(Honestly, I’m 98% convinced that this was actually written by a woman in effort to mock incel men, or maybe just as social commentary.)

Yes the narrator is misogynistic, self-absorbed, and unreliable, but if you bought the book having read the first page and expected it to be anything other, that’s on you.

Diary of an Oxygen Thief has that special Nabokov style of writing, where he writes contextually awful events but includes pockets of really, actually well written prose in effort to make the narrative digestible.

E.g. “Maybe there is a law after all. Of nature. Like gravity. An unwritten axiom that governs our emotional dealings.” Page 24

“Even now I feel like I should have capitalised them. But that was just the effect they had on me.” Page 35

“I was in a lot of pain, you see. But it had been caused by an abstract blade.” Page 53

“I trained myself to derive a perverse pleasure from the surrealism of that place. Hell in reverse.” Page 56

“I’m married to me.” Page 63

“[…] gaping mouths of Hades.” Page 75

“The nurse becomes willing to sacrifice herself to the patient. But the patient isn’t suffering from an external illness, he’s suffering from self inflicted wounds. The nurse wants to prevent him from this pain, the patient wants her to feel the pain too. How else will she understand him?” Page 147

The hate for this book provokes a larger discussion I think a lot of readers need to consider. Should you only read work that aligns with your political and moral beliefs? Should you take literature-and all art for that matter-at face value? Does a narrator have to be likeable for a book to be ‘good’?

I feel sorry for those who cannot read unlikeable narrators. One of the greatest pleasures of reading is that you have the opportunity to live the life, or read the mind, or feel the feelings of someone or things you normally wouldn’t, which in turn allows you to harbour a broader understanding of the world outside of your bubble. I will never know what it’s like to live the life of an incel man, nor do I really wish to, but I can confidently say that I have a greater understanding of a life I’ll never live.

Isn’t that what you should take away from the book? Allow yourself to be curious. Allow yourself to be mad. If it provokes strong feelings and thoughts, it’s good writing. End of. You can still keep your morality and politics without always being consumed by it.

An Afrofutiristic sci-fi take on one of the most popular fictional monsters, Octavia Butler’s Fledgling was her answer to vampire literature that was dominated by the pale, white specters of European folklore. It’s an incredibly ambitious work, tackling primarily racism as a theme and what the vampire myth would be if they as a species broke with racial homogeneity.

As a huge Butler fan, I must say that I think Fledgling is among her weakest work that I’ve read to date. Although the premise of the novel was what drew me to it initially, the genetic experiment of a Black vampire and what that means for the larger vampire community, I found it kind of unexplored for what should have been central to the story. The pacing of the novel is quite slow and latter half of the book unfolds in a way that I did not expect and that I’m not sure quite works for me. I expected more political intrigue and maybe some action but instead it became a pretty straightforward courtroom drama, which was a bit confusing and unsatisfying. It’s clear that Fledgling was intended to be part of a series and that’s likely what makes it feel kind of underdeveloped as a standalone piece.

Butler’s strengths in this novel lie in the characters, the world building, and the novel science fiction reimagining of classic monsters of fiction. The concepts of mutual symbiosis and community building around that, the introduction of melanin to vampire genetics, and the controversy of this genetic experimentation are all innovative and inventive in a way only Butler could manage. Most of the characters feel well developed and distinct in spite of the large cast. Her weakest work is, in my opinion, still much stronger than many authors’ best and deserves the accolades it receives for the novel approach to vampirism.

That being said, I can’t finish this review without mentioning the incredibly uncomfortable age gap between the main character and every other person that she has a sexual relationship with. I thought at first that there would be some kind of commentary or that it would affect the plot in some way. There is none and it does not. There’s no further exploration of these dynamics and in fact it often reads as though we’re supposed to find them romantic or wholesome, which left a very bad taste in my mouth. For all of these reasons I would caution those that are triggered by CSA to avoid this work.