DNF'd Books: Withered Hill, Barnett; We Live Here Now, Pinborough; Dream Fossil, Satoshi Kon

[juushika]

Still catching up on 2025; here's a trio of what I didn't read.

Title: Withered Hill
Author: David Barnett
Published: Canelo Horror, 2024
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 45 of 360
Total Page Count: 553,155
Text Number: 2074
Read Because: browsing erotic horror from the library and definitely this is horny; ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 12%. Reads fast enough, dual timelines will do that, and it's certainly goes ham with the folk horror. But nothing about the horny haunted thriller tone is working for me; big breasted boobily energy in the female PoV.


Title: We Live Here Now
Author: Sarah Pinborough
Published: Flatiron Books: Pine & Cedar, 2025
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 90 of 290
Total Page Count: 553,245
Text Number: 2075
Read Because: browsing erotic horror from the library and definitely this is horny; ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 30%. I'm a hard sell on first person, and really need a distinctive voice and preferably textual justification for the perspective; my nightmare is alternating, undifferentiated first person PoVs, and guess what's going on here! Credit given, I did poke around for spoilers before putting this down, but the petty each-partner-has-a-secret mysteries are underwhelming and transparent bids for suspense; the house itself is more interesting, and I enjoy the concept of haunted houses with more robust and speculative logics than simple ghosts. But this is poorly written, manipulative, and boring on its way to that speculative reveal.


Title: Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon
Author: Satoshi Kon
Translator: Yota Okutani
Published: Vertical Comics, 2015
Rating: N/A
Page Count: 50 of 520
Total Page Count: 562,590
Text Number: 2125
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library via Hoopla
Review: DNF two stories in. I tend to bounce off manga short stories, and am here: same-face syndrome conspires with the limited length to make for ungrounded, rushed stories.

Comments

[radiantfracture]

Title: Withered Hill

I read this last year, I think sort of by accident? It was, like, adequate all the way through, but like something written from a kit of cool folk horror tropes.

[juushika]

I love the idea of reading something sort of by accident. Been there. I like folk horror, but when it's that kit of tropes feel, I find I don't actually like it enough to motivate me.