beforeviolets's reviews
425 reviews

I'm drowning in my adoring fascination for this book. My jaw dropped from the artwork on page 2. And it only got more meaty and gorgeous from there. A graphic novel gothic complete with ghosts, sexual repression, hallucinations, and the most complex and open-to-interpretation ending I've perhaps ever come across in my life, Emily Carroll has created my newest obsession. I immediately ran to go purchase a copy so I can use post-it notes to annotate and try to connect all the strings of this intricate spider web of a tale.

If anyone wants to join in a riveting discussion of this book's themes of grief and homosexuality and motherhood and daughterhood and loneliness and try with all their might to try to make some sense of this, please hit me up.

CW: suicide (past), death of mother (past), death of sibling (past), murder, drowning, derealization/unreality, hallucinations, sexual content (vague, brief), blood & gore, violence

A really fascinating horror novella that unexpectedly reimagines The Little Mermaid as a sanitized and rewritten history of a mermaid’s capture and torture, following her and her unlikely companion after her escape. Khaw explores the way men of power turn their violence into tools of control through easy to digest narratives, convincing the masses that their acts of harm are acts of benevolence and generosity. I think this will speak to folks with religious or medical trauma, or folks interested in questioning narratives of history written by those in charge.

The prose is perhaps the most purple I have ever seen, and at times finds itself eclipsing the storytelling. It has its moments of benefit (loved it with the gore and body horror) but also had its moments of egregious obfuscation to the story. I did learn a lot of new words from it though so that was fun!

CW: blood & gore, violence, body horror, cannibalism, auto cannibalism, medical torture, medical content, torture, confinement, animal death, child death, grief, character death, fire, trauma, childbirth (past)

The artwork in this was so so so gorgeous. Any time I pick up a First Second graphic novel, I just know the art is going to be top tier, and this was no exception. From the character design to the grand atmosphere, it was just stunning.

I also really loved the story at hand. It felt very much like a myth or fable in the style of oral storytelling for the sake of passion on generational lessons in its structure. It had a moral without being a lecture.

But as other reviews have mentioned, there was some unnecessary antisemitism. This book has greedy trickster goblins that are in control of an island of money and eat the people who try to take it. There were definitely plenty of alternatives to this as a plot beat. And frankly, the fact that this side quest plot beat was about greed was a little redundant as money plays so much into the main storyline as it is. (Why have I been reading/seeing so many books with antisemitic goblins this year?)

CW: violence, death of loved ones, grief, kidnapping, blood, fire, illness

I have not seen the word "Bow-wow" written out in earnest since I was probably five years old.

This was a decently fun tragicomedy and I would absolutely love to see this staged–it would be such a fucking blast if treated as the campy piece it's meant to be.

In terms of rhetoric: I really enjoyed and was frankly impressed by the way this play confronts the construction of biases in the system of witch hunts–who gets labelled as a witch and who gets condemned as a witch. I was not really expecting it to go that hard with the social commentary. Very convenient as a historical account of the early modern view of witches! Thanks guys!

As a piece of entertainment, oh boy am I obsessed with this little slippery prankster demon Dog. He felt like a cool and dark twist on the fool archetype mixed with Puck from Midsummer and he just was such a delicious character. I can only imagine how much of a joy he would be to play. I want him to be in every play actually.

I do wish the actual witch of Edmonton herself had more to do with the main events of the story; she seemed to kind of exist to rant about misogyny and class (and eloquently so, but) or to justify the presence of the Dog, and I think she should've been allowed to have some fun in the plot, goddamnit!

THE SILVER BIRDS is a self-published sapphic woodsy fantasy horror with plenty of gore, witchy magic, terrifying sentient-ish trees, fucked up birds, and romantic tension. Now, reviewing a self-published book is always a very careful balancing act, and I hope that this one is full of care.

I find with self-published books, reviews can often sit in extremes: 5 star reviews overflowing with hyperbolic praise or applauding the author for the difficult effort of writing a whole book while completely glossing over any problem no matter how large, or 1/2 star reviews and DNFs from folks who nitpick typos and inarticulate phrasing to the standard of a traditional published book. So I try to approach these books from a place of moderation, keeping my critiques to issues that impact the storytelling on a larger scale. And though I have much to praise about this book, I do also have quite a few notes about things that impacted this book’s storytelling. But I’m going to make sure I keep my critiques constructive and editorial, balancing the elements that work to aid and work against the story at hand.

I think, overall, this book has a lot of potential and it has some really strong moments, especially in the very beginning and in the final third of the story. It has some really brilliant and smart world-building and plot structure, but struggles with the journey through the story itself. I think it unfortunately doesn’t feel ready for publication and is in need of another couple of rounds of drafts with betas, at least a full round of developmental edits and a full round of line/copy edits. It also really needs a trans sensitivity reader, which I’ll get into. But let’s break my specific thoughts on this book down.

The strongest part of this book from the very beginning is without a doubt the world-building. I have always been taught that the best way to learn about a society is through their cultural behaviors and beliefs around death. And this book so brilliantly uses this society’s death culture as an introduction to this world. It instantly sets up so much context for the audience about where this society places their values and their fears and their hopes. I honestly wish more books would include death culture, and that more books would center their world-building around death culture the way this one does. And frankly, all the elements of the world-building are just cool as hell. The titular silver birds are so mysterious and terrifying and the grandiosity of their stamp on this island's day-to-day life earns them the title of this book. They’re so fucked up and scary. And I loved them from first sight. This is true of a lot of the woodsy and natural elements. From vampire trees to poisonous fog, I adored each magical element that seep into this world. They feel so distinct yet share a common language across the narrative to create a really well-defined and unique environment. And these elements don't just hover in the world but are really well woven into the plot! So often books that are interested in creating lush and complex environments for their stories forget to have those environments hold a relationship to the story itself, but Lucy’s tact is so well done here.

However, in guiding us through these environments, I wish this book felt more comfortable taking up space with its descriptors. This world is so lush and has the potential to be suffocatingly atmospheric (complimentary) but seems timid to luxuriate in its imagery. Unfortunately, Lucy has a consistent habit in her writing of half-showing, half-telling. What I mean by this is that Lucy tosses out a very brief description or a reference to a visual without much flourish and then immediately follows it with a thought from the protagonist that tells us how she feels (and therefore how we should feel) about that descriptor. But instead of this tactic amplifying the impact of the image by adding the perspective of the protagonist, it sort of halves the impact of both with a one bird, two stones situation. It feels wasteful and redundant, and made the work read younger than it is, as I felt like I was being handheld through the story. I really wanted Lucy to just take her time describing the images and ideas she created, and allow the protagonist's feelings about them to speak through the descriptive writing. I think the author deserved to trust her story more and trust that we would be suspicious at suspicious behavior or repulsed by grotesque body horror or compelled by new circumstances. Especially with all the cool imagery and delicious circumstances, I wanted to get to breathe in it or feel immersed in it.

And just to quickly note, because I can’t find another place to insert this: the MC’s internal dialogue (and the few bits of dialogue spoken to herself) needed to be cut down by 90%. They are incredibly redundant and come across as really juvenile, and unfortunately really eclipse any other attempt at tone or atmosphere or subtle character work.

I think the second strongest element of this book is its plot. The reveals and the action towards the end of the book did feel extremely climactic and really shifted the tone a lot in a way that almost (just almost!) felt a little too out of nowhere, but the seeds of those plot points were planted so well from the beginning. I found myself really honestly hooked by each reveal and element. Nothing is too obvious or too unguessable, but the perfect balance of both.

My note on the plot, however, is that the journey through it is in need of some more streamlining. There were whole scenes that decidedly needed to be cut (I’m actually still spinning over the scene where they randomly discuss their overly modern coffee orders that completely ripped me out of the story! What do you mean a lavender latte with white chocolate and lavender syrup? Why do they have an espresso machine? And espresso?) but it’s more that the order of events needed to be more organized and deliberate. The first couple chapters of the book start out really strong in this way (though I will say the timeline of the days feel a little confusing and rushed) but then we kind of lose the full plot until a little over half way through. Through the first half of the book, each chapter feels like it meanders away or even leaps away from the one before it, and it was often very hard for me to keep track of the narrative priority or the urgency of the stakes and circumstances at any given time. The characters would set out to accomplish a task, and before that task is accomplished, something new would happen action-wise. And then before they could fully react to that thing, or even complete the task before, something else would happen! Until we have this pile of things that need to be addressed or that the characters need to do or that are impacting the story, but it was hard to keep track of what had been addressed or completed or integrated into the world at that point in the story and which we needed to be thinking about at each moment. And it made it feel like a whole lot was happening (there was constant high-octane action that was really thrilling and helpful to the world-building) but with little to no narrative progress.

I now definitely need to talk about the romance. This was such a roller-coaster of opinions for me, and you might have seen my updates on it (the first being me complaining that this was being marketed as an enemies-to-lovers romance when it isn’t, the second one saying that I was wrong and that it is actually enemies-to-lovers, and then the third saying that I love when lesbians stab each other). It’s going to be kind of hard to talk about this element without spoiling, so I guess spoilers in terms of very broad strokes. I won’t give away any Actual Plot Things, but feel free to skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to read that.

Essentially, the enemy element in this enemies-to-lovers only becomes known to the audience retrospectively later on in the book as we gain more backstory and context after a reveal. And so though they are enemies to lovers, we don’t know that until they’re no longer actively enemies. And frankly, that retrospective view of their relationship is really scrumptious on its own. But it’s clear that Lucy wanted to have her cake and eat it too–to still have the standard arc and dynamics of the enemies-to-lovers trope, even though that knowledge hasn’t been presented yet. And this essentially just results in a hate-to-love dynamic in which the hate feels really unearned and disproportionate, which in turn makes the characters feel unbelievably immature. The main character is incredibly suspicious of the love interest and I think if she perhaps tried to investigate her suspicions about the love interest’s behavior by getting close to her or plotting quietly against her, it would create the tension that Lucy is attempting to build, instead of that tension being sliced through by the main character's immediate and disruptive anger and finger pointing. I think it would keep the payoff (or even make it greater) without cheapening the impact for the sake of sticking to the cookie cutter trends of the trope. Trope elements don’t exist as rules but as tools to serve a story. And they didn't serve this one.

The romance really does have incredible!! chemistry by the end of the book. Though I may have had a few line edits or ideas to make some moments bloom even further, I was absolutely squirming and screaming with some of the climactic plot elements and the way they entangle with the complexities of the romance. The tension not only between the characters but between loyalties and trust and love and self-preservation peak in such a perfect way, exactly the way an ideal and well-structured enemies-to-lovers arc should. My god. I love when lesbians stab each other and I won’t say anymore than that. (🫀!!!!)

Okay. I do think I have to comment on the trans rep though because I do have an issue with it, and it’s going to take a bit of explaining. No spoilers here, I promise. So essentially the main character’s best friend is a man who was born AMAB, but when he was a kid, his parents opened a stolen treasure chest and this treasure chest transformed his body into a traditionally AFAB body, while he still maintained his identity and memories and selfhood. I mean, sure. Upon this first introduction of this backstory, I would consider this more of a trans-aligned experience than a trans character. It reminded me mostly of that random arc of Wizards of Waverly Place where Max gets turned into a little girl, or maybe of the types of people who become forcibly transitioned for one reason or another as children (being intersex, having an accident that impacts their genitals, etc. These things happen, and they have a relationship to trans experiences, but I wouldn’t necessarily label them as trans definitively). This then gets brought up one other time, when another character is accusing this character of murdering his brother (which he didn’t do). This character misgenders him, makes some comments about his genitals, and suggests that the people of the village believe that he is lying about the curse and that he was actually AFAB but the curse made him believe he is a man. (Obviously, I don’t need to say that if someone believes they’re a man, they are one.) And then that is all that’s ever said about this character’s gender. And so. I take qualms. Because the treatment of this character shows that for all intents and purposes in this world, he is framed as a trans man, but also was born as a man. And that extra step of being actually AMAB is then used as a justification to legitimize his identity as a man. When he shouldn’t have to be AMAB to be legitimate in his identity as a man, obviously. So even though I can tell the author is trying to be trans-positive and trans-inclusive, this extra magical background just 1. unnecessarily sensationalizes and mythologizes his transness and 2. pushes the idea that his identity as a man relies on the truth of his biological identification at birth aligning with his gender despite his current biological and genital status. There’s no reason why he couldn’t literally just be a trans man. Trans people can exist in fantasy stories without magical interference.
It is then worth pointing out two other issues with this element: 1. The transphobia in this story only exists to show that the character who wields it is a jerk. So, frankly, unnecessary and therefore inappropriate. 2. The transness of the character is framed as a curse. Enough said on that I think.

I want to be clear in my critique about the trans rep. It’s such a small part of the story that I wouldn’t at all use it as a tool with which to gauge this book’s quality and I’m not trying to say this book is harmful (I wish I didn’t have to give this disclaimer but the internet is the internet and I don’t want people running around calling this whole book transphobic because I think the approach to the trans character is poorly done). To me, it read as though the author was earnestly trying to provide some casual but visible trans representation, but just overthought the way it would need to fit into the fantasy world or tried to overwrite the backstory when trans people can just be trans people. And unfortunately, that caused it to have the opposite effect than likely intended.

All in all, I have a very torn feeling over this book. I think it really holds the heart of something meaty and delicious and so perfect for me, with monstrous nature elements, gloriously grotesque body horror, lush wintery woodsy environments, and a tension-filled sapphic romance. But as I said, it just didn’t feel ready to be out in the world, and needs a few more drafts (with some eyes, both professional and non-professional) to help shape its impact into the sharp and succulent blade of the tale this could be. I hope it gets reworked someday.

CW: violence, blood & gore, body horror, death, grief, death of father, animal death, dead bodies (including of a stillborn), injury detail, torture, amputation, insects, poison, misgendering, transphobia

A book that is my atmospheric soulmate: gothic, woodsy, dark fairytale vibes akin to Ava Reid or T. Kingfisher.

By far, the most interesting and well-executed part of this book is its magic system. Cards that work like magic spells built out of Faustian-esque bargains, and a taunting and corrupting magical mist that infects vulnerable inhabitants with a fever that gives them magical powers, it all felt incredibly thought out and well-integrated, as well as just properly intriguing.

I think my only critique is that the characters at times felt a bit indistinct and indistinguishable from romantasy archetypes. They're all incredibly interesting by proxy of their circumstance (and let me clarify, their circumstances make them VERY VERY interesting as characters) but I feel like I wouldn't be able to recognize them if you plucked them out of the narrative at hand. But within the narrative, wow. I loved the whole idea of a girl having a monster in her head and it impacting the way she would navigate the world.

I think the biggest compliment I can give this book though is that I finished it and immediately picked up the sequel. Rachel Gillig, you had me hooked.

CW: violence, blood & gore, injury detail, illness, death of mother (past), mind control, child abandonment, self harm (for magic), alcohol, poison, death, sexual content

I had heard rumors that this sequel was even better than the first, and the people do not lie.

Not only is this sequel stronger than the first book (which is so so rare) but it genuinely makes the first book better. What an amazing build off of its predecessor!

I mean, clearly the solution to improving a book is just adding a sentient forest that moves at will.

The characterization and chemistry was the only thing I felt somewhat lacking in the first book, but holy wow was it strong as hell in this one. This book, unlike the first, was multi-POV, and the characters we got to see be fleshed out in this book where just so unbelievably well characterized. Their development and histories and motivations were woven with such tact into the macro and micro of the narrative. And the romance in this one had me clutching my chest.

I think the thing about this book that improved the first, in particular, is the unraveling of the world-building and lore. There are so many truths and ideas set up in the first book that felt interesting but somewhat flat in the first that turned out to have great payoffs or subversions in this book, and those new shifts really helped move the story and the world and the stakes forward in really smart ways.

I was worried this finale would be hard to pull off but it was properly exciting and high energy and nail-biting, and the resolution was quite satisfying (I was very curious how Gillig would handle a sort of magical cure plotline, but I really felt this was tastefully done.)

CW: violence, illness, blood & gore, injury detail, dead bodies, death of father, poison, murder, death of sibling, sexual content, alcohol, child death (past), grief, mind control, domestic abuse, self harm (for magic)

This is definitely one of the lesser known Shakespeare plays, as the tragicomedies often are. And what’s interesting to me is that I’m usually a much bigger fan of reading the tragedies than the comedies but I was actually much more compelled in the comedic to neutral elements. Maybe it’s because I prefer Fletcher’s comedies as a reading experience? 

I know this is a retelling of a Chaucer story so it’s somewhat nonsensical to take up arms with the plot itself but I really felt unsure about the tragical elements when there was so much room for it to end like a comedy, a la The Two Gentlemen of Verona or even Love’s Labour’s Lost. 

But alas. I did really enjoy the characters in this (especially my sapphic queen Emilia who canonically has sex with a woman during the play’s events) and the layers of meaning and symbolism Shakespeare always so brilliantly injects into his work. I’m definitely excited to go read some scholarship on this one while I brainstorm how I would stage this in a way that depicts a lavender marriage situation.

This play was… definitely not amazingly written, I think it was incredibly disjointed feeling. But it was really really cool to see a literary representation of a potentially trans person and the way that they were viewed in the world!

Simultaneously subversively trans and also rigidly enforcing bioessentialism. This was a really fascinating early modern play about a brother and sister who have spent most of their life (~20 years) passing as a woman and man respectively. When their family is reunited from their father’s banishment, they’re expected to return to their “original” gender roles. The play goes on to hold questions and discussions about nature vs nurture until, ultimately, heterosexual love gives the siblings the power to fulfill their traditional gender roles. 

I think there’s something inherently trans still about the fact that this “love’s cure” is overtly campy and magical. The brother, having been raised entirely as a woman suddenly becomes a skilled sword fighter and master of courtly masculine manners with the kiss of a singular woman, for example. So its campiness, in requiring a benefit of doubt from the audience, does sort of argue for stubborn nurture over nature. Or you could argue that it reaffirms and comforts the audience about the power of nature to keep people cisgender. Either way, very funky and fun play with a lot to unpack and analyze.