it really felt like i left a piece of myself getting lost in the many, many descriptions of a landscape of ice and more ice without ever feeling repetitive. no, i don't want to talk about what became of estraven and genly ai. i will be devastated again and again if i think about these two for longer than a minute (i'm totally normal about them).

i had high expectations coming into this book with a premise that felt resonant with the current state of the world. i don't think it's anything new that horror media reflects the state of when it was made and it's really no coincidence that we've gotten works that explores bodily autonomy like alien: romulus, silent hill f, i saw the tv glow, and now this book (just to name a few).

this is a fast paced book. it leaves you no room to breathe from the beginning until the very end. if the first chapter doesn't hit you with an immediate gut reaction, then the visceral writing that follows certainly will. the feeling of something crawling under my skin is a prominent and constant feeling reading this. this is a wonderfully disgusting book. it gets into the nitty gritty of the body, and of gender. so much so that one of its tender moments is also one of its more nauseatingly horrific moments.

and also i love crane. a mute autistic trans man? fuck yes. every part of his identity matters to him, his character journey, and how he exists/perceived in this world he lives in. like sure, some things may have been easier to resolve if crane did things a certain way. maybe things would've been easier or not have gone the way it did if crane had spoken. crane, too, believes this, but he won't. he can't. also maybe because i can't get myself not to feel excited to read a character with a bird-like name. like him, i understood the need to seek for permission to exist, and like him, i am never sure if i'm allowed to.

overall, yes it's a fast read but it's far from being an easy read, and it's not at all trying to be one at all, unapologetically so. this is exactly the kind of horror book that i needed and wanted to read. it's the kind of book that buries itself in your gut, making a comfort out of your insides, and you simply let it. it definitely did for me.