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juushikaTitle: A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood Book 1)
Author: S.T. Gibson
Published: Nyx Publishing, 2021
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 275
Total Page Count: 454,825
Text Number: 1588
Read Because: mentioned bychthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Dracula's first bride as an abuse survivor, addressing her Maker after centuries of marriage and after his death. This a loose novel with a gliding, freeform organization and a fun second-person address. I love the vampire atmosphere, the real sense of centuries passing; and, of course, the bloody, gothic indulgences. An abusive relationship and a vampire family map naturally to each other, a profound social isolation that creates an insular, toxic dependence.
But this cleaves to a narrow metaphor of vampire-as-abusive-relationship that I find limits the vampire elements specifically. When physical abuse pops up as a singular occurrence and final straw I was, frankly surprised; it feels out of character that it isn't present throughout the relationship, when so much other violence is. I like this, I like its vibes, but it doesn't gel for me.
Title: I Hold My Father's Paws
Author: David D. Levine
Published: 2006
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 20
Total Page Count: 454,845
Text Number: 1589
Read Because: see review, available free via Infinity Plus
Review: This comes up regularly in alterhuman circles and I can see why, since it's ridiculously on point: protagonist's father physically transitions to dog. The story itself is ... fine; troubled family dynamics are one of the least interesting possible frameworks for this subject, but I appreciate how they complicate the father's psychological motivations—the protagonist holds him both close and at a distance; the father is identifying as but also escaping into dog. So: interesting. Not especially convincing—the "dog with a human head scenes" particularly fail to track; they're not even body horror, they're just comedic. But certainly relevant to my interests.
Title: I Await the Devil's Coming
Author: Mary MacLane
Published: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2022
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 110
Total Page Count: 466,895
Text Number: 1637
Read Because: mentioned in emily m. danforth's Plain Bad Heroines, available via Project Gutenberg
Review: The diary of Mary MacLane, chronicling a few months of her life as a 19-year-old woman. This is such a vulnerable text. It's a stylized self-portrait: conceited, brilliant, engaging, often miserable. It's flagrantly honest except when it fails to be - most tellingly when MacLane doesn't or can't yet articulate her own queer desire. Works that were genre-defining often show their age when revisited; they feel less revolutionary in view of the texts they spawned. And sure, this is a now-familiar model of teenage angst and confessional writing. But for all its very mortal exaggerations and imperfections, I feel it in my heart: a specific queer rage, an experience defined foremost by lack of self-knowledge, lack of fulfillment, lack of community, lack of recognition. MacLane evokes it beautifully, in her lines and in the spaces between.
Author: S.T. Gibson
Published: Nyx Publishing, 2021
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 275
Total Page Count: 454,825
Text Number: 1588
Read Because: mentioned by
chthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: Dracula's first bride as an abuse survivor, addressing her Maker after centuries of marriage and after his death. This a loose novel with a gliding, freeform organization and a fun second-person address. I love the vampire atmosphere, the real sense of centuries passing; and, of course, the bloody, gothic indulgences. An abusive relationship and a vampire family map naturally to each other, a profound social isolation that creates an insular, toxic dependence.
But this cleaves to a narrow metaphor of vampire-as-abusive-relationship that I find limits the vampire elements specifically. When physical abuse pops up as a singular occurrence and final straw I was, frankly surprised; it feels out of character that it isn't present throughout the relationship, when so much other violence is. I like this, I like its vibes, but it doesn't gel for me.
Title: I Hold My Father's Paws
Author: David D. Levine
Published: 2006
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 20
Total Page Count: 454,845
Text Number: 1589
Read Because: see review, available free via Infinity Plus
Review: This comes up regularly in alterhuman circles and I can see why, since it's ridiculously on point: protagonist's father physically transitions to dog. The story itself is ... fine; troubled family dynamics are one of the least interesting possible frameworks for this subject, but I appreciate how they complicate the father's psychological motivations—the protagonist holds him both close and at a distance; the father is identifying as but also escaping into dog. So: interesting. Not especially convincing—the "dog with a human head scenes" particularly fail to track; they're not even body horror, they're just comedic. But certainly relevant to my interests.
Title: I Await the Devil's Coming
Author: Mary MacLane
Published: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2022
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 110
Total Page Count: 466,895
Text Number: 1637
Read Because: mentioned in emily m. danforth's Plain Bad Heroines, available via Project Gutenberg
Review: The diary of Mary MacLane, chronicling a few months of her life as a 19-year-old woman. This is such a vulnerable text. It's a stylized self-portrait: conceited, brilliant, engaging, often miserable. It's flagrantly honest except when it fails to be - most tellingly when MacLane doesn't or can't yet articulate her own queer desire. Works that were genre-defining often show their age when revisited; they feel less revolutionary in view of the texts they spawned. And sure, this is a now-familiar model of teenage angst and confessional writing. But for all its very mortal exaggerations and imperfections, I feel it in my heart: a specific queer rage, an experience defined foremost by lack of self-knowledge, lack of fulfillment, lack of community, lack of recognition. MacLane evokes it beautifully, in her lines and in the spaces between.
