I may have been hoping for too much from this one going into it. It's not bad.
It's just not what I was hoping for.
Things seemed stretched at times trying to prove a point.
Meh

sometimes a little hard to follow but overall a really fun read. to be fair from the cover alone i was sold on this. would definitely recommend to any horror obsessed readers out there

This is an ambitious and intellectually rich book, but it’s a tough one to follow. Baer dives deep into horror, trauma, and film theory, often with dense language that feels more academic than accessible. While the ideas are compelling, the structure and prose make it hard to stay engaged.

i was super excited to this one, i love a good queer horror story. this is my first experience with an avant-guard novel so i had no idea what to expect. the writing really took me by surprise. it was poetic, strange, and really intriguing. i felt like half the time i had no idea what was going on yet i could not put it down.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
I will say, this was a very interesting read even if I did not care or understand it for the most part. I think you really need to be into experimental writing for this, which is totally valid. I loved the queer aspect of the story for sure. I wish I knew what was truly happening throughout the whole novel, but I really just took it one page at a time. I think I wanted more horror from it, too.

You should give it a try, but know that this is not a book that will be for everyone.

I honestly couldn’t tell you if this book has a plot and if it does, I dodged it entirely. There are some beautiful quotes to be found in this but other than that, it’s mostly just gay sex but make it artistic.

I sadly didn't care for this book. I felt like the author was trying to do way to much like they just didn't quite know what they wanted to do.

Queer horror that reads like 1950s pulp. a very enjoyable read. if you like the avante garde and more experimental writing styles this may be just for you!
at times it really worked for me and other times- word choices kind of lost me especially since the story is a series of vignettes rather than a full chronological “novel.”

Fun, but definitely something you may need to mentally prep for before diving head first into!

The author writes "your" as "yr". Let that sink in for a second before you continue reading this review.

This is avant-garde...risky...experimental... and it didn't really work for me.

The lyrical, poetry aspect of the book had the potential to be interesting. But the writing itself feels like a word vomit stew. Excessive use of very obscure words to the point that it felt like I was reading from a thesaurus. And the novel is presented as a series of vignettes, so I thought with that combined with the writing style that it made to story very hard to follow.

I appreciate the attempt at trying something risky, and there were certain aspects of it I did like, but ultimately this wasn't for me. I've seen some other high reviews though so I'm sure there's an audience out there that is going to love this book.

This was sadly not for me. The cover is intriguing and tells a different story than the story itself.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The premise of this book, and the amazing cover, was really intriguing and I had high hopes for this novel. Unfortunately I didn't get out of it what I had hoped for.

I enjoyed the lyrical aspect to the writing--I love an unconventional narrative. When I read it like poetry, the language did give me a pulp horror vibe. The language was really evocative and quite visceral at times. But with the exception of the erotic aspects of this novel, I couldn't ascertain what was going on. Through the words, I could get a futuristic feeling or a vibe of being in space. But vampires? Hardly got that at all!

All in all, this book gave me the feeling that I was missing something and everyone else is probably smarter than me and 'gets it'.

As this was an eArc (thank you Net Galley), I'd be curious to see if the formatting of the final printed version changes the feel of the narrative. The pdf line breaks seems, at times, to allude to illustrations or page breaks.

This is a book for someone! And while there were parts I enjoyed, that person wasn't 100% me.

The premise and cover intrigued me and I had high hopes but unfortunately I was disappointed and I had to DNF.

The way this book is written is really throwing me off. It feels like it was meant to be poetic but instead it confused me through and through. I was not one chapter in and I was already lost and had no idea what was going on. And I couldn’t get past the use of “yr” instead of “your”.

I’m sure there is an audience for this type of writing and work, but I’m not one of them.

honestly i just wanna say what?
had to dnf, i just god confused with everything. the writhing is weird, every sentence made me more confused and lost. i can’t even explain the few 50ish pages i’ve read. i thought it would be a fun read but i guess it isn’t made for me ):

Unfortunately this is my first NetGalley DNF. The concept of this novel was perhaps too good to be true.

The grammar made reading the novel difficult, leading to multiple rereads of the same sentence. And what I read appeared more as an accumulation of vignette style fragments placed alongside one another. I think the novel is trying too hard to be intelligent, which appears more as regurgitation than integration of subject matter, philosophy, and complex vocabulary. Having read many outwardly pretentious works at university, I can grasp the inspirational matter used as a framework, but I struggle to see how this will engage a modern audience without a deep understanding of obscure vocabulary, excessive adverb usage, and strange grammar. Truly disappointing as this could have integrated those complex ideas and repackaged them as part of the plot instead of being fed it overtly, falling victim to ‘telling’ the reader rather than showing the reader.

This is a properly brilliant fever dream fused with queer brilliance. There's some great writing in this and there's certainly some bending of rules too! There's bits that didn't agree with me, but I enjoyed it overall.

Was very enticing, however I feel like I was massively missing something. Reading through other reviews I believe this is part of a series? I'm interested enough to find the the first book.

I love this cover, and the synopsis of the story sounded very interesting! Unfortunately I could not get past the first chapter, due to the writing style. Hopefully this book will find its readers, but for me it was just not it…

I anticipated this to be a good read by the description and the cover. GAY PULP FICTION? SIGN ME UP. But—— I was left confused more than I was satisfied. Did I miss some chapters or something?

It was really upsetting to find out after receiving this that it is the third book in a trilogy. Nothing on netgalley mentioned this and I was very lost and confused at first until a friend did some research and pointed this out. I ended up giving up very early on.

I found this kind of a slog to read mostly because it’s not what I was going in expecting. The writing was strange and hard to follow which really irritated me. Then the story just was meh.