essjay's reviews
560 reviews

I am not necessarily the target audience for this series. I don't usually rate romance novels OR epic fantasy super highly. But these books are so compulsively readable. I kept scoffing and huffing about stupid shit that was happening, but I still struggled to put it down.  

The battle scenes were not my favourite, and I do wish they'd been pared down a bit. Also, goddamn there are so many characters to keep track of. 

I'm never going to re-read these (I didn't even look up recaps before starting this one), but I'll continue to read them as they come out. 

The stories I ended up enjoying the most were those that I think incorporated the stated theme of the anthology the best. Didn't even realize that until I was tallying my ratings for averages. And even then, the "lower" rated stories still never dipped below 3s, which I always count as a win in a collection. 

Stories rated 4¾+:

I needed something fluffy and kind of dumb today. This was that. 

I was hooked almost immediately, then considered DNFing. Then got hooked again, and then again considered DNFing. All of this occurred within the first half hour of starting.  Once I hit my stride, I was in for the ride, but the beginning is kind of uneven.

The end was not really all that surprising (although I also didn't find the end of Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh all that surprising either, and seem to be in the minority there), but was still incredibly effective. 

3.8 on the rubric, rounding up. 

Well, goddamn.

You know how sometimes you read something that feels like all of your Special Interests have been plucked right from your skull and placed lovingly on a page for you to marvel over? Once Was Willem ended up being like that for me. 

Faerie/folktales and fables? ✔️

Zombies (kinda)? ✔️

Úlfhéðinn? ✔️

Biblically accurate angels and nephilim? ✔️✔️✔️

And then another thing at about the halfway point that made me shout "HOLY SHIT, IT'S A [REDACTED]!" that I'm not going to spoil for you bc it made me so fucking happy to realize and I want you to have that realization, too. 

The way this story was written is probably not going to be for everyone. I started out keeping track of all the archaic words I had to look up, but eventually gave up and relied on context cues so I wouldn't have to stop reading. But some people are going to LOVE it, and I can't wait to talk to them about it. 

Genuinely creepy. The title tells you everything you need to know going in, and should indicate what's in store. I really think Page has become one of my favourite authors. Can't wait to read what they do next. 

I read this aloud to my 14y/o, the rating is an average of the total score they gave each story (44) divided by the number of stories (11). 

This is the sort of anthology that can either really work, or really doesn't, where each of the stories really contributes to the theme as a whole. Here we have a group of teen-equivalent aliens on an unsanctioned mission to Earth to rescue one of their own. The landing doesn't go as hoped, escape pods are cast off, and each crew member ends up in a different location. 

We kept yelling at them every time they revealed themselves to a new human (bc we suck and why would you take that chance) and also laughed a lot at how many of the stories seemed to revolve around the human kids hoping to get scholarships to escape their hometowns.

While we really did enjoy almost the whole thing (only one story was a dud in our opinion, but the 14y/o wouldn't let me skip it in case it was important later), the following were their favourites:

"Prologue: No Strangers to Love" by Vanya Stoyanova and Rosiee Thor - "This was a lot of fun, a great intro, and I LOVED the use of Rick Astley."

"Username: I'm An Actual Human" by Eric Smith - "I love everything about this story, it was so fun and funny, and I want to be Dexin's online friend."

"Parts of a System" by SJ Whitby - "I knew I was going to love this bc I LOVE SJ Whitby, but I wasn't prepared for how MUCH I loved it. I haven't really come across too many stories featuring enbies who were socialized male, so that was really cool. Find out if anyone has recommendations for that, please?"

We will be checking out a few of the other authors' works, and recommending this as a purchase for our local library. 

Honestly, this book was complete and utter bonkerballs and I loved every second I spent with it. It's almost impossible to talk about and be coherent (I've tried several times while reading) bc any description you give sounds like you're describing some fucked up fever dream Zillennial nonsense? Idk. I loved it, will read it again, and can't wait to see what Kemp writes next.  

This is how Cyrus Roger got sent to the school where they told him he'd never be famous. 

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you. 

Hail Satan. 

Add another to my list of melancholy time travel 2024 releases pile. Can't help comparing it to the other things I've read and as such, it suffers a little. Still enjoyed quite a bit (the framing device of using Wells' The Time Machine as a  non-fiction starting point was absolutely inspired), and will probably push it on a few people if asked.