This Is Not A Book Review Blog

I loved the inclusion of African American folklore. Few thing better than a book that send you straight to google. Even though I lacked some cultural context I was never confused about what was happening which I consider impressive. Its more action horror than than creepy horror, but it still managed to make me squirm here and there. Some of those description are.. vivid.

The writing doesn't falter behind either. I've only finished the first 5 volumes so far but even then I can already tell this story's got a lot it wants to say and I'm exited to see where it goes. I especially liked the portrayal of disability and ableism, rarely do I see ableism (or any marginalization really) be portrayed not only as a matter of prejudice but as systemic. It gives me confidence that "Witch hat Atelier" has the potential to be a true masterpiece of the genre. (if it isn't already :P)

Anyway, my favorite part is absolutely Ishmael, the narrator, he's so fun. It's therefore a little sad to me that over the course of the book he disappears more and more from his own narration. Most of the time he is indistinguishable from a third person semi-omniscient narrator. Which is fine, but I missed him :( over all I think I liked it though, but I probably won't be rereading it. At least not within the next decade lol

Like most books, I do not remember how this got on my TBR, but thank god it did, holy shit this was good. I'll need to buy my own copy someday so I can annotate the hell out of this thing. It's sad that Qiu Miaojin died at such an early age, I'll have to read more of her work eventually.