![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTrying to get back in the habit of posting individual reviews so that my tags can actually mean something!
Title: Don't Let the Forest In
Author: C.G. Drews
Narrator: Michael Crouch
Published: Recorded Books, 2024
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 521,435
Text Number: 1897
Read Because: more horror available now on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Best friends at boarding school are hounded by monsters born of their art. This unforgivably overwritten, with one extra adjective in every sentence and dialog that apes that narrative voice, everything tortured metaphors about forest thorns and unrequited love and the monstrous self. I desperately want it to be scaled back: that language; the talky identity issues, which overflow with convenient GSA meetings and coming-outs where our protagonist explains he's this type of ace but all ace people are different and valid!!, the twist and happy resolution.
Because there's a kernel of something here which I adore. It's at the heart of that tortured artist forest prince nonsense and it's in the way that asexual desire scales back the importance of sex to focus instead on other forms of ardent expression: violence, entwinement, codependent need. It doesn't have to be less cringe to be good reading—the cringe, the raw idealization and projection, is a strength—but it has to be better written. I find this a lot when I dip my toe into YA: the clumsy balance of captivating dynamic to poor writing breaks my heart. This makes me want to reread The Wicker King, which is incredibly similar in premise & dynamic but which I remember fondly.
Title: Don't Let the Forest In
Author: C.G. Drews
Narrator: Michael Crouch
Published: Recorded Books, 2024
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 521,435
Text Number: 1897
Read Because: more horror available now on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Best friends at boarding school are hounded by monsters born of their art. This unforgivably overwritten, with one extra adjective in every sentence and dialog that apes that narrative voice, everything tortured metaphors about forest thorns and unrequited love and the monstrous self. I desperately want it to be scaled back: that language; the talky identity issues, which overflow with convenient GSA meetings and coming-outs where our protagonist explains he's this type of ace but all ace people are different and valid!!, the twist and happy resolution.
Because there's a kernel of something here which I adore. It's at the heart of that tortured artist forest prince nonsense and it's in the way that asexual desire scales back the importance of sex to focus instead on other forms of ardent expression: violence, entwinement, codependent need. It doesn't have to be less cringe to be good reading—the cringe, the raw idealization and projection, is a strength—but it has to be better written. I find this a lot when I dip my toe into YA: the clumsy balance of captivating dynamic to poor writing breaks my heart. This makes me want to reread The Wicker King, which is incredibly similar in premise & dynamic but which I remember fondly.
