Swamp butch

I picked up this book in the "staff picks" of the HP Lovecraft bookstore in Rhode Island. It's about a horror novel about a librarian discovering fucked up moss taking over her library and infecting people, only to realize it's the work of a eldritch being she encountered as a child. I love moss, libraries and horror so this seemed perfect!

I really enjoyed this book. The premise was intriguing and it certainly delivered. The characters were well fleshed out and the monsters were unique and captivating. The spiders in this book were so fascinating! The idea of an arachnid creature made of your lost items trying to stuff itself into ur body through your mouth is a very visceral image. I really want to make an scuplture based on such a concept. The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the ending. I won't spoil it, but it caught me super off guard. It was also a bittersweet ending, and one character in particular I liked didn't get a happy ending which was a bummer. The book also touched upon library politics before the horror started but never really went back to it, which I guess it didn't have to but that would've been interesting. It just wasn't the direction the author wanted to go I suppose. I give this book like a 8/10, would reccomend to people for sure but would also love to see how they react to the ending as well.

I discovered this book at my local science fiction bookstore. My friend was trying to find a certain sci fi cat book and instead we came across multiple sci fi cat books written by Andre Norton. The name sounded familar so I looked him up, only to discover Andre Norton is a woman! She is considered the dame of pulp sci fi and wrote many books and was on different sci fi councils. I was shocked that I hadn't known this and decided to buy multiple books of hers (I actually ended up getting them for free but that's another story) This is the first one I read, but more reviews of hers are likely to come.

This book I suppose could be counted as a xenobiology book such as Warrior Cats, but is definetly a more sci fi take. In this world, Earth was abandoned by humanss and inherited by lab animals turned intelligent humanoids through experimentation. There are The People (cats), The Barkers, The Rattons and The Tusked Ones. The story is told throuhg the perspective of one of The People, who details their customs and how there is group of outsiders that study the "Demons" (what they call humans) and try to harness their old technology. The leader of these outsiders has figured out that the Demons left the planet and will probably someday return. Indeed they do, but that is spoiled by the back cover so I'm not really giving anything away. This book was certainly unique and very much had an 70s sci fi feel to it. If I hadn't already known I may have guessed that this book was wrtitten by a woman because Andre Norton writes female characters pretty well, which is a breath of fresh air in old sci fi. Another thing I found interesting is that she clearly doesn't like to write fight scenes. She instead focuses on other things, such as feelings before a fight or sneaking around bases. When fights do happen they aren't very long, or happen off screen (for lack of a better word.) Because of this, there was no epic last battle like I expected, which was a bit anticlimatic in my opinion ut still worked. One detail I loved is how the book eventually shifts perspective to the humans who are landing. Just as I felt the book was getting a bit redundant it switched to that and it was a very cool thing. Norton did a good job at differientiating voices, the humans/demons feel much different to read then the cats/The People. In all I give this book like a 7/10, really liked it.

OH one last thing I forgot to mention. Andre Norton clearly HATES rats. The Rattons are given the slytherin treatment, they are considered irredeembly evil by everyone. Even one of the wise old cats who preaches peace between all species says the Rattons are a lost cause. It was kinda funny. What the hell did they do to her?