Honestly, I just need to let my feelings and thoughts simmer for a while because this book is so intense and captivating. I can't put it into words. All I can say for now is wow.

this was one powerful and punching of a read. i was taken in by it totally and utterly and it didn't let go. i had no choices i was in, i was sat, and i was there right until the end. i cant honestly say i have never read anything like this before.
our narrator is trying to discover themselves out of the generational trauma they have inherited. they are non binary and just trying to seek what is them. what makes their identity? we get memory we get thoughts we get heart. we get something that feels like a piece of an award winning English piece, poetry but also someones heart felt story.
i dont know how to say anything about this book other than you feel it. you feel it through your whole heart and world. it does something in the writing that i've honestly never seen in a book before. there is something special within its pages. the vulnerability here is brave beyond words. like, really brave. we get it all from this book but somehow it all seems to fit, work alongside and work together.
its like we are reading a story written by Kim but also her characters first and foremost. its weird. its beautiful. its just a brilliant time to be a reader.
its like we are searching for belonging in the pages and tone the book takes whilst also finding it amongst he story.
im so glad i came across this book. im sure many other reviews will do it more justice and im aware im not delivery it with much sense. but there it is, maybe you need to read it and you will understand.

Blut. Buch. Blutbuche.

And in between these three words, we just might have the queer novel of the year. Perhaps it’s still a bit early for such pronouncements, but I dare anyone reading this to find another novel as complex as Kim de l’Horizon’s. While I was slightly annoyed by the usual theoretical name-drops (if I see another mention of Neimais, I swear I’ll…), the novel carves out its own space, never feeling derivative. It is especially compelling in its treatment of plants, working through the chiasmus evoked by those three words at the start of this review. What Blood Book demonstrates is that queerness and its relation to the more-than-human is never unmoored from history—and here it is intertwined with blood beech, various European nationalisms, racisms, and much more.

As an interesting side note, beech also features in Rt, the best recent Serbian novel dealing with different forms of extraction and environmental destruction, in the form of the surname Bukvić. Ilić’s novel is also very much queer. There’s something about queer more-than-human ecology that draws attention.

But back to Blood Book. The translator mentions workshops on translation and notes that there was a Croatian translator present. In English, referring to a child as “it” may sound a bit jarring, but in ex-Yugoslav languages it’s simply grammatical gender. It’s also used for things and animals, so there’s that. I’ve always wondered when we’ll start reclaiming “it” for our queer purposes. There’s a whole front of us—animals and things—and that’s many (or rather, a multiplicity, pace D&G). I’m also looking forward to the Croatian translation, if I ever get my hands on it, even though I pre-ordered the English version as soon as I saw it was available. This one needs to be read on paper—and slowly.

Blood Book is a radical, genre-defying novel that pulses with emotional and political urgency. Blending autofiction, queer theory, family history, and experimental language, Kim de l’Horizon crafts a voice that is fluid, raw, and defiantly uncontainable. As the nonbinary narrator seeks to uncover inherited trauma while forging their own identity, the text shapeshifts—between essay, fable, memory, and bodily revolt.

This is not just a book you read—it’s one you feel in your gut. De l’Horizon writes with courage, vulnerability, and fierce intellect, breaking open the boundaries of gender, narrative, and form. Blood Book is a vital, uncompromising work that deserves its place among the most groundbreaking queer literature of our time.

Dieses Buch ist wirklich ein Unikat, das ich so noch nie gelesen habe. Eine wilde Mischung aus Familiengeschichte mit geheimnisvollem Touch, botanischem Fachwissen, esoterischer Fantasy, einer Reise zur Selbstfindung – und ja, auch ein paar pornografischen Kurzgeschichten sind dabei. Klingt verrückt? Ist es auch, und genau das macht es so spannend.

Zu Beginn musste ich mich echt durchkämpfen, weil das Buch so viele verschiedene Ebenen gleichzeitig bedient. Aber Kim de L’Horizon schafft es tatsächlich, am Ende alles wie ein großes Puzzle zusammenzufügen – und ich war mehr als positiv überrascht.

Die Hauptfigur Kim, die nicht-binär ist und bei der Geburt als männlich eingestuft wurde, sucht nach ihrem Platz in der Welt. Dabei startet sie ein Schreibprojekt – das Buch, das wir gerade lesen –, um sich selbst eine Stimme zu geben. Klassisch, aber alles andere als gewöhnlich.

Das Buch verändert ständig seine Form und seinen Ton, probiert neue Wege aus, und manchmal funktioniert das nicht so richtig. Genau das ist aber die große Stärke: Das scheitern und Irren wird bewusst thematisiert und macht das Ganze echt lebendig. Kim, der Erzähler, ist so jemand, der mit viel Theorie und Ironie durchs Leben geht, immer auf der Suche nach Schönheit, Frieden und Erlösung und genau das spürt man beim Lesen.

Das ist definitiv kein einfaches Buch für Zwischendurch, aber wer sich auf die verrückte Reise einlässt, bekommt eine außergewöhnliche und intensive Leseerfahrung geboten, die sich von der Mainstream Popliteratur meilenweit entfernt.