The Word of Flesh and Soul by Ruthanna Emrys
My rating: 3/5 cats
I try to feel the word: not just the velveteen shapes on my floor, but how they’d have sat in the minds of the speakers. Someone carved those bright letters in dark stone, almost four thousand years ago. Someone struggled over their sentences, just as I do when I strive to say what I mean, and nothing else, explanations chipped out word by word.
i suppose this story isn’t precisely lovecraftian, but it is lovecraft-adjacent, and that’s close enough for me to politely excuse myself from reviewing it, since this is such an obvious case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’ or, rather—‘it’s not you, it’s your influences.’
i like a lot of the writing, and the story started off holding my interest, but then its focus slid quickly into nooooot fooooor meeeee toooown, enough so that despite my so far/so good 2018 commitment to reviewing all of these free tor shorts, however briefly, immediately after reading them instead of letting them pile up on my virtual ‘review-pending’ shelf until years have passed and i can’t even remember the foggiest detail, i put off reviewing this for a week—a week during which thanksgiving happened, gravy-wiping my memory of anything except turkey and root vegetables and regret.
so now, all i can remember is that i really wanted to like this one, and it had good bones, as they say, but while the style and the shape around those bones will appeal to many readers, they do not, unfortunately, appeal to this jackass.
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2018/11/14/the-wo…
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