#the riverman

[amandabe11man]

the fact that cary elwes did both The Riverman AND Saw in the same year is enough to fuck with my perception of time

[caryelwestley]

[better-dead-than-in-hell]

drawing requests now open ;)

feeling pretty bored, so might doodle some characters from fandoms i'm in. leave your requests in the comments of this post, or send me an ask/message.

fandoms:

arc of a scythe

the riverman

marie lu series (warcross, legend)

the great gatsby (will not draw gatsby x daisy or tom x anyone, sorry)

wildwood (no shipping)

renegades

what i will do:

shipping (as long as it is between teenagers or adults of similar ages)

mild gore

[cultivating-wildflowers]

Books of 2023 - November

Still struggling to get through the books I want to read by the end of the year; but, on the plus side, I've marked off a few audiobooks I've had bookmarked on Hoopla!

Total books: 5  |  New reads: 5   |   2023 TBR completed: 0 (0 DNF) / 22/25 total   |   2023 Reading Goal: 85/50

October | December

#1 - The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen - 4/5 stars (audio)

“Hail His Majesty, the scourge of my life."

This was a bit of a surprise! I don't know how this book ended up on my tbr, and I had to force myself to give it 10% before I decided whether or not to dnf it. Fortunately, it became more interesting after a somewhat lackluster opening; and it ended up being a fun story, for all its faults. (And I did NOT like the narrator.)

My biggest complaint had to be the politics. More than once I paused while listening to yell "Really?!?" because so much of that didn't make sense. The nice thing is that the story itself was engaging enough that the fumbled attempts at political intrigue and court customs didn't ruin it, which is kind of miraculous considering it's a story about a treason plot.

I really became engaged once my finely-tuned suspicion was piqued. (Thanks Megan Whalen Turner.) The twists were a little predictable but entirely satisfying. Gonna recommend this one to my sister and brother-in-law.

#2 - To Each This World by Julie E. Czerneda - 4/5 stars (audio)

*content warnings for mild language and sexual content*

This book grabbed me from the first page. The exposition and world-building were well-balanced, especially considering all of the background and technology that needed to be coherently introduced. It may have been easier to physically read this one with all of the unfamiliar terms and name structures (I felt the same way with The Goblin Emperor); and one of the three narrators did a horrible job differentiating between characters when there was heavy dialogue. (The other two narrators were fantastic.) It was an entertaining read with just the right amount of twists to keep me guessing.

Also, I love it when an author's personal interests shine through like they did here (Czerneda is a biologist).

#3 - System Collapse by Martha Wells - 4/5 stars (audio)

Another fun installment! Personally I rank it near Fugitive Telemetry in terms of plot. Felt to me more like a bridge book than its own adventure. Some of that might be on me; I was really struggling to pay attention to this one.

Pros: Tarik! And major character development for Murderbot.

Cons: Not nearly enough of Three.

#4 - The Riverman by Aaron Starmer - 3/5 stars (audio)

Skim the reviews for this book and you’ll notice a theme: “Wait…. What???”

This book started out strong, tripped on its own shoelaces a couple of chapters in, and fell flat on its face. It then spent almost the rest of the story trying to convince you it was the cat’s fault—when there isn’t even a cat.

Why does the 12-year-old protagonist read as 15? Why do all of the reveals come out of left field with as much foreshadowing as a shadow puppet dog? How were there so many characters and yet almost no genuine human interactions between them? How does a person lose an index, middle, and ring finger but NOT the pinky or thumb on the same hand? Why was the story giving off fantasy signals at the start when it apparently meant to be magical realism/horror with way more ambiguity than it had earned? Was it set in the 80’s just to keep the main characters from conveniently googling all of their questions? HOW DOES A PERSON SPEND TWELVE YEARS ALL ALONE IN A MAGICAL WORLD AND STILL NEED ONE CONVERSATION WITH AN EXTREMELY CONFUSED CHILD TO FIGURE OUT THE BIG REVEAL??? Was she sitting on her hands talking to chartreuse giraffes for that entire period?

The most frustrating thing to me was that there was so much potential here, so many angles we could have explored, so many places we could have dropped a few clues; yet the portal fantasy aspect was blander than a cheese sandwich and Alistair’s obtuseness was the only thing keeping the real world story thread tangled long enough to make a book out of it.

#5 - The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - 4/5 stars (audio)

I was about 80% of the way through this book, really enjoying it because I'd come across the audiobook and the narrator was great and it was a cozy, kind of idyllic, slice-of-life little classic and bam.

Told a friend what I was reading and she responded instantly with "oh I HATE that book".

And I realized I was definitely holding a tragedy in my hands. I'd suspected as much, but I didn't want to believe it. Now the question was how would that last 20% go down.

My friends, it went down like honey with a Worcestershire sauce chaser.

Of all of the ways I might have guessed it would end, I was honestly hoping for something more like Where the Red Fern Grows. And I expected it to happen a little sooner than right at the very end (minus what? a chapter?). Pain upon pain, woe upon woe.

I didn't hate it by any means. 98% of it I loved. It's just not quite what I was expecting and I'm still recovering from that.

DNF

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (tr. Ken Liu) - Solid writing and an interesting premise, but not my cup of tea.

[frecht]

i am at the library which means i am flipping through the riverman bc no one else has checked it out which means i am thinking about fiona again. i love her SO much she's so insane. i wish she had more page time because she's such good Weird Girl rep. like the 2nd time we hear about her (after her giving alastair the tape) is a flashback from when she was like 6 and says "we should pretend a nuclear bomb fell and we are dying from the radiation" and as someone who was a Weird Girl obsessed with disasters and poisons i love that for her SO much

[demisexualnathanvuornos]

Haney (John Dunsworth) The Riverman (2004) 2/ 2

[velvettapeworm]

Some of you are familiar with my work already through itch.io or this blog, but I want to say that my book, So Sang the Riverman—a story which tells of the primordial world's destruction after the spirit of life, Fervor, makes off with the heart in Decay's grave—is now available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. If you have a soft spot for mythological tales, lyrical prose and/or obsessive lovesick martyrdom, have yourself a look. And if you do decide to buy a copy, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my work!

[sillyseaveerablogs]

and worst of all, there's no fanarts when I search for the riverman fanart ;c

Oml the riverman is so good why no one know about it

[maxladcomics]

Riverman

ShowerMan

WatchingMan

StrangeMan

MysteryMan

[justanechoflower]

my monthly piece is done, time to return to the cave to think of my next artwork.

(Nice! Cool riverman art. I don't think I've ever seen the guy outside their boat expect for now. They should be given the opportunity to explore more like this! They thank you for your generosity.)

[demento-mori]

Actually. In that vein, does anyone have any good recommendations for horror books (that aren't stephen king)?

Ive been looking for some new ones to read but a lot of them just seem really tame not really what i was looking for.

[horsesarecreatures]

Nice day at the South Jersey Horse Rescue.

[better-dead-than-in-hell]

what's (one of, if you can't pick one) your favorite underappreciated ya book or series?

man, this is a tough one. for classics i would say the wildwood trilogy bc it kind of feels like a twisted, ruined fever dream (and its being turned into a stop motion movie, from what i hear! wow!)

for something ive read more recently, the riverman trilogy. damn this one hurts. it is stories of a disappearance and a land called aquavania and greed for more, more, more, rainbow souls sucked through a straw and riverman, riverman, blood to ice, friends to enemies and fireworks and guns and shaking twelve year old hands and a girl named fiona and a boy named alistair, and a confused love and a frog shaped rock and an accident and water floating in the middle of nowhere, code and tape and a cassette and a forever unfinished biography, bookmarked the end too soon. anyway i am totally normal about this totally for sure /j

[euesworld]

"She is the riverman, she escorts you across death.. with long, perfect, slender legs under her cloak. She rows across the sea slowly, cloak covering her face in shadows reciting rituals like the pope.. the oars dipping into lightless dark matter, a rippling hollow darkness that emanates an eerie groan. You are aware of her, though you can't move a thread.. death.. her cloak slips a bit and you see a skull. Thin wispy, stringy hair hangs from the skull in patches and her eyes are cold.. two blue sparks floating in its eye sockets where the eyes should be.. she turned and you hear the raft bump against something, a dock? Out of the corner of your eye, you can see her coming over to where you lie.. with a strength that was impossible, she picked your body up easily with one hand, and as she carried you, you can see the dark, star filled night. Your body twists in her grip and you are facing those perfect womanly legs again as she walked along.. she stopped. Suddenly you feel as if something is wrong.. you can feel despair, emptiness, sadness, hate.. thick around you, squeezing like a snake. The feeling is consuming you, like your soul is dissolving.. it transcends pain like nothing you have ever experienced before. If you could scream, it would be an eternal wail of anguish like the curse of billions of souls that believed in absolutely nothing, in other words.. the devil.. the devil is absolutely nothing, the opposite of God. And as the riverman flings your body into a big dark hole, the energy that makes up your soul dissolves and the last thing that you experienced was the fabric of your soul being slowly torn, shredded, and destroyed even as you fought against it. You ceased to exist. They say you can't destroy energy, but when you believe in nothing.. you become nothing in the afterlife. Believing in nothing is like believing in the devil, the darkness before light when nothing existed.. you don't return to the flow of the universe, you don't return to God. The riverman looks at the black hole once more and turns around.. she returns to her boat to collect another soul. She looks up into the ethereal sky filled with stars and she whispers a little prayer.. 'I live for you. I love for you. Treat others with compassion. I give to you. My life for you. May our souls be everlasting.' She started rowing back across the darkness lapping at the sides of her boat. I'm starting to wonder how many trips she makes a day? If you don't believe in anything, why do you do the things you do? Cause you are told? Must be a pretty empty life with no meaning. Maybe it's best to just become part of the nothing.. it's a cruel existence not knowing God's love. God loves everything equally, down to the last cockroach but if you don't believe in God, God is not obligated to believe in you.. anything that God doesn't believe in just ceases to exist. Which isn't such a bad fate anyway, cause y'all don't believe in anything.. so you are right in a way."

Meh, this will probably be analyzed and scrutinized.. it's a story. Take what you want out of it, haha.. it's a weird fuggin story, I admit - eUë

[frecht]

thinking about the riverman again i might have to reread the whole trilogy ven though it's only been like 2 weeks since i finished it. I'm going to write a bunch of tags but DONT read them bc they're spoilers

[demisexualnathanvuornos]

Haney (John Dunsworth) The Riverman (2004) 1/ 2