situation where she is expected to singlehandedly usher in the Earth's new inhabitants after all the old ones are gone. This was my favorite section.
So, the things I like. There's some really good horror here and some stuff that legitimately made me cringe in discomfort (specifically the brain licking). I also enjoy the mystery aspect of everything being set up and slowly revealed. Even once we know what all is going on, we still don't know WHY any of this is happening. I also didn't dislike the sudden ending, as it felt like it absolutely kept the door open for a sequel.
The squiddo, Gregory 2.0, is a neat little thing and I appreciate how, despite being this fucked up monstrosity, he's literally just a baby. A baby with a ton of tentacles and downy fur covering, but a baby nonetheless. On that point, there's some absolutely fantastic creature design and body horror to boot. I'd love to see someone with more artistic talent than me take a stab at the Archivests. I also loved the last section when Mareva is watching the world fall to complete chaos and then settle into eerie quiet over the course of many weeks.
Onto what I didn't like. This book is preachy as all sin. For the record, I actually more or less agree with everything the author is getting at. However, when you're interrupting a horror novel to talk about assaults against women on college campuses in comparison to people killing folks so that they can eat their brains, the resulting tonal whiplash could constitute a real world example of psychic damage. I get the vibe that the author doesn't trust the reader enough to notice any parallels she may put in place and so feels the need to spell it out plain as day. It just feels a bit like being talked down to.
I felt a lot of the Savannah sex segments to be extremely gratuitous and a little much for my liking. I'm not a prude by any means, but the phrase "slick with girl goo" takes me out of any kind of scene you may have crafted. I also found quite a few of the scenes with Savannah to be extremely mean-spirited and cruel, ESPECIALLY the Leela bit. Speaking of mean-spirited, man, this book treats Gregory (the original) so fucking awfully. They're just a super nice person trying to do their best, as a partner and as a closteted transgender individual, and it feels like at every turn, the narrative beats the shit out of them.
Final complaint, I wish we could have had more hints/lead ups to this Yellow Sign business.
If a sequel to this book comes out, as I suspect it will, I'll probably seek it out. Give this a look if you like weird shit with great cosmic horror and monsters at the expense of some soap-boxing and AO3esque sex scenes.