I've been reading slowly lately because I'm being pulled in two diametrically opposed emotional directions, which just doesn't make for great concentration, and also has my dropping my book on my face. But I'm reading/read three interesting novels/novellas.
A Plagued Sea by Kim BoYoung: So I generally find anything reworking the Cthulu mythos a little hamstrung by, well, the Cthulu mythos itself. To me, at best, the Cthulu mythos puts a quirky avatar over sublime, terrifying nature, and I personally find sublime, terrifying nature more interesting than a squid god. I'm not addressing racism here because a lot work that engages with Lovecraft explicitly tries to trouble the racism. That said, I really love what I've read by Kim BoYoung, and I really enjoyed how many layers she managed to build in a short space: grief and displaced rage, the meaning of quarantine, government abandonment, monsterfucking. And, above all, the quintessential Lovecraftian narrator, who goes mad but survives to warn the world of the horror, is portrayed as shallow and exploitative, unable to handle the horror because of his narrow mind. This was never going to be my favorite novella because, again, once everything points to Cthulu my brain reacts like it's just seen a horror movie monster reveal where the image is not nearly as compelling as what my mind cooked up. But that doesn't mean it's not good stuff.
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda: I have less to say about this because I'm not far in it, which is purely the fault of my own exhaustion, but It's so nice to read more Ojeda. At least as translated by Sarah Booker, her writing has such nice rhythm to it, and I'm so concerned and excited to see where this story about runaways at a psychadelic music festival beside an active volcano is going to go. Her works are always a kaleidoscope of perspectives and just profoundly unafraid to go dark places and ask the most frightening questions. I know this sounds vague, but again, I haven't read very much.
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes : I started reading this because Electric Shamans isn't available as an English-language ebook, and when I was on the road to see my niece, I wanted to bring my ereader. I'm really charmed by the world building here: a city built in the corpse of an ancient tree, where on top the wealthy use strange perfumes to alter others' perception of them, and below poor exterminators attempt to rid the tree of powerful and magical vermin (insect monsters).
