Taste the Books: Review Morsels #46 Kosoko Jackson, Jay Bonansinga, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear, I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson (ARC Review)

★★

The only Black and openly gay scholarship student at a prestigious academy struggles with his past and battles homophobia and bullying, until he finds out he might be the only one able to stop the curse that haunts the bordering forest.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Harper Collins for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

After loving The Honeys by Ryan La Sala, I had great expectations for a book in the same vein...but I realised early on that TFDID wasn't going to recreate that kind of magic only on the basis of a shared premise. First off, I'm not a big fan of short sentences, so the writing style set a certain mood for me from the start. Secondly, the main character sounded younger than his age. Finally - and more importantly - there wasn't any suspense build-up...in the opening chapters, we're literally smacked on the head first with the protagonist's dark secret, then with the very creatures that haunt/hunt in the forest next to the school (and with the curse that allows them to exist in that space) - and bam! our Douglas is revealed to be the Chosen One who's supposed to end such curse. I wouldn't discourage potential lower-to-middle YA readers from picking this one up* (especially gay Black teens and fans of reject-to-chosen-one narratives), but for me, the book lost steam early on, and I painfully decided a DNF was in order.

*Mind you: since I DNF this one, I can't really speak for the level of horror and/or gore it contains - maybe see other reviews or look for a trigger warning list elsewhere.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later, and of course I don't plan to reread this book).

Lucid by Jay Bonansinga

★★★

A half-Jamaican, half-Irish, all-goth 17 y.o. girl who's been having nightmares about a creepy door for most of her life discovers a demon-infested dreamworld and her own power to influence it.

***

Rated 3.5 really.

This could have been AWESOME - and to an extent, it was. Unique premise that blends lucid dreaming with demonic possession, stunning visuals, shocking reveals (though I figured out one of the twists in advance*...yet I couldn't be SURE, you know?), and an interesting, spunky lead. Except there were a few things that bugged me (not even including the open ending that desperately calls for a sequel). Apart from certain points my fellow reviewers have already touched upon (like the foreshadowing and small inconsistencies), I thought that the book needed to be longer in order to expand on the worldbuilding, and to give Lori more time to grow into her dream-affecting powers. The fact that people who probably never met in real life would share dreams where they saw each other's true aspect was never explained. The (too fast) romance didn't make sense and was in poor taste - for reasons I can't elaborate upon in order to avoid spoilers. Another thing that didn't make sense was for a possessed characters to get killed, only to not stay dead once the entity that animated their hollow body left it behind. Lastly, adjectives like "beefy", "obese" and "fat" are a tad too on the nose, even for a 2015 book...Anyhow, highly entertaining and worth a read.

*The fact that Lori never saw/asked to see her mother during a certain ordeal was a telltale sign, though I'm almost convinced that the author simply forgot to incorporate that detail...

(On a side note, the cover is awesome, except Lori isn't white, you know 😤).

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later).

Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky

★★★

A British astronaut from an international team sent to investigate a wormhole artifact in space finds himself wandering inside the thing and encountering all kinds of creatures - but he might not be the same individual who got lost in that physics-defying maze anymore.

***

As of 2023, I've read all the Terrible Worlds: Destinations novellas Tchaikovsky put forth, and while I very much enjoyed the last two, I'm not terribly fond of this one. My eyes glossed over the most technical sci-fi stuff, and even the humour proved to be too dry and snarky for my tastes. The author nicely (so to speak, given the amount of gross imagery 😂) combines a number of sci-fi/horror tropes and gives them his own spin, and the writing is poignant at times (when Tchaikovsky doesn't go for the most obscure, not completely fitting words he can employ); the creatures our main character meets and their interactions with him are genuinely funny at times, nightmarish but less original in other instances. The main twist is sort of telegraphed, though it has horrific implications that I didn't see coming (maybe I should have, in retrospect, but 🤷‍♀️). Also, I was only able to understand the Easter egg nested in the ending thanks to more literate reviewers (or maybe reviewers more versed than me in movies and graphic novels) - but you don't really need to get that part to enjoy the story. Recommended if you love claustrophobic space horror and snarky yet philosophical anti-heroes.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later; also, due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?