Lori's Reviews > A Carnival of Atrocities
A Carnival of Atrocities
by
by

Lori's review
bookshelves: arc-reviewers-copy, downloads, a-big-steaming-heap-of-wtf-ery, fiction, people-as-monsters
Apr 06, 2025
bookshelves: arc-reviewers-copy, downloads, a-big-steaming-heap-of-wtf-ery, fiction, people-as-monsters
I am not sure what I just read.
The title is captivating, the cover is gorgeous, the writing was stunning. But the storyline was a blur of reality and... something else. It was incredibly hard to follow but too intriguing to put down. Did I like it? Yes. It was definitely an experience. Would I recommend it? No. I don't think so. Unless I did it selfishly, so you could finish it and tell me what the heck was happening.
The book opens with a young girl who is forcefully removed from her home when her mother dies and her father disappears. Then, we shift to the perspectives of nine of the townsfolk who remember the girl as a witch and are on a strange journey of sorts to hunt down a group of runaways.
Cursed, afraid, and perhaps completely out of their minds, incredibly odd and horrific things begin to happen to them on this journey. A priest cuts off his own ears, a woman loses her footing and falls to her death and when her husband grieves over her dead body, someone else sneaks up to the woman who is attempting to console him and cracks her skull in with a rock. A man who owes a debt removes the gold teeth straight out of the mouth of a dying traveler; the food for the trip goes rotten; someone sets some of the others, and maybe themselves, on fire; and a young man upon coming face to face with his father, stakes himself in the chest.
Then again, this might all be wrong.
A hypnotic story of treachery and fear that howls like the wind in your ears. There's a message here somewhere but I'll be damned if I can decipher it.
The title is captivating, the cover is gorgeous, the writing was stunning. But the storyline was a blur of reality and... something else. It was incredibly hard to follow but too intriguing to put down. Did I like it? Yes. It was definitely an experience. Would I recommend it? No. I don't think so. Unless I did it selfishly, so you could finish it and tell me what the heck was happening.
The book opens with a young girl who is forcefully removed from her home when her mother dies and her father disappears. Then, we shift to the perspectives of nine of the townsfolk who remember the girl as a witch and are on a strange journey of sorts to hunt down a group of runaways.
Cursed, afraid, and perhaps completely out of their minds, incredibly odd and horrific things begin to happen to them on this journey. A priest cuts off his own ears, a woman loses her footing and falls to her death and when her husband grieves over her dead body, someone else sneaks up to the woman who is attempting to console him and cracks her skull in with a rock. A man who owes a debt removes the gold teeth straight out of the mouth of a dying traveler; the food for the trip goes rotten; someone sets some of the others, and maybe themselves, on fire; and a young man upon coming face to face with his father, stakes himself in the chest.
Then again, this might all be wrong.
A hypnotic story of treachery and fear that howls like the wind in your ears. There's a message here somewhere but I'll be damned if I can decipher it.
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Reading Progress
March 15, 2025
– Shelved
March 15, 2025
– Shelved as:
to-read
March 25, 2025
– Shelved as:
arc-reviewers-copy
March 25, 2025
– Shelved as:
downloads
March 30, 2025
–
Started Reading
April 6, 2025
– Shelved as:
a-big-steaming-heap-of-wtf-ery
April 6, 2025
– Shelved as:
fiction
April 6, 2025
– Shelved as:
people-as-monsters
April 6, 2025
–
Finished Reading