#but come on man redemption by death is SO overdone i thought we were my little ponying this shit

[singlemindeadly]

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 16 of 26

Title: Tales From Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #5) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Short Story Collection, Novella, Third-Person, Female Protagonist 

Rating: 8/10 (note: this is an average)

Date Began: 7/2/2021

Date Finished: 7/6/2021

Tales From Earthsea is a collection of five short stories and novellas which take place in the Earthsea universe. In addition, there’s a supplementary timeline of Earthsea’s history, tradition, and cultural details of note. The last story in the collection, Dragonfly, serves as a bridge between Tehanu (#4) and The Other Wind (#6), the final book in the series. 

Of the five stories, my favorites (both 10/10s) were The Finder and On The High Marsh.

The way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn’t very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it— can we even remember it— until we can tell it in a story? 

Content warnings, individual ratings/commentary, and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Death and violence, child abuse (including implied sexual abuse), police brutality, slavery, reference to torture and execution, brief reference to inc*st, misogyny, animal cruelty, mild body horror, very brief implied mind control via a "love charm" (it doesn't work).

#1 - The Finder (10/10)

In The Dark Time, magic is widely mistrusted. Petty tyrants use the once noble art in pursuit of power and glory. Medra, the son of a shipwright in Havnor, has magical talents honed in secret. One day, he curses a ship built for a warlord’s fleet. Unfortunately, he gets caught and sent to a prison camp. There he is forced to use finding magic to locate veins of cinnabar.

The prison exists to refine quicksilver, a substance the most powerful mage on the island believes will turn him into a god. While in the refinery, Medra feels a spiritual connection to a dying slave, a young woman named Anieb. The two of them devise a plan to kill the mage and escape. Medra’s journey eventually takes him to the island of Roke and the founding of its prestigious wizard school. 

‘The dead are dead. The great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.’ 

I really enjoyed this novella. The Dark Time is largely unexplored in the stories of Earthsea, so it was interesting to read about it here. I get the feeling that we’re approaching or in the middle of one such time in the real world, so seeing a version of it on the page is depressing yet hopeful. The story is dark; mass feudal warfare, a literal concentration camp in the opening half, widespread enslavement, and abuse of power. But it also offers hope and the promise of change. The story also explores the integral role of women in not only the preservation of magic in a bleak age of humanity, but the very foundation of Roke. 

Medra’s story spoke to me; how he resists the despotic powers-that-be, his connection with Anieb even after her tragic death, and how despite his disillusionment with humanity, he ultimately fights to create a better world. I also thought Gelluk was a horrifying villain. He’s characterized as a soft-spoken, almost kindly man who loves children and animals— yet his narrative thoughts involve burning hundreds of slaves alive in order to better fuel the quicksilver refinery. “Nice doesn’t mean good” taken to an extreme, and a mirror of many villains in the real world. 

Le Guin was anti-capitalist, but that way of thinking seems peripheral in the Earthsea series. The Finder, however, definitely has a Marxist reading in it. A recurring theme is the disenfranchised rising up against the powerful. Indeed both antagonists, who are despotic wizards of great power, are soundly defeated by groups of people they consider powerless. Magic is only considered relevant for the value and power it produces, an idea antithetical to the rest of the series. The quicksilver refinery also embraces anti-capitalist rhetoric; this section focuses on how mass enslavement and death is used to manufacture a meaningless commodity only one person “benefits” from. That’s not even getting into the prison-industrial complex. 

I dunno. This story slaps. It’s not at all what I expected from a Roke origin story.

#2 - Diamond and Darkrose (5/10)

Diamond, the son of a prosperous lumber merchant, struggles to find his true calling in life. His father disapproves of almost everything he does, including his close friendship with the local witch’s daughter Rose. While he loves music, his father derides his talents and forces him to abandon the pursuit. When Diamond shows some  promise in magic, he travels to a neighboring town to serve as the local wizard’s apprentice. But when this path estranges him from Rose, he grows disillusioned.

Rose had looked after herself from an early age; and this was one of the reasons Diamond loved her. With her, he knew what freedom was. Without her, he could attain it only when he was hearing and singing and playing music.

I did not like this story very much. I gave Diamond and Darkrose a 5/10 because it’s competently written (duh), and the protagonist has a character arc not entirely dependent on the central romance. But that’s about all I can say for it.

None of the characters are especially appealing. Diamond’s mentor figures are all extremely narrow-minded. Rose, supposedly his true love since childhood, drops him the moment things become difficult. And Diamond himself is a pushover who only grows a spine and pursues his dreams at the end of the story. I understand that’s his character flaw and his arc is about overcoming that. But due to all these factors, I was annoyed by every major character. The only person I didn’t dislike was Diamond’s mother, who only shows up for a couple of scenes.

Someone please tell me there are love stories out there where the romantic tension is NOT based on a fucking MISUNDERSTANDING. That shit drives me up a wall! It’s so overdone and painful to read.

#3 - The Bones of the Earth (8/10)

Dulse is an aging wizard on the island of Gont, reflecting on his life and relationship with his former apprentice, a young man he calls Silence. But he senses something amiss on the island; a massive earthquake poised to destroy a nearby port town and its inhabitants. To avert disaster, Dulse realizes he must turn to an ancient form of magic taught to him long ago— and he needs Silence’s help to save the town.

In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation. He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought.

So I’ve always liked Ogion in the main series; I love the idea of an immensely powerful wizard who lives an unassuming life of silence, contemplation, and appreciation of the natural world. In The Bones of the Earth, we get a glimpse of Ogion through his mentor’s eyes. Ogion’s heroism and how he stopped the earthquake is mentioned several times in the main series, but this is our first look at what actually happened.

Dulse is an unexpected and fascinating perspective character. It would be so easy to tell this story wholly from Ogion’s perspective, but I think making Dulse the protagonist was the right call. In particular, Dulse’s mind is starting to go. Le Guin presents this by utilizing flashbacks and connecting them to the present. This technique conveys Dulse’s disorientation and confusion so the reader experiences it alongside him... it’s hard to describe without actually reading the story. I also loved the little twist at the end regarding where Dulse learned the ancient magic that saves the island. There’s also a strong thematic connection to The Farthest Shore; death and becoming one with the rest of the world.

#4 - On The High Marsh (10/10)

A half-mad wanderer named Irioth comes upon a small settlement on the volcanic, marshy island of Semel. A murrain has been devastating the local cattle population, and Irioth offers his powers as a curer to heal the animals. He settles into a calm rural life with Gift, a widow working a small dairy. Though Gift likes Irioth, and the animals instinctively trust him, she senses something amiss with the man. Soon, Irioth’s dark past threatens to return and disturb the peace.

“Oh, yes,” Irioth said. “It was my fault.” But she forgave, and the grey cat was pressed up against his thigh, dreaming. The cat’s dreams came into his mind, in the low fields where he spoke with the animals, the dusky places. The cat leapt there, and then there was milk, and the deep soft thrilling. There was no fault, only the great innocence. No need for words. They would not find him here. He was not here to find. There was no need to speak any name. There was nobody but her, and the cat dreaming, and the fire flickering. He had come over the dead mountain on black roads, but here the streams ran slow among the pastures.

This story is a banger. It has a Western vibe— a stranger coming into a cattle town haunted by a mysterious past. Also cowboys. It’s an atmospheric story, and I think hits on the “small rural town” vibe better than Tehanu did. But there were several writing choices I especially liked.

We don’t learn Irioth’s name until a little while into the story; his physical description, temperament, and ability to immediately identify Gift’s true name just by looking at her makes one assume he’s Ged. He’s also got an interesting redemption arc, because it’s presented in a reverse order. We see Irioth’s genuine desire to do good, and his gentle and patient manner with animals and other people. He doesn’t even consider asking for payment for curing the murrain until Gift tells him he should. But there’s a sense that something is off; he’s paranoid, clearly running from something. The use-name he picks is Otak, a fictional ferret-like creature— which Gift asserts looks nice, but has sharp teeth.

Near the end, Ged actually does show up and explain what happened to Irioth. They have pretty similar backstories; both were powerful, arrogant young mages who messed with forces  they shouldn’t have, then went through great personal sacrifice to right the wrong (oh god the initial deception was intentional they’re narrative foils oh god). Ged embraced the darkest aspects of himself to avert calamity. Irioth came to Semel to escape Roke and atone by helping others. One detail I especially liked was that Irioth once considered healing beneath him, but now he takes a deep joy in using it to help. 

#5 - Dragonfly (8/10)

Irian lives a solitary life-- her father is a drunkard living in the ruins of their family’s once prosperous estate. Her closest relationship is with the local village witch, who named her in secret in the dead of night.  When a disgraced young wizard named Ivory comes to town, he sees Irian as a potential conquest. To gain power over her, he hatches a scheme; disguise Irian as a man, travel to Roke, and sneak her into the male-only wizard school— humiliating the great Masters.

But Irian is restless. She knows she has power, but her true nature is a mystery even to her. Irian sees Ivory’s plan as an opportunity to find answers from the most powerful wizards in the world. When the Doorkeeper actually lets her into the school, she finds herself in a magical and political conflict over the future of Roke— and discovers what exactly she is.

“Dark is bad,” said the Patterner. “Eh?”

Irian drew a deep breath and looked at him eye to eye as they sat there. “Only in dark the light,” she said.

This is one of those stories that has a rocky start, but a great second half. The first part of the novella felt dry to me; I’ve read plenty of tales about social outcasts with weird, unexplainable powers. On top of this, a chunk of the early narration is from Ivory’s POV, and he’s a complete tool. That can be a fun perspective to take, and I like the fact that he thinks he’s manipulating Irian when she’s the one pulling the strings. But since he’s an irrelevant character who disappears from the story halfway through, it feels like a waste to devote a huge chunk of the story to him.

However, once Irian arrives at Roke, the story gets much more interesting. Her presence at Roke causes a huge scandal that divides the Masters. Women being forbidden from Roke is a Series Thing at this point, but Earthsea is in an era of change (although I DO question that she’s the first woman to try it). The Finder demonstrated that women were pivotal in the foundation of Roke, something largely erased from history. Barring women stems from a power hungry bigot codifying it into tradition.

Irian finds some unexpected allies--minor characters in the previous books. The Doorkeeper continues to be the coolest motherfucker there. The Patterner is a major character in this story; he was in just one scene in The Farthest Shore, so I liked learning more about him. The Namer is the kind of guy you’d expect to be a stodgy traditionalist, so him siding with Irian is surprising. The Summoner, a heroic figure in previous books and stories, is a sinister villain here. As for the ending, well… if you didn’t see it coming, I’d wonder if you even read Tehanu. The same hints are there.

There were little particulars I liked, such as Irian moving into a decrepit hut that’s definitely Medra’s old home. My favorite detail is that this story has a parallel scene with The Finder. In The Finder, there’s a scene where an antagonist, Early, invades Roke in the form of a dragon. He lands on Roke Knoll, a site of power that reveals one’s true form. It turns him back into a human, leaving him defenseless when the residents of Roke attack him and repel his invasion. The reversal happens in Dragonfly. Irian gets attacked by one of the Masters while at Roke Knoll — and its magic turns her into her true form, a dragon. Props to whoever picked the cover design, since it references both scenes.

#6 - A Description of Earthsea

I’m not rating this since it’s basically a lore dump. It’s a deep dive into Earthsea’s history, languages, cultures, and other relevant world details. It’s the kind of bonus info a lot of fantasy series tack on as reference material.  According to Le Guin, she wrote this to get some idea of the timeline on each of these stories.

As a series, Earthsea has relatively little worldbuilding exposition. Sometimes characters reference legends or historical events, but usually the reader lacks the context to fully understand them. The focus is more on the lives of the characters and their personal experience of the world. I think something like A Description of Earthsea has benefits and drawbacks for the reader. On one hand it's nice to have some definitive information to tie things together. On the other, this does represent a loss of some of the mystery in the story.

I think this is the first thing in the series that even mentions homosexuality, so props for that I guess?

Closing Thoughts

A short story collection is always going to have high and low points. I tend to look at each story individually and score that way, but an average is always misleading. Diamond and Darkrose dragged the score down since there were only five stories total. But I enjoyed the majority of them. I am interested to see where the human/dragon subplot goes in the final installment; I assume Irian will show up at some point? We’ll see.

[mainstreamtags]

Hearts & Other Body Parts Review

Rating: (⅖)

So…. I’ll start by saying...Hearts & Other Body Parts was okay. Not the best of YA fiction but not OVERLY terrible.

I was initially attracted by the cover. Black and red with fun, gothic typography; my aesthetic. Opening the cover to read the synopsis on the other hand, I was hardly as impressed;

“A novel of love and monsters.

Sisters Esme, Katy, and Ronnie are smart, talented, and gorgeous, and better yet . . . all three are witches. They have high school wired until the arrival of two new students. The first is Norman, who is almost eight feet tall and appears to be constructed of bolts and mismatched body parts. Despite his intimidating looks, Esme finds herself strangely -- almost romantically -- drawn to both his oversized brain and oversized heart.

The second new arrival is Zack, an impossibly handsome late transfer from the UK who has the girls at school instantly mesmerized. Soon even sensible Esme has forgotten Norman, and all three sisters are in a flat-out hex war to win Zack. But while the magic is flying, only Norman seems to notice that students who wander off alone with Zack end up with crushed bones and memory loss. Or worse, missing entirely.

Hearts & Other Body Parts is a wickedly addictive novel about love, monsters, loyalty, and oh yeah, a Japanese corpse-eating demon cat.”

Can you see where I hesitated? Around “the nice guy is the only one who sees what’s wrong with his romantic rival and has to “rescue” his crush from thinking she loves the other guy”? Yeah. But hey, I thought, I got through Heartless and ended up liking it more than I thought I would so maybe this one will be a little cringe worthy in the beginning but pull out a decent ending too.     

I was half right. There were definitely parts that made me need to lay down for a minute like #GiveUsASnog, the blatant stereotypes masquerading as inclusivity, the frankly alarming overuse of the term “beautiful girls”...

It never managed to pull itself together in a way that made the ending worth it. About halfway through I found the writing continued to lack and there was hardly any substance to keep me there. I powered through purely for the sake of this review. It wasn’t that it was BAD, just all around lack luster. Certainly not the WORST, but just… boring. 

Honestly though, “not the worst” is probably the best thing I can say about this book. I can appreciate what it was trying to be. A campy bit of romantic horror that played off of big name monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and Witches. Nothing more than a bit of fun. Unfortunately the fun wears off in the first few chapters. A good B Horror relies on being so terrible it’s good, making use of overdone tropes but putting enough twist and creativity into it that it comes together into something memorable even if it’s totally cheesy. Hearts & Other Body Parts fails this on the most basic level. Sure, it’s filled to the brim with all the cliches you could ever want in a B Horror, but it doesn’t have the creativity it takes to bring it together. Instead, we’re left with a collection of poorly thought out characters, a forgettable plot line, and an ending that leaves you wondering if the eight hours it took to read was really worth it.

The answer is no. No it was not and yet I bought it because I was promised a good time.

Side tangent, I’ve noticed a trend in formatting when trying to look up published reviews for books. They paste in a summary of the book and then the writer spends one or two brief paragraphs talking about it in the most ambiguous way possible with a couple of buzzwords like ‘witty’, ‘inventive’, and ‘funny’ tossed in for good measure. You’ll also see the phrase, “I was given a free copy of the book for an honest review.” Honest, yet they don’t tell you WHY a book was funny or inventive, and they definitely don’t tell you if the book was bad, honest or not. Marketing at it’s finest.

So yeah, I’m going to tear this bitch to shreds. I’m going to talk about everything in this book and I’m going to do it in the plainest language I can. It won’t be pretty, but that’s the point. I don’t want it to be filled with flowery language because that shit is hard to write and takes away from the point of the message. No fluff, no buzzwords, no mercy. There will be spoilers, so be warned because I’ll be talking about the ending to this book A LOT.

Let’s start with the backbone of a story; the characters. Hearts & Other Body Parts switches point of view chapter to chapter, sometimes in the middle of a chapter and sometimes whenever the fuck it feels like it. This would be fine, especially if the characters had strong voices, but everyone in this book sounds almost exactly the same. It makes for stilted, awkward dialogue as well. Jokes made by characters don’t land because the conversations they were having felt unnatural.

The only one who had some semblance of a narration style is Norman. Norman is not the main character but it felt like Bloom REALLY wanted him to be and ends up as the most fleshed out character in the book. Considering that every single character in this book is a high school stereotype, that’s saying something.

The witchy sisters this book touted to be the main players felt like one girl broken into three that had never been raised together. The summary calls them smart, talented, and gorgeous and they’re exactly that, in that order. They all get to have only one thing according to B Horror laws and they can’t possibly share anything. Yes they lived in the same house, yes they sit at lunch together but nothing beyond that suggests that they're actually related. They riff on each other occasionally like siblings might but there are no mentions of shared interests and we hardly get to see into Veronica or Katy’s lives aside from “one is super hot and likes makeup and the other likes fashion subcultures and dogs”. I didn't even know Katy was supposed to be a jokester until another character pointed out that she was. As for Veronica, the gorgeous one, she’s youngest sister and only fourteen. Creepy.

Esme, the actual main character of the book, falls victim to the “sudden rash decision heroine” trope. She’s shown previously to have been level headed and intelligent yet when, #spoilers, her sisters are kidnapped by the book’s villains, Zack and the Ancient, she’s suddenly running into a death trap by herself without a plan. Of course, she’s stopped in the nick of time by Norman who is still sensible because he’s smart and also a man. It’s an exhausting trope to have to read over and over again in YA books with female leads, especially leads that are supposed to be intelligent planners.

In the end, Veronica and Katy just end up becoming a combined damsel in distress trope. They only exist to give main character Esme someone to save and to push along the finale. Afterwards, we hear that they “recover” but we don’t see any lasting effects. Bad Guy Zack is still left alive. How do they feel about this? We just don’t know. Norman is the most thought out character in the book, but really at his center he’s still an obnoxious “nice guy” and his very existence feels almost as if the author was pushing an agenda. “Look girls, he may be ugly but he’s intellectual and kind! He’s obviously the correct romantic choice because he’s a NICE GUY.” Norman himself doesn’t do anything overly untoward but the author pushes Esme and Norman together in the worst way. Bad Guy Zack is handsome and the guy all the girls want but he’s just another dumb jock without substance who will cheat on you. So obviously the right choice is Norman.

Having a solid friendship just isn’t an option and looks aren’t EVERYTHING, until, oh wait, they are. In the end even Esme is so unconvinced of her attraction to Norman that she feels she has to drug herself with a love potion to feel anything and drug HIM with a beauty potion in order to make him lovable--which is ableist by the way--and sends the message to disabled readers, “sorry but if you're not at least semi conventionally attractive, no one can truly love you.” The fact that she feels required to be with him because he loves her says it all, really. Speaking of Bad Guy Zack though, his ending was one of the most disappointing parts of the book. Throughout the story we are shown glimpses of his relationship with his vampiric master, the Ancient. In the beginning we’re told that the Ancient chose Zack for a very specific reason. What that reason was, we’re never really told but I’m guessing it’s somewhere along the lines of “he’s hot” and because he’s hot, it makes it easier to draw in women to serve as food sources. The Ancient coerces Zack into doing his bidding and kidnapping women by enthralling him with the use of his vampiric mesmer abilities. Of course, when Zack fails (or whenever the Ancient feels like it apparently) he’s beaten and tortured for hours. These beating are apparently so terrible that the only thing that saves Zack is his fledgling vampire durability; if he was human, he’d only last for a few minutes.

So to reiterate, Bad Guy Zack is actually Abused Minor Zack forcibly coerced into kidnapping girls by his father figure/master. Yes, he’s a player, yes he strung along the sisters in order to eventually kidnap them but if he didn’t he would be tortured. He’s an abused minor repeatedly shown to have remorse for his actions along with other qualities that could have made for a potentially decent redemption arc but instead he is “adopted” by Norman’s father and instead of receiving therapy or support, he submits himself to to being locked in a cage and wanting to take “any punishment that could be meted out to him,” including his own self harm which was described as “absolutely medieval” in design. The idea that a victim of of this type of psychological and physical abuse would would consider himself guilty and deserving of punishment isn't unrealistic but the fact that self harm to the extent described was being seen as acceptable is laughable at best and disgusting at worst. I’m not sure whether to look to the narration of Esme or the writer himself for this but considering Esme’s upbringing, it wouldn't make much sense for her to see any amount of self harm or abuse as normal. As for the Ancient himself, he suffers from a case of overhyped villain. We’re shown repeatedly that he’s willing to do terrible things and told repeatedly that he’s extremely powerful but in the end, it takes all of 7 pages to take him down and I’m being generous with that number. The majority of those 7 pages is even spent with him TALKING about how he’s going to kill Esme without doing anything to support that. The final battle, if you could call it that, is entirely fluff and any sort of threat that the Ancient might have posed instantly fell short the second he started talking.

Esme also has the support of her not-so-japanese, not-so-corpse-eating, demon familiar Kasha who takes the form of a cat and information dump character right along with demon ex machina for the final battle. There is literally no other reason to this character. The chapter that has him get involved with the fight is literally called “Deamon Ex Machina”.  You could have replaced him with a decent google search and the story would have lost nothing. It would have even saved the book from one of its multi-page info dumps and a terrible joke about gophers used 5 too many times. The ending might have even been halfway decent without Kasha. The Ancient might have become the threat he should have been and we could have had an exciting, climactic fight. Instead we got a ridiculous game of cat and mouse that had the terrifying villain reduced to a mess resigned to his fate. Boring.

All of the side characters had this sort of simplification of personality too. The LGBT characters especially suffered from this. Esme’s mother is referred to as a lesbian while also being absent, evoking that age old “gay people are terrible parents” adage. Nick, the background football player, had to be shown by white cis-het Esme that being gay was okay, after which he immediately becomes a fashion obsessed trope despite no hint of him showing interest in it before. You can tell he’s also meant to become a comic relief character, but the jokes are entirely centered around him being gay and effeminate. If that wasn’t the worst, the only trans inclusion comes in the form of the Goddess who offers to show Esme her genitals as proof of being intersex without any prior prompting. Because thats a thing that people do.

Hearts & Other Body Parts was touted for its humor and intelligence but the jokes more often fell flat, and the intelligence came only in the form of page long wiki-esque information dumps and latin terms tossed in for the sake of sounding smart. It fails to be smart in ways that matter. The lack of character depth is one thing, but there were times when I had to set book the book down for a moment because immersion was completely broken by a plot hole or interaction that did nothing to support the character, story, or humor.

For instance, after Esme finally breaks free of Zack’s hypnosis, she makes her way to Norm’s house to meet his father Dr.Frank: a scientist that has important information on vampires. Shortly after she arrives, so does football player, stereotypical meathead Jackson. Earlier he had been in a fight with Zack and left him with extreme anxiety regarding speaking about the fight. Jackson is looked over by Dr.Frank and then given a cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs and narcotics to make him sensible and able to explain who hurt him. Afterwards, Jackson is never mentioned having an issue with panic attacks again. While it’s mentioned he doesn't sleep much, hinting at the anxiety, this doesn't cause him any issue with functioning in general or assisting Esme with tracking the vampires. That is:

A.) Not how sleep deprivation works. B.) Not how anxiety works. C.) Suggests that not only did Dr. Frank medicate an underage child without parental consent but that he CONTINUED to supply this child with medication.

This is one of the most jarringly immersion breaking instances but there are several more like it along with a multitude of smaller instances such as typing an entire url instead of using the search bar, purposefully cooking a brisket until it’s dry, and not considering that other LGBT people may exist outside of the chosen three which would have entirely messed up the “only some men are immune to vampire mesmer“ thing. It leaves one wondering if Bloom thought a lot of this through, or if he simply wrote himself into a corner a few times and had to come up with something on the fly to fix it.

This book was a struggle to read and even now, I’m struggling to come up with anything positive to balance out the negative. The grammar was decent. The sentence structure wasn't bad, but decent syntax only means so much when it’s the content itself that’s the issue. I’m not asking for a serious drama from a book meant to be along the same lines as a Syfy special, but I am asking for at least some effort. The plot was a forgettable ode to nice guys, the humor was flat, the pacing was off, the characters were walking cliches, the representation borderline phobic, and the ending was entirely anticlimactic. The writing wasn’t the WORST but it wasn’t good either. It was as if Bloom had only wanted to get a book published and nothing more so he wrote the most generic crap he could manage then tossed in some black and red with a Japanese cat as a hook. I can't say it didn't work because I spent money on this snooze-fest but damn. Reading Hearts & Other Body Parts was a slog. If it had been terrible, it might have met its B horror mark. It was a slog not because it was bad, but because it was just plain mediocre.

Ira Bloom, nice try but for your next book, a little more effort would be appreciated. Thanks. #SorryNotSorry.