"Why do I have to be such an old crank? As of today, Monstrilio rating on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ was 4.19. Well, if you loved this book, scroll on because I’m about to be my irritable self.

A grief stricken mother grows a piece of her dead child’s lung into a new creature.

There were so many things I didn’t like about this book that I’ll only be able to mention a few. Oh, I could lie and say I liked it and discuss metaphors and observations, and look all intelligent, but why? The book was a chore to read. It was boring as well. I finished only because of the high ratings, and when it didn’t get any better I was frustrated. Now I wish I would have DNF’d.

There was no horror beyond the removal of the piece of the dead child’s lung with the exception of animal killing and bites, which is a “no� for me. No matter what happened, it was treated like everything was a-ok. It was all just so awkward and…odd. Even the mother carving into her dead child was treated as an “oops� moment. Magical realism, I get it, it was just so weirdly done.

The characters. Ohhhh, the characters. The book was divided into four parts, four POV’s from each of the main characters. They were boring and self centered, there was pretty descriptive sex that contributed little to the story, and their actions were strange to say the least. Each character had his or her own “monster�. What started as one (grief) turned into more (lbgtq issues, unusual sexual appetites, inability to play well with others) and I ended up lost in metaphor land. (Once the performance art started I was beyond done with it all). Waaay too many monsters for one story besides Monstrilio. Why should I care about any one of them? The author gives the reader no reason to like them, other than their issues. There was no “heart�. It just really was too scattered all over the place, and Monstrilio almost got lost in the shuffle.

Im glad it’s over. Reading this monstrosity (heh heh) just left me feeling “icky�."

"I don't think I understood the power of prose until I read this book. This novel is divided into 4 parts: Magos, Lena, Joseph, and Monstrilio. You'd expect the perspectives to shift as we watch how they experience the loss of Santiago and learn to live with a monster. But the prose doesn't change for any perspective. Everyone very straightforwardly recounts the same story.

This was supposed to be a book about grief, but the writing holds you at such arms length, you don't feel the weight of the grieving process. I feel it a bit from Magos' perspective but it evaporates as soon as Lena's takes over. And where's the inference! The implication! One user said this story reads like a screenplay and how true that is. I found myself wondering why this story was even told via this medium if it wasn't going to take advantage of the freedom this medium allows. There's no lyricism, no rhythm, no particular care to show what each of these characters is going through.

Since the writing is so straightforward, I don't finish this book caring about any of the characters. Instead, I find myself confused about their relationships, confused about their lack of reactions to Monstrilio, and confused about what it is they even love about him. There is a large time jump in the middle of the story where all the characters change immensely. The readers don't get to witness this change, rather we enter Joseph's POV with a new cast, a teenage Monstrilio, and a completely new story. This makes it even harder to feel any connection with this cast when they've all gone through something wholly separate from the audience.

The blurb is so, so misleading. I was really excited for a literary horror novel that used grief to exacerbate the horrific nature of it, but this was a coming of age story that occasionally featured fangs. I won't say I'm disappointed because I would've never realized what I like about character specific writing until I read this book, but I am befuddled by the choices made in this one."

"Samantha Harvey, who I’m sure is very nice but also apparently became quite fascinated by the Wikipedia entry of Voyager, presents to us her Google Earth travelogue. Orbital is an essayistic file of recurring lists, rolls, catalogs, registers, indexes, directories and listings about various geography and other hobnob things noticed by a group of astronauts in orbit. Literally at one point she lists the Great Lakes. Like all 5. Just because. Full of less than profound musings, Harvey adds this awkward *literary sense of wonder* to professional astronauts that I imagine may would have been much more familiar with the humdrum STEM topics she seems to be utterly in awe of. Africa. Australia. Islands. The Antarctic. The ocean. The ocean. The ocean. The desert. Land. The land. The sun. The sun. The dark. The dark. Oops another list. Come here for surface-level musings about space and God and nature and stay for the lists and lists and more lists. And for that time she anthropomorphized the moon, saying it missed humans since we hadn’t gotten to visit in the last 50 years and when she quoted the same old story about time since the Big Bang comparing it to a calendar year and mentioning that humans haven’t been here all that long, just toward the end of December� wow did she just take Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar and present it as her own??? Is that even OKAY??? Then she goes and writes yet another list that’s her own boring version of We Didn’t Start the Fire where she mentions every blasted thing EXCEPT for Billy Joel. Contrived, trite, boring, and really just a bad book."

"If asked to describe this book in one word, it would be: nothingburgers.

It gave me nothing. It meant nothing. It was about nothing.

Actual quote from the book:

“The moon, the moon. Mars, the moon.�

I actually laughed, out loud, at how nonsensical this one is in places.

My experience of reading this was tantamount to being invited to lunch with some acquaintances. They aren’t friends really, but they could be, because they are generally nice people, so I agree to go (not really, because I’m an introvert, but for the purpose of this comparison, I go.) They select some restaurant I’ve never heard of where they serve you poutine with cashew cheese (I’ve had this, it’s gross). And while you’re eating some hipster stands up at the small stage with the microphone in front of the windows, and proudly announces they are about to have a slam poetry reading.

And then someone with the thickest, blackest eyeliner you’ve ever seen gets up and reads you their deepest poetry about #astronautlife, even though they have clearly never ever been to space.

And you can tell it really means something to them. And the audience is feeling it. And the poet is feeling it. And all you can do is make an excuse to run to the bathroom so you don’t burst into a laughing fit because it’s so fucking ridiculous.

So I am once again, the odd man out.

This is why I have no friends by the way.

Anyway. I gave it two stars because there was exactly one chapter about Chie’s mother that I found really beautiful and touching. It’s a fucking shame Harvey didn’t focus on the astronauts more because she did have something to say about the human condition, (outside of: in the majesty of space, human life is insignificant or humans are only a “few flint strikes ahead� of anything else), but it was so fleeting I can’t give it more than that. She should just write poetry if that’s what she wants to do. There are people who would appreciate it. She should not sell it in novel form. I am unlikely to read from this author again."