Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Not saying all books need to be social commentary/have explicit morals or anything like that, but it just felt really abrupt.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Luminous Dead Author Caitlin Starling
I could feel/understand the trauma bond developing between Gyre and Em, but I remember the end of the book just sort of played their relationship straight without acknowledging how unhealthy it was.
My major gripe with the book was the ending. I never felt like there were pacing issues in the narrative, and I think a large part of that might have been how convincingly she portrayed the foreboding atmosphere and the rising tension between the characters. The audiobook narrated by Adenrele Ojo is absolutely fantastic. This was my first foray into horror/suspense and it made me really excited to check out more of the genre. But I do remember staying up until 4am on a work night so I could finish the whole book in one sitting haha. I read this book like two years ago (just happened to stumble on this thread), so I don't remember many of the plot details anymore. I'd love to hear your thoughts! I'm planning on doing a mini-review post like this for each book I finish, I'd love to discuss these books as I read them! But the issues that I had with the overall plot kept it from being a great story, in my mind. I thought it was a solid sci-fi adventure, and like I said, the last third or so kept me very engaged. Gyre definitely has internal conflict about this, but it just felt odd to me that it ended the way that it did. It was like Gyre was suffering from some version of Stockholm Syndrome, constantly finding ways to justify Em's behavior. After everything that happened, after everything that Em put Gyre through, the lying and the manipulation, it just didn't seem plausible that they would fall in love with each other over the course of the book. It just felt like a way to shoehorn a "big reveal" of this creature into the story, and still have Gyre come out ahead, somehow.īeyond that, I didn't love the progression of the relationship between Gyre and Em throughout the book. Gyre just barely survives her first two encounters with it, but then when she comes face to face with it, she just yells at it, causing it to overbalance and fall to its death. The pinnacle of this was Gyre's final encounter with the Tunneler, a mysterious and dangerous beast that is hinted at throughout the book as being an unimaginable threat.
#The luminous dead skin#
Gyre seemed to get out of sticky situations by the skin of her teeth over and over, to the point where I was just waiting for the next disaster to strike, only to essentially be hand-waved away. I'm not sure that I really liked how the book ended, it felt like it wasn't really earned. The entire first half of the book all blends together in my mind because there just wasn't that much of significance that happened.Īside from that, I felt that both the story progression and character arc progression in this book felt cheap at times. I understand that it takes some time to set up the world, the characters, etc, but it just took a long time to get there. The first half or so of the book felt very drawn out. My main issue with this book was the pacing. Starling put together a riveting and suspenseful conclusion to this story that made it hard for me to put down! Unfortunately, the journey up to that point was less engaging, although the book overall was still pretty enjoyable. One thing that I will say about The Luminous Dead is that the last act of it was very engaging.
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