Daniel (@dungeondive) sits down for a quick literary update, running through recent reading with the candour that defines his book videos — praise and disappointment in equal measure. He opens on Sacculina by Philip Fracassi, reading a bleak, well-crafted passage before concluding that Fracassi can write but the novel itself never erupts into the horror its premise promises — “a flat-liner of a book” that reads like it was written to become a movie. Nathan Carson’s Starr Creek fares a little better: neat ideas and an 80s metal-and-D&D nostalgia trip in the vein of Stranger Things or the film Mandy, but no character he could latch onto. He recounts seeing Karen Joy Fowler and Ted Chiang speak in Seattle, coming away impressed by Fowler (a blind spot he means to fix) and reflecting on Chiang’s famously slow, committed craft — the writer who never leaves a story unfinished. He closes looking ahead to the first Gotrek & Felix omnibus, a Warhammer duo he frames as the Old World’s answer to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. A loose, generous survey of a reader’s month.
Daniel calls Sacculina a “flat-liner” — great prose that never quite erupts. What’s a beautifully written book you finished that left you cold?