Cassandra Khaw

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𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴, 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦.

⁽ᵁᴺᴮᴱᶻᴬᴴᴸᵀᴱ ᵂᴱᴿᴮᵁᴺᴳ ⁻ ˢᴱᴸᴮˢᵀᴷᴬᵁᶠ⁾
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Das war wild. Schon der Einstieg hat mich mitten hineingeworfen, ohne dass ich so recht wusste, was eigentlich passiert ist. Genau dieses Gefühl der Desorientierung zieht sich durch das ganze Buch – manchmal packend, manchmal etwas verwirrend.

Die Geschichte spielt auf zwei Zeitebenen:
Zum einen begleiten wir Alessa, die entführt und in Hellebore zwangseingeschrieben wurde. Wir erleben, wie sie sich mit der neuen Umgebung auseinandersetzt und andere kennenlernt, die dasselbe Schicksal teilen. Zum anderen gibt es die Zeitebene des Abschlusstages, an dem sie gemeinsam mit anderen in die Bibliothek flieht. Gerade dieser Handlungsstrang war für mich der spannendere und intensivere. Ich hätte mir gewünscht, dass er noch mehr Raum bekommt.

Teilweise fand ich die Struktur verwirrend. Eine lineare Erzählweise hätte der Geschichte für meinen Geschmack gutgetan, um die Handlung noch besser greifbar zu machen.

Dennoch: Die Kreativität ist enorm. Cassandra Khaw verwebt Dark Academia, Body Horror und Gore zu einer sehr eigenen Mischung, die definitiv nicht alltäglich ist. Auch wenn ich mir in manchen Momenten mehr Klarheit gewünscht hätte, hat mich das Buch durch seine Einzigartigkeit und die intensive Atmosphäre beeindruckt.

Ein ungewöhnlicher, wilder Trip, der sicher nicht jedem gefallen wird, aber wer Lust auf experimentelle Dark-Academia-Horror-Vibes hat, sollte sich darauf einlassen.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆  

In terms of language this was clearly a delight!! But also a bit of a struggle for me, because I missed some marks or explaination on the japanese words and ghostsforms.
The twists were amazingly disturbing and I was wondering from the middle till the bitter end.
BUT as this is just a short novella I can't really argue about the lack of describtion and character depts... even though (not sorry) I would have loved to know how these monsters really looked like in detail! And same goes to the characters. What confused me was the non specific gender of the protagonists in the first pages but it didn't ruin anything for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

CW: Abusive Relationships, Co-Dependency, Body-Horror, Amputations, surgeries, suicide 

So, this was a weird one. It was not at all what I was expecting. I mean I liked it but there where just elements that again and again confused me and made me like it less. I’ll give it 3.5 stars.

I was expecting a high stakes action adventure with a crew of badass mercenaries. And this is that, but only barely. The story focuses more on the characters and their trauma, where they have been in the last 40 years and who hates who. The ‘plot’ is resolved in the last 30 pages or so. That did annoy me a bit since I myself normally prefer plot over characters and this book didn’t give me that. As always, this is just my opinion, your experience might differ greatly.

And I liked the characters. They are cool and bad-ass and queer and even though none of them are entirely human their motivations and feelings are very understandable.

Ok, now to the stuff that I didn’t like. Like I already mentioned, I didn’t lime that the plot very much took a back seat in this, I think the synopsis is very misleading.

Next: (This has to come with the info that I read an ARC and these issues might be fixed in the final copy) There are so many mistakes in this. Typos and just wrong words and mixed-up names. I really hope that issue will be fixed because it makes the book even more confusing.

What do I mean with ‘even more’ confusing? Let’s just say the writing is…very elaborate.  Iknow English is my second language, and I am always prepared to not understand everything in a Sci-Fi novel but even then… this writing is just way to complicated. In some sentences I can’t understand half of what is being said. And it’s not just the normal Sci-Fi level of that. The word choices just seem designed to show of and brag that ‘look, I used a fancy word!’. It just annoyed me. I think that might be because the author used to write short stories, where very stylized writing like this can add to the intrigue of the story but in my opinion, it doesn’t really work in a full-length novel.

So, in conclusion: If you want to read a story about badass sci-fi characters and don’t mind a little confusion, check this out!