American Elsewhere

While it's not perfect, I have to give it 5 stars for quickly igniting the Gaiman Theory of Great Stories: “... and then what happened?”

If you like weird fiction, definitely check this out. Its mysteries are often more mysterious to the characters than the savvy reader, but glimpsing where things were going didn't dull my enjoyment at all. In fact, it had me marveling, “If we know all this at 30% in, what's going to happen NEXT?”

I'm definitely going to check out more of Bennett's work after this. He created some amazing characters and a lot of engaging ideas. At its heart, this is an emotional story, despite sci-fi trappings and action sequences, and he absolutely nailed it.

Not usually my usual fare, but an interesting story, with shades of Stranger Things

Mother set the rules
left to their own devices
the youngest goes rogue.

Really cool idea, but far too eager to explain itself; and the plot is not really complex enough to justify all that. I felt like I was ten steps ahead of the protag at times and you never really want to feel that way. Also I personally find it irritating when alien races are portrayed as basically the same as human beings. Like really an alien with mommy issues. We have enough of those.

I enjoyed the atmosphere of this book. The town of Wink was really interesting and mysterious. However, I got probably 50% of the way through the book (which is already pretty long, imo) and realized I didn't really care to go any further. It just kind of dragged and because my backlog is large, I decided to put it down.

At about the 60% mark of this book, a character reflects that “familiarity breeds contempt.”

This is the problem with so many stories in the “cosmic horror” genre — as soon as the “mystery beyond words” is revealed by an unskilled author, that author has no tools but words to describe that which is inherently beyond words.

Sadly, this author takes the path of turning to gross-out gore and incredibly depressing violence, including absolutely horrible scenes of children being murdered. 

I'm actually angry with Storygraph for recommending this book to me. It's disturbing, disgusting, and almost completely  without redeeming features. What's particularly sad is that the first 40% of the book is incredibly interesting (albeit confusing) before turning into a depressing, gore-saturated pulp. 

This is the most disappointing book I've read in decades. I'm so sad I read it.