entazis's reviews
818 reviews

This book is a wild ride! It may be a novella, but it has so much to say. At the heart, it's a story about a desperate need to conformity out of internalized homophobia, wanting to belong and yearning for normalcy, but ending up miserable and lonely. It's also a corporate satire, illustrating the absurdity of the beauty industry, but also, the corruption, and toxic work environments. And in the end, it's a folk horror tale of fighting to live your life as true to yourself as you can in a society that tries to paint you as wrong, as something monstrous.
From creepy, unsettling, and tense, to gory, bloody, satirical, and even romantic, this book will bring you to the team building at the remote lodge in Zagorje, a beautiful hill region of Croatia known for the wine, where you'll find lonely sapphic coming to her breaking point.
If you're interested in Slavic folk tales, this one is a reimagining of the story of Babaroga, giving her a more modern, queer twist (Baba Roga, a lesser known monstrous woman of Slavic folklore said to eat bad kids, similar to Baba Yaga, only, she has no house with chicken legs, but a horn protruding out of her forehead). I find it interesting how Ivana connects the story of our famously "conventionally unattractive" woman to the world of cosmetic surgery.

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo follows a trans nurse who gets a post in an isolated village in Appalachia, in 1929. It's obvious from the start that the village will be a problem - with their hate of strangers and everyone who's different. And even when the protagonist tries to pass for his safety, it's still not enough, being percieved as an unmarried working woman in a "godfearing" village where everyone know "their place". But he learns he's not alone, in the village there's another trans youth who's in constant opposition and fights with the pastor.

I don't think I need to tell you that this is one of those horror books where tensions and terror come from humans, ready to commit attrocities under the guise of religion. There's a great quote in the book that someone whose power is based on fighting demons needs to find demons wherever he can. And this story illustrates well how an oppresive society creates its own monsters where there were none to begin with.

And while the first part of the book was hard to read, with growing dread, the last part of the book was the "you're doing amazing, sweetie" meme. The ending was a cathartic experience after everything that happened.

The book is also an exploration of trans and queer identities in a historical context, learning about yourself when you had very little knowledge and language to explain yourself.
And the role nature plays here vs religion, especially in the context how queer/trans people are usually considered "unnatural", is just perfect. 

This book has such a strong opening. Truly, the second chapter (I think it was second) dives into the nigthmarishly unsettling teritory, and the way it ended left me disturbed (had to pause with reading at that point to jump in the sea to cool off. Also, it was sweltering warm.).

But what was surpring was that even though the book deals with some dark & heavy topics (like, r*pe, kidnapping, abusive mothers, child abduction, loss of a spouse), the book managed to be so funny. The author has a great sense of humor and I was left laughing out loud almost every other chapter (while being unnerved in between). The story is also split in the timeline, building for us a mystery through multiple generations, giving us that epic feel of a family saga (and maybe you already heard this, but a difficult mother-daughter relationship in media is my jam, and oh boy, this one has multiple generations doing horrible shit).

And as a treat, we also got a creepy children show in the vein of Candle Cove, which is always a bonus, if you ask me.

In conclusion, I was unsettled and entertained, and as a folk horror title, this one is a true gem. 

This was super funny. I enjoyed the humor and the tensions, the main character was refreshingly fun, petty, snarky and self-centered, and the complicated family dynamics are something that I really love in fiction and here it was done really great.

This book is fun and tense, disturbing in all the right places, and has a lot of heart. It talks about art and more specifically, queer art, in relation to the capitalist society that only recognizes profit over artistic expression. Or that puts profit as the only thing that values, sacrificing everything else. But it's also about queer tragedy and queer joy. Very meta, it analyses art and how we create, the inspiration behind it, and how capitalism refuses any nuance because that's not easy to sell.