Latest / Rachel Oates / Nothing But Wasted Potential

Transcript

Nothing But Wasted Potential · Rachel Oates

• 0:00
  Cassandra Calls Nothing But Blackened Teeth seems to be a
• 0:03
  horror book that has divided people as I've seen it both on
• 0:06
  the list of the best horror books ever and the worst horror
• 0:09
  books ever. As a big horror fan myself, I
• 0:12
  wanted to check it out because, you know, why not.
• 0:14
  I will say the cover art is absolutely phenomenal.
• 0:17
  It is creepy, it is dark, it is definitely memorable, it has an
• 0:21
  incredible setting, an incredible premise, and it seems
• 0:23
  to be exactly my kind of thing. I'll give you the summary.
• 0:26
  A Hayanira mansion stands abandoned, its foundation
• 0:29
  resting on the sons of a bride and it's walls packed with the
• 0:31
  remains of the girls sacrifice to keep her company.
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  It's the perfect venue for a group of thrill seeking friends
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  brought back together to celebrate a wedding.
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  A night of food, drinks and games quickly spirals into a
• 0:41
  nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are
• 0:44
  tested. But the house has secrets too,
• 0:47
  lurking in the shadows as a ghost bride with a black smile
• 0:49
  and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there
• 0:52
  in the dirt. At just 125 pages it is bound to
• 0:55
  be a quick read so I thought we would just jump in today and
• 0:58
  let's see what we think. As with a lot of my book
• 1:01
  reviews, I do like this. I wrote my script as I went
• 1:03
  along, so you're going to be getting my like real time
• 1:05
  reactions to what I was reading on the page.
• 1:13
  Part 1 How the F are you this rich?
• 1:16
  I took in the old festivule, the wood ceiling that domed our
• 1:19
  heads. Time etched itself into the
• 1:21
  shape and stretch of the Hain mansion, its presence apparent
• 1:24
  in even the texture of the crumbling dark.
• 1:26
  It felt profane to see the place like this, without curators, to
• 1:29
  chaperoners, no one to say do not touch and be careful.
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  This was old, before the word for such things existed.
• 1:34
  That Philip could finance its desecration, lock stock, no
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  question, and do so without self reproach was symptomatic of our
• 1:41
  fundamental differences. He shrugged, smile cocked like
• 1:44
  the sure thing that was his whole life.
• 1:47
  So this is how the book opens and it is very indicative of
• 1:49
  everything that it's become. Lots of over the top flowery
• 1:52
  descriptions contrasted with very basic dialogue with a lot
• 1:55
  of swearing and quite one-dimensional characters who
• 1:59
  were just like these annoying rich kids that we are about to
• 2:01
  be introduced to. I say kids.
• 2:03
  They're not really kids, although for the longest time in
• 2:06
  this book I had no idea how old they were meant to be.
• 2:08
  Really confused me. On the one hand they act like
• 2:11
  teenagers, on the other hand I was like maybe they're like
• 2:14
  young adults. On the other hand they put a lot
• 2:16
  of money. So I was like anyway turns out
• 2:17
  they're like 25 ish or something like that but I was really
• 2:20
  confused. First up we got Philip, who is a
• 2:22
  billionaire who has flown them all out there and rented the
• 2:25
  mansion for a few nights. His vasty jacket, still
• 2:28
  perfectly fitted to his broad quarterback frame, blazed indigo
• 2:31
  in yellow where it caught the sun in the dusk.
• 2:33
  Letters of his name were guilt and glory and good stitching.
• 2:36
  Poster boy perfect. Everyone craved him like a vice.
• 2:39
  Seriously though, it's no big deal.
• 2:41
  So again, having this be the first bit of like character
• 2:44
  description really confused me because again, I had no idea how
• 2:46
  old they were meant to be. I thought vasti jacket meant
• 2:49
  like skit still in school and a teenager.
• 2:51
  But then I was like, if he's a teenager, how does he have the
• 2:53
  money to fly his friends to Japan?
• 2:55
  Why was friends getting married? Like I was really confused to
• 2:58
  me, like knowing that he's like an adult still wearing a varsity
• 3:01
  jacket gives like peaked in high school.
• 3:03
  But the narrator of this book, the main character still thinks
• 3:06
  he's attractive for God knows what reason.
• 3:08
  And it's like the only thing she ever says about him.
• 3:10
  It's like Philip did this. Did I mention he's super hot?
• 3:12
  And then Philip did this, and oh, my God, he's so hot.
• 3:15
  Philip did this. Yeah.
• 3:16
  So hot. It's really annoying.
• 3:18
  And honestly, like, that is the only thing we ever learn about
• 3:21
  Philip. By the end of the book.
• 3:22
  He is rich and attractive. That is it.
• 3:25
  Nothing more. Like if you want to play a
• 3:27
  drinking game during this video, right?
• 3:29
  And if you're using alcohol, please don't.
• 3:30
  You may die. Feel free to play along with
• 3:32
  whatever else. Soft drink water, milk.
• 3:37
  Drink every time cat the narrator gushes over how hot
• 3:41
  Philip is. Drink anytime there's an F word.
• 3:44
  I'll tell you there are 76 of them in the 125 page book, so
• 3:48
  that's one every other page pretty much more than what else
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  can we do? Drink every time there's over
• 3:54
  flowery language. Leave your other drinking game
• 3:56
  things down in the comments because it'll be fun.
• 3:58
  Cat, have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake?
• 4:01
  The shock of an old memory is kind of like that.
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  Every neuron singing a bright hosanna.
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  Here we are. You forgot, that is, but we
• 4:07
  didn't forget about you. Only one other person had ever
• 4:10
  said my name that way. Is Lynn coming?
• 4:13
  I licked the corner of her tooth.
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  No comment. You could just about smell the
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  cream on the lip of Philip's grin, though I tried not to
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  cringe, to wince, beset by a zoeotrope of sudden emotions.
• 4:24
  I hadn't spoken to Lynn before I checked myself into.
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  We'll get there. It was a mental health facility,
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  basically, but when you're reading stuff like this, it's
• 4:33
  like the author sword a thesaurus, and not in a good
• 4:35
  way. She really reminded me of Milo
• 4:38
  Winter when we read his poetry, and it was just like he was
• 4:41
  throwing words in that sounded fancy and big, but weren't
• 4:43
  necessarily right for the way he was using them.
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  At least in this I can tell. Like she's using the right words
• 4:51
  in the right context most of the time.
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  It just still sounds wrong. It sounds like she's using them
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  to be fancy, not because they're the best word for the situation.
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  So I hadn't spoken to Lynn since before I checked myself into the
• 5:01
  hospital for terminal on Wii. Exhaustion so acute it couldn't
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  be sanitised with sleep, couldn't be remedied by anything
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  but A twist of rope tucked tight.
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  And this is something else. You'll see.
• 5:13
  She can't just do 1 description. She'll be like, it was like
• 5:15
  this, like this, like this, like this, and it just, it gets a
• 5:20
  lot. We don't need that many
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  descriptions of the same thing. Sometimes less is more.
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  The doctors kept me for six days and then sent me home.
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  Pockets stuffed with pills and appointments and placards
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  advocate in the commandments of safer living.
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  I spent six months doing the work, a shooting committed to
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  the betterment of self University and my study of
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  Japanese literature, both formal and otherwise, shelved
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  temporarily. So of course, she has a tragic
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  back story of mental illness that doesn't really go anywhere.
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  So last year I read Kikoko's Cameras.
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  There's no such thing as an easy job, and in my opinion that does
• 5:52
  a much better job of representing the feelings of
• 5:55
  depression and melancholy and general on we and general
• 5:58
  malaise than this book does. If you want to hear someone
• 6:02
  living with those kinds of feelings or lack of, go read
• 6:06
  that book. This book does not do it that
• 6:08
  well. The main character in that book
• 6:09
  doesn't go as far as Cat in this book, like she doesn't try and
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  commit suicide or anything like that, but I just find her whole
• 6:15
  tone and behaviour a lot more believable and well written.
• 6:19
  Another thing is that I find it so hard to believe that a
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  heavily depressed woman who's only just putting herself back
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  out into the world would be using such grandiose language
• 6:27
  and vivid descriptions. The tone and subject matter are
• 6:30
  jarring and not in a good way. It feels like this is the voice
• 6:34
  of the author, not the voice of the narrator, which that sounds
• 6:38
  like the same thing, but they're not.
• 6:40
  They're very, very different. Because, for example, like the
• 6:42
  way I talk would be very different to the way a fictional
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  character spoke. So if I was writing a book from
• 6:47
  the perspective of a certain character, I'd need to make sure
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  I was giving them their voice and not my voice.
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  I feel like that's not what's happened here.
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  I feel like Cassandra is writing Cat's narration in her voice,
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  not Cat's voice, and that's why there's such a jarring
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  juxtaposition between the dialogue and the descriptions.
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  And it feels like the descriptions don't feel
• 7:08
  realistic for Kat and her supposed depression.
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  You know, I don't, I don't know, I don't know, maybe I'm reading
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  too much into this at this point.
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  We also meet Faze and Talia who are apparently the couple
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  getting married. A door thumped shirt and we both
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  jumped, turned like cogs. See what I mean about like this
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  happened like this, this happened like that.
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  Like there's too many descriptions for like the same
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  thing. All my grief riled somewhere
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  else. I swear, if that moment wasn't
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  magic, wasn't everything that is right and good, nothing else in
• 7:34
  the world is allowed to call itself beautiful.
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  It was perfect. A Hallmark commercial and freeze
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  frame, autumn leaves swirling against a backdrop of Beech and
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  white cedar, God rays dripping between the bows.
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  Phase and Talia emerging, arms looped together, eyes only for
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  each other, smiling so hard that all I want to do was promise
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  them that forever will always, eternally, unchangingly be just
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  like this. Tis a lot, and I'm all for
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  showing, not telling, but this is taking that to the extreme
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  where it just almost feels like too much.
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  Like a you know what reading this book reminded me of feeling
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  overstimulated, like sensory over stimulation, but with
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  words. It wasn't pleasant.
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  I felt like I had to shut out a lot of it to like get to the
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  real meaning underneath it, which is not what you want in a
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  book. And, and don't get me wrong, I
• 8:25
  love a nice flowery book. I love a lot of vivid
• 8:27
  descriptions, I just think there's authors that do it
• 8:30
  better than this. This felt like a lot of noise
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  rather than a lot of detail. Without warning, Honorate, a cat
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  hears a creepy voice speaking to her in Japanese.
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  I'm not even going to try to pronounce any Japanese words
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  here, but I will say it translates to at sooner
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  Matsuyama. Even the waves have a voice.
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  We don't actually find out the meaning in book until later, but
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  I figured I'd just tell you now because why not.
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  My head Jack knifed up there. It was the stutter of a girl's
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  voice, sweet despite its coarseness, like a square of
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  fabric worn ragged, like a sound carried on the last ragged
• 9:00
  breath of a failing record player, a hallucination.
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  It had to be. It needed to be see again.
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  Like the use of two similes in succession like that is too
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  much. It's needless.
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  Use one if you want, but use some sparingly for more impact.
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  You know, when you're bombarded with image, image, image, you
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  never really get to the true meaning, the true feeling.
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  Like when you use, sorry, I'm going off script here, but like
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  when you use a simile, you're not just like painting a picture
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  in someone's head and saying this is like this, that you can
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  picture it, but the particular image that you use or comparison
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  that you use that connotes something else.
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  So for example, you know, comparing this to a square of
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  fabric worn ragged, that has different connotations than, for
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  example, the last ragged breath of a failing record player.
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  Both of them are given you raggedness.
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  I mean, it says ragged twice. But when we think of, for
• 9:52
  example, like fabric worn, we might think of it as like worn
• 9:55
  rough because it's been touched a lot.
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  Maybe it's been touched with love, with tenderness.
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  It used to be comforting to the point where like it's been worn
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  away. When we think of, for example,
• 10:04
  like last breath of a failing record player, we think of
• 10:07
  something that's maybe been played over and over again in
• 10:09
  joy and happiness that's been like used so much in excitement
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  that you know it's finally broken and worn down and it's
• 10:17
  not useful anymore. With the fabric, when it gets
• 10:20
  ragged, maybe like there's still comfort in that.
• 10:22
  Maybe it's not that it's damaged now, it's that it's changed.
• 10:26
  With the record player. It's like it's been so overused
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  that we can't use it anymore, that it's poorer quality, that
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  it's not giving us the sound it used to when there's less
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  enjoyment there. So even though both of them are
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  giving ragged, they say very different things.
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  So when we have the same voice described as both this and this,
• 10:44
  I'm like, wait, is it meant to be comforting or is it meant to
• 10:47
  be like, oh, it's like not fit for purpose anymore?
• 10:51
  Is it meant to be like this used to be comforting, but it's
• 10:53
  changed? Or is it like this used to be
• 10:56
  fun and now it just is a bit uncomfortable?
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  Like if she picked one or the other, I would know more of her
• 11:02
  meaning, but it's it's hard and I, I I get it sweet.
• 11:07
  Despite its coarseness, we could say the fabric is the sweet bit.
• 11:10
  We could say that the record player is the coarseness.
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  But then again, I think even just saying like a square
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  fabric, one record, we could say that that is sweet.
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  Despite its coarseness, A failing record player.
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  I don't see how that could ever be sweet.
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  It just, I don't know, They don't work for me putting them
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  together. It's just it's unnecessary.
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  It muddies the meaning. I just, yeah, sorry, I've gone
• 11:34
  off script there, like a little ramble, but yeah, there you go.
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  And no, let me know in the comments if you agree with me or
• 11:40
  not. Maybe you like this.
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  Maybe you think both are necessary.
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  I'd love to hear your thoughts. So Honorary A cat tries to play
• 11:47
  all off as a joke, but it's clear that her and Philip had
• 11:50
  some sort of relationship between them that ended badly in
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  the past. He says.
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  I know, but that crap I did, that wasn't cool.
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  You and me, I should have found a better way of ending things.
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  And his hands fluttered and fell in time with the backbeat of his
• 12:03
  confession. Philip's expression cracked with
• 12:05
  the guilt he'd held for years. Like a relicory.
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  Like I say, sometimes less is more.
• 12:10
  But again, I wouldn't mind this language.
• 12:12
  I find it hard to pronounce. I'm not going to read it out
• 12:14
  loud, but I wouldn't mind some of this language.
• 12:16
  But there's just too much of it all piled together for me.
• 12:19
  I want this is going to sound silly.
• 12:22
  I want beautiful words and beautiful vocabulary used
• 12:25
  sparingly sometimes so that you can really appreciate it, so you
• 12:29
  can really let that word choice linger and really, like, soak it
• 12:34
  all in and really pick up all its meaning when you just have
• 12:37
  like, big word, big word, big word.
• 12:39
  I'm just like, sometimes there's too much.
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  And like I keep saying, it muddies the meaning.
• 12:43
  Truth was, I hated that he still felt guilty.
• 12:45
  It wasn't charitable, but apologies didn't exonerate the
• 12:48
  Sinner, only compelled graciousness from its recipient.
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  The words, each time they came, so repetitive that I could tune
• 12:55
  a clock to their angst, soared through me.
• 12:57
  You can't move forward when someone keeps dragging you back.
• 13:00
  I trapped the tip of my tongue between my teeth, bit down, and
• 13:03
  exhaled through the sting again. I feel like some of this was
• 13:06
  written with the intention of it being like, quoted on Tumblr.
• 13:09
  You know, I feel like 20 years ago on Tumblr, this would have
• 13:11
  killed it. Us teenagers would have loved
• 13:13
  that. I will say though, and there's
• 13:16
  some bits I do like in this and we'll get on to one in a minute,
• 13:18
  but one of the things I do like is, as you can imagine from the
• 13:20
  title of the book, there is this repeated image throughout the
• 13:25
  book of teeth and teeth in various states.
• 13:29
  Licking a tooth, blackened teeth, white teeth, teeth doing
• 13:32
  this, this, I think that's good. I really like that.
• 13:35
  I'll discuss it more later in the video, but I it's the thing
• 13:37
  that I do really like about this book.
• 13:39
  There are a lot of things I don't like, but it does have
• 13:42
  some really good bits and I want to talk about them.
• 13:44
  Another bit that you like, though, listen to this.
• 13:45
  A breeze slouch through the decaying soji screens.
• 13:48
  Lavender, mildew, sandalwood, rotting incense.
• 13:52
  Some of the paper panels were peeling in strips, others nod to
• 13:55
  the still vividly lacquered wood.
• 13:57
  But the tatami mantling the floors, there was so much, too
• 14:00
  much for everywhere, more than even a Hans Noble house should
• 14:03
  hold. And all of it was pristine,
• 14:05
  store bought fresh, even when the sentry should have chewed
• 14:09
  the straw to mulch. So as much as I struggled was
• 14:12
  reading that, I do like this. It's atmospheric.
• 14:15
  I like that juxtaposition of old and new, sweet and sour, life
• 14:19
  and death. The scents, you know, lavender
• 14:22
  and mildew, sandalwood and rotting incense.
• 14:24
  You can really smell that and picture it.
• 14:26
  And that juxtaposition makes you uncomfortable, as it should.
• 14:29
  I think this is really, really good.
• 14:31
  I like how uncomfortably out of place the mats are.
• 14:34
  I think it's great. I think it's really unsettling.
• 14:37
  The whole setting for this book I love.
• 14:40
  I feel like it's such a good setting.
• 14:44
  It's based on so many amazing bits of folklore, and there's
• 14:48
  all these like, amazing references to characters and
• 14:52
  beings from Japanese folklore. And I find some of the
• 14:55
  descriptions so beautifully creepy and so unsettling and
• 15:00
  just like, oh, it gets me like, really shivering.
• 15:03
  I feel like this book had so much potential.
• 15:06
  It just doesn't use any of that as well as it should.
• 15:10
  It feels like a real waste of potential.
• 15:12
  It's a real waste of some amazing folklore back story and
• 15:17
  setting. And I find that really, really
• 15:19
  sad to be honest. Like even this amazing
• 15:22
  description is then ruined as the paragraph continues.
• 15:25
  The sight of it itched under my skin.
• 15:26
  Like someone fed those small black picnic ants through a
• 15:29
  vein, somehow got them to spread out under the thin layer of
• 15:32
  dermis, got them to start digging again.
• 15:35
  Sometimes less is more. If you just left it at the ants
• 15:38
  under the skin or maybe ants in my veins, that would have been
• 15:41
  creepy enough. That would have been atmospheric
• 15:43
  enough. We would have got that feeling.
• 15:45
  We don't necessarily need every description to go on and on and
• 15:49
  on and on, you know? So we learned a little bit of
• 15:52
  back story to the characters. They're all childhood friends.
• 15:54
  There were five of them, I think Philip, who's rich because of
• 15:58
  some inherited family money, Faze and Talia, who are getting
• 16:01
  married, Cat on narrator and someone called Lynn who isn't
• 16:04
  there yet. And it's unclear if they will
• 16:05
  be, but spoiler they will. The mansion that they're staying
• 16:08
  in is also known for being creepy and haunted and having a
• 16:10
  really cool history, and it's unclear exactly what strings
• 16:13
  Philip had to pull and who we have to pay to let them stay
• 16:16
  there. But this definitely isn't like a
• 16:17
  regular hotel Airbnb somewhere they're actually allowed in.
• 16:22
  Tourists don't regularly go there.
• 16:23
  This is meant to be like a special thing.
• 16:25
  It's like usually bordered up. It's like a historical building
• 16:28
  basically. We also start to learn why
• 16:29
  there's some tension between them all.
• 16:31
  Cat said something horrible about Talia and phase as a
• 16:33
  couple. Phase she describes as her best
• 16:35
  friend and is the only reason that Talia didn't wall her out
• 16:40
  her words after all the drama. We're constantly told that Phase
• 16:43
  and Cat are best friends, but we never see them acting as best
• 16:46
  friends. We never see any of that
• 16:47
  relationship. We never actually see much of
• 16:49
  their friendship. We're told a lot about it and
• 16:52
  we're told a lot of history and back story, but we don't really
• 16:54
  see very much of it. Cat and Phase are meant to be
• 16:56
  best friends, but they never act like best friends.
• 16:59
  We never really see like, you know, maybe them having a nice
• 17:01
  joke together or having a moment where they like, oh, I missed
• 17:05
  you, I missed you so much. Oh I love you lots.
• 17:07
  They don't have like some heart to heart.
• 17:09
  They don't have like, oh, like sit and share secrets together.
• 17:12
  They don't have like, oh, let me tell you about my life.
• 17:15
  Let me tell you about yours. They don't have like inside
• 17:17
  jokes. They don't have, you know, any
• 17:19
  of the things I feel like I do with my best friends regularly.
• 17:22
  You don't see in them. So I feel like we're told
• 17:25
  they're best friends, but that doesn't mean much because we
• 17:27
  never see it again. I'll I'll well, I'll tell you
• 17:30
  now. The horrible thing that cat said
• 17:32
  about Talia and Faye is it, I guess it kind of was horrible.
• 17:34
  And basically, Talia says that Cat has insisted they break up
• 17:39
  because they weren't happy, and Talia says you nearly cost me
• 17:43
  everything. Talia said, still staccato in
• 17:45
  her rage. I have both your best intentions
• 17:48
  at heart. Are you sure?
• 17:49
  Her expression shaded with pity. I glanced at the boys.
• 17:52
  Or were you hoping to get Faze back?
• 17:55
  And at this point I was like, you know, I'm actually on
• 17:56
  Talia's side here. You don't want your partner's ex
• 17:59
  who told them to break up with you at your wedding, do you?
• 18:01
  So that's the whole thing. So here's the drama.
• 18:04
  Cat used to date Phillip and then Phillip broke up with her.
• 18:07
  Cat also used to date Phase who's now her best friend and
• 18:10
  now Phase is marrying Talia. And when Phase and Talia got
• 18:13
  together, Cat was like you 2 should break up, you're awful
• 18:15
  together and now Talia is mad at Cat.
• 18:17
  Obviously, we never see why Cat thinks they should break up.
• 18:22
  We're told it was, you know, you was in your best interest.
• 18:25
  But like, why? Why do you think they're a bad
• 18:27
  couple? We've seen no evidence of them
• 18:29
  being toxic together or them being bad for each other.
• 18:32
  And now you're saying like, oh God, I wish they could just stay
• 18:34
  like this forever. Like there's no consistency.
• 18:37
  We don't see any of this stuff. We're told a lot of it, and we
• 18:40
  don't see any of it on the page. There's a lot of telling and not
• 18:43
  showing in building these relationships.
• 18:46
  And that's why I think I kind of don't care about any of these
• 18:49
  characters. So yeah, the other thing to note
• 18:51
  here, this is a very incestuous friendship group.
• 18:53
  So far we have two men. Cat has dated them both.
• 18:55
  She then replies to what I think is Talia's very valid point with
• 18:58
  I'm effing sure of it, and Jesus, I don't want your man.
• 19:02
  I told her with as much detachment as like a scrounge
• 19:05
  not wanting to sell a face short.
• 19:07
  Not after all this. It's been years since we were
• 19:10
  together and I don't know what more you want from me.
• 19:12
  I've apologised, I've tried to make it up to you, although we
• 19:15
  never know how. And Talia let a corner of her
• 19:17
  lips with her. You could have stayed home.
• 19:20
  Yeah, well, Talia has a point. We're at 13% of the way into
• 19:24
  this book, and Team Talia, I'll be honest, we also get a nice
• 19:27
  little excuse to infodump about the location, too.
• 19:31
  I'm not mad about this. I don't mind a nympho dump when
• 19:33
  it's relevant, when it's done well, when it's about one of the
• 19:36
  few interesting things in this book, which is the setting and
• 19:39
  its history. So tell me about this place,
• 19:41
  Philip, said Talia, voice billowing in volume, filling the
• 19:44
  room, the house. And it's dark.
• 19:47
  Tell me this isn't secretly Matsu Castle because I'd kill
• 19:50
  myself if it is. I heard they buried a dancing
• 19:52
  girl in the walls, and the castle shakes if anyone even
• 19:54
  thinks about dancing near it. The manna seemed to breathe in,
• 19:57
  drinking her promise. I could tell we all noticed it
• 19:59
  all at once, but instead of hightailing it, we bent our
• 20:02
  heads like this as a baptism. The house might hold you to
• 20:04
  that. I blurted before I could stop
• 20:06
  myself. And the sheer wrongness of the
• 20:08
  statement, the weird puppyish earnestness and it's jump from
• 20:10
  my throat made me cringe. I just don't like cat.
• 20:14
  I don't you'll may be seen on my channel.
• 20:16
  I recently did a review of yesteryear by Carol Claire
• 20:19
  Burke. Great book.
• 20:20
  I think it's fantastic. Hated the narrator in that as
• 20:22
  well. But when meant to like she's
• 20:25
  meant to be awful and like because of that, I think it's a
• 20:27
  brilliant book and I was so invested in it.
• 20:29
  I loved it. This.
• 20:32
  I just hate cat. That's it.
• 20:33
  I just hate cat. Anyway, turns out they don't
• 20:36
  know the mansion's name, but when asked about its back story.
• 20:39
  I don't know, Philip said, the singsong timbre of his voice
• 20:42
  familiar, the sound of it like a coyote lying about where he'd
• 20:46
  left the sun. But rumour has it that this was
• 20:48
  once supposed to be the site of a beautiful wedding.
• 20:50
  Unfortunately, the groom never showed up.
• 20:52
  He died along the way. So I was thinking here we're
• 20:55
  getting some foreshadowing, right?
• 20:56
  Talia dies, it looks like a suicide or it is a suicide and
• 21:00
  then face is going to disappear or die before the wedding,
• 21:02
  something like that. I was thinking like, they really
• 21:04
  bring this back story into like the present day and have like a
• 21:08
  connection. It'd be really cool.
• 21:10
  No, no they don't do. Of course they don't do that.
• 21:13
  That would be too interesting anyway, said Philip with a
• 21:16
  clearing of his throat. The bride took her abandonment
• 21:18
  in stride and told her wedding guests to bury her in the
• 21:21
  foundation of the house alive. I whispered.
• 21:25
  I thought of a girl holding both hands to her mouth, swallowing
• 21:27
  air, then dirt, her hair and the hems of her wedding dress
• 21:30
  becoming heavier with every shovel's worth of soil to come
• 21:33
  down alive, said Philip. She said she had promised to
• 21:36
  wait for him, and she would. She kept the house standing
• 21:39
  until his ghost finally came home.
• 21:42
  And every year after that they buried a New Girl in the walls,
• 21:44
  said Philip. Why start phase startling
• 21:46
  somehow at this revelation? The F would they do that?
• 21:50
  I, I don't like that bit dialogue.
• 21:51
  I do not. It's weirdly split up.
• 21:53
  You didn't. I feel you don't need to split
• 21:55
  it there because it gets lonely down there in the dirt, Philip
• 21:58
  continued. And you know what, as creepy
• 22:00
  backstories go, I like this. This is creepy as hell.
• 22:03
  And it sort of makes sense in that over the top, dramatic way,
• 22:07
  You know, that imagery of a woman being buried alive, of her
• 22:10
  waiting until her dead lover comes to join her, that, that is
• 22:14
  horrifying. That is kind of, I wasn't going
• 22:17
  to say kind of believable, but like, yeah, that is something
• 22:21
  that I can imagine this, like, tragic character doing and then
• 22:25
  like, you know, her ghost haunting the place for centuries
• 22:28
  after waiting and waiting. That that part is great.
• 22:31
  That works for me. I love that.
• 22:33
  I feel like you can then have, like, similar parallels with the
• 22:35
  characters in this time and the ghost, like interacting with
• 22:38
  them in this way or making them behave in certain ways.
• 22:41
  I think that's fantastic. That is like that back story.
• 22:45
  That's a book I want to read. That's a film I want to see.
• 22:47
  That's, you know, horror I want to experience, but I just don't
• 22:51
  think it's used well. I think it's a waste of an
• 22:54
  amazing back story, This book. You'll see.
• 22:56
  We'll get there. I couldn't shake the idea of an
• 22:58
  eminently practical family, one that understood that bone won't
• 23:01
  rot where wood might, ordering the workers to stack the girls
• 23:04
  like bricks, arms here, legs there, a vein of skulls wet, fed
• 23:08
  into the manners, framing insurance against a time when
• 23:11
  traditional architecture might fail.
• 23:13
  Might as well. They were here for the long
• 23:14
  haul. One day these doors would open
• 23:16
  and wedding guests would pour through and there would be a
• 23:18
  marriage. Come the cataclysm or modern
• 23:20
  civil, the house would wait forever until it happened.
• 23:24
  One girl each year, 206 bones times 1000 years.
• 23:28
  More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the
• 23:30
  stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own
• 23:33
  shining bones, all for one girl as she waited and waited alone
• 23:38
  in the dark. And again, this feels a little
• 23:40
  overwritten, but I can forgive that for the creepiness because
• 23:43
  those images are a house literally built on bones of
• 23:47
  like, young women's bones being built into the walls, like girls
• 23:51
  stacked like bricks. That is a horrifying image, and
• 23:54
  I love it. For a horror book, I think it's
• 23:56
  brilliant. This is such a creepy setting
• 23:58
  with so much potential. And again, having like, the
• 24:02
  ghost having that motivation of like, waiting for her lover and
• 24:05
  now you're having a married couple here.
• 24:07
  I'm like, the potential here is amazing.
• 24:10
  I think it's fantastic. It doesn't go anywhere, like it
• 24:14
  doesn't pay off in a satisfying way.
• 24:16
  I'm telling you that now, and it's really frustrating.
• 24:18
  Philip leaves to go take photos of the building and nothing ever
• 24:22
  comes of that. Nothing's mentioned of it again.
• 24:24
  The nothing comes of the photos, nothing creepy happens with the
• 24:26
  photos. The photos never come up again.
• 24:28
  I think they just want an excuse to get him out of the room.
• 24:31
  Meanwhile, everyone is treating Kat with awkward kid gloves.
• 24:34
  Kat describes Philip as a Rembrandt in high definition,
• 24:38
  which I kind of hate for some reason.
• 24:40
  You know why not? And also drink for Philip being
• 24:43
  hot again, when Cat follows Philip at the room when he's
• 24:46
  taking photos and when they're alone, Cat asks him when did you
• 24:50
  date Talia? Was it after or while we were
• 24:52
  seeing each other? About a month after.
• 24:54
  But we weren't exclusive or anything.
• 24:56
  You never did like exclusive things?
• 24:58
  No, it's not that. So much sincerity in those gold
• 25:02
  blue eyes, crowns of honey around black pupils.
• 25:05
  It's just we were kids. We're still kids.
• 25:07
  These relationships won't last into adulthood.
• 25:10
  Most of them won't. Tyler and Vaze, that's something
• 25:12
  else. Anyway.
• 25:13
  When I'm older I'll settle down but these are the best years of
• 25:16
  my life and I don't want to waste them shackle to a person I
• 25:18
  won't like at 30 again. I was so confused about the ages
• 25:22
  of these characters and since it's turned out they're like
• 25:24
  2526 and whatever. Like it feels weird he's talking
• 25:28
  like this but whatever. I'm also really confused about
• 25:31
  the timelines of everyone's relationships but here we go.
• 25:33
  Incestuous friendship. Talia has dated Philip and then
• 25:37
  Faze and now she's marrying Faze.
• 25:40
  Cat dated Faze and then Philip and then Philip dumped her and
• 25:43
  dated Talia and then tell it. I don't care.
• 25:46
  I don't care about any of these people.
• 25:48
  Just go date other people you're not friends with and just stop
• 25:50
  complicating things. It's not that hard.
• 25:52
  I'm just wondering if Faze knows you two were together.
• 25:55
  He stilled. That's some Talia to tell him,
• 25:57
  not me. I mean, you're his friends so
• 25:59
  you could say something, but OK. I considered my next words in
• 26:04
  case he doesn't know. I feel like you should make it a
• 26:06
  point to pretend you 2 weren't ever an item.
• 26:08
  Guile was the reply. Why?
• 26:12
  I thought of Faze and his teeth, bad and blunt and bitter.
• 26:15
  Faze might not like suddenly finding out you slept with his
• 26:18
  fiance. He's an adult and male.
• 26:21
  He's not going to care about someone's sexual history.
• 26:23
  Better safe than sorry, Philip. I paused.
• 26:26
  I'm sorry. You can't use it exclusive.
• 26:28
  He's an adult, he can deal with it.
• 26:29
  But when you're talking about you also feel like I'm still a
• 26:32
  kid. Shut up.
• 26:34
  Sorry, you're the same age. Better safe than sorry, Philip.
• 26:37
  I paused. Also, FU Phase is an adult who
• 26:39
  can make his own decisions, but you're a kid who shouldn't
• 26:42
  commit yet. There you go.
• 26:43
  Hey, people mature at different speeds.
• 26:45
  Literally my point though, It's so annoying.
• 26:48
  So, so far we got 23% of the way into this book.
• 26:50
  We have a super cool setting, really cool bit of intriguing
• 26:53
  history, and we have a group of annoying entitled people of
• 26:57
  indeterminate age who all seem to hate each other and have been
• 27:00
  incestuously dating for the last God knows how many years,
• 27:02
  swapping partners and resentment and God knows what else.
• 27:06
  They seem awful at this point. I don't give a damn about any of
• 27:09
  them. I don't care what happens to any
• 27:11
  of them. I was just hoping at this point
• 27:13
  we got like a cool intertwining of like the relationships
• 27:16
  between the characters and the relationship of like the bride
• 27:20
  waiting for her husband and that kind of thing.
• 27:22
  But that doesn't happen. So all I wanted at this point
• 27:26
  and throughout the rest of the book is to tell them to grow up.
• 27:29
  Philip thinks that they are going to see a ghost in the
• 27:32
  mansion and that she'll be hot and it's OK that he's being
• 27:35
  gross about it all because he's just a hot blooded male.
• 27:39
  He confessed doing what hot blooded males do.
• 27:42
  I said in my original script, I hope he dies 1st and we get to
• 27:45
  witness a grisly death. Sometimes wishes do come true.
• 27:51
  Cat finds these sliding doors painted with big scenes of
• 27:54
  animals and yokai which are like these creepy shape shifting
• 27:57
  demons and ghosts which some sometimes take the form of
• 28:00
  animals or have like animal like features.
• 28:03
  They're a really cool, creepy part of Japanese mythology and
• 28:07
  folklore and I think their inclusion here is really damn
• 28:09
  cool. I wish there was more of a focus
• 28:12
  on them. I wish some of the descriptions
• 28:13
  of them have been expanded on a bit more.
• 28:15
  I think it could be really, really fun, and I wish there was
• 28:18
  more about these paintings and less of hearing about how Kat
• 28:22
  thinks Philip is so hot with his grin like a politician's smile
• 28:26
  beaming up from the cover of GQ, only better because it was
• 28:30
  actually sincere, larger than life, yet still intrinsically
• 28:33
  boy next door. I don't care.
• 28:35
  Tell me about the creepy painting, and please excuse my
• 28:38
  terrible pronunciation here. I'm probably going to butcher a
• 28:40
  few of these words, but I promise I will try my best.
• 28:42
  It was all yokai, A veritable parade, kitsune and elaborate
• 28:47
  Thomas Sode, tails curling with questions, Ninjio crawling from
• 28:52
  the jewelled sea, Kappa and towering Oni negotiating for
• 28:56
  baskets heaped with cucumbers everywhere, every last brush
• 28:59
  painted face insight. Even the housewives, some with
• 29:02
  eyes, some with only lips, some with gaping smiles sliced into
• 29:05
  place. Every last one of them.
• 29:08
  All effing yokai, creepy as hell.
• 29:10
  I love this. I want more of this, please.
• 29:13
  And again, I'm really sorry if I butchered some of that
• 29:15
  pronunciation, but I think the inclusion of it and like the
• 29:19
  like, this is all so creepy. These are brilliant, perfect
• 29:23
  horror elements. I love like some of the creepy
• 29:26
  aspects of old Japanese mythology.
• 29:28
  Like I've read so many of those old stories and I think they're
• 29:30
  wonderful and their inclusion could bring so much to this
• 29:34
  story, but it feels like they're just set dressing without
• 29:38
  actually being integral to the story.
• 29:41
  And I think that's a real, real shame and it's real wasted
• 29:44
  potential. And I also like, I find this
• 29:45
  really jarring to read as well because the setting is so
• 29:48
  creepy, but the characters are just so insufferable and
• 29:51
  annoying that it's jarring, but not in a way that's like
• 29:54
  purposely uncomfortable, just in a way around like I wish, I wish
• 29:58
  they weren't together. The prose of the narration is
• 30:00
  trying to be so poetic and flowery and over the top, and
• 30:03
  yet the dialogue is like, you're good people talk to the hand
• 30:07
  bitch, she's hurt just to hurt bearded male and all that vapid
• 30:11
  nonsense. And every single one of those
• 30:13
  was a direct quote from the text.
• 30:14
  I'm not making that up. So having that next to this like
• 30:18
  awfully flowery descriptions, just it just feels off.
• 30:21
  It doesn't work for me. And again, I wish there was more
• 30:24
  focus on the creepy horror elements and the mythology
• 30:27
  elements than the like, oh, to the hand and used to her
• 30:31
  bloodied meal. Like, you know what I mean?
• 30:33
  The first chapter or part of this book ends with Cat hearing
• 30:36
  the whispered words again, and she narrates a whisper so quiet
• 30:39
  the cerebellum wouldn't acknowledge its receipt.
• 30:42
  The words were drowned by the reverb of phases, voice calling,
• 30:45
  an afterimage, an impression of teeth on skin.
• 30:48
  We exit the room, the future falling into place behind us
• 30:51
  like a wedding veil, a morning call like froth on the lip of a
• 30:55
  bride drowning on soil. Again.
• 30:57
  I feel like this also could benefit from being a little bit
• 30:59
  more simplistic in places. Like the descriptions are so
• 31:02
  flowery and the dialogue is so cheesy and over the top.
• 31:04
  Like it's from like a 2000s raunchy comedy like American Pie
• 31:09
  or something like that. I don't know, you know, you know
• 31:11
  what I mean? Like the dialogue feels like
• 31:13
  it's straight out of that era of crappy film.
• 31:15
  I just want her to rein all of it in, Rein it all back a bit,
• 31:19
  be a bit more subtle, focus on just telling a good creepy
• 31:24
  story. One of my favourite horror books
• 31:26
  I've read recently was a Ketsu's Strange Houses, and while it's
• 31:30
  very simple in its writing style, there were certain
• 31:33
  passages which just creeped me out so much to the point where
• 31:37
  at the time when I was reading it, I I still have my Chira and
• 31:40
  at the time I was just like Kyra.
• 31:41
  You are not leaving my side. I was so creeped out and I was
• 31:43
  like, you were staying with me on the bed while I'm reading
• 31:45
  this book. You know, I was like, Mama needs
• 31:47
  you to protect her. And I found that really cool
• 31:49
  because it's such a simple book and even the premise is quite
• 31:52
  simple. But he didn't overcrowd the page
• 31:54
  with overly complex descriptions or language.
• 31:57
  He didn't let the dialogue be super cheesy and over the top.
• 32:00
  He just let the creepiness of the situation in that particular
• 32:04
  building he was describing. He just let it build on the page
• 32:07
  and take over your mind and your imagination kind of filled in
• 32:10
  the gaps and you get so creeped out when you're reading.
• 32:13
  And I love that. I thought it was fantastic.
• 32:15
  I did not get that at all with this book.
• 32:17
  So that's a shame. Like I keep saying, it's a
• 32:20
  fantastic setting, but there's just no atmosphere.
• 32:22
  It often felt like particularly creepy elements were being like
• 32:25
  listed off like a checklist, Like we need to include this and
• 32:28
  this and this and this. Now shove them all in a scene
• 32:30
  and they're there, but they never really actively part of
• 32:34
  the story and they never really create a creepy atmosphere.
• 32:37
  They don't there's no room for your imagination to fill in the
• 32:40
  gaps. And that's what I think they get
• 32:42
  really scary with horror stories when you let your imagination
• 32:45
  fill in the gaps, you know, and I've been reading a lot of
• 32:47
  horror books recently. I think that's some that do it
• 32:49
  really well and some that do it not so well.
• 32:51
  I just think it's a shame. So they all go off to kind of
• 32:54
  explore the house a little bit together.
• 32:55
  And we poured across its spaces alone and together, sifting
• 32:59
  through the ruins. In one room sat terracotta
• 33:01
  monks. Heads waited with an ancient
• 33:03
  regret, and another dolls with mouths lacquered black, and
• 33:07
  another books, or at least the corpses of books.
• 33:10
  The volumes were mulch eaten by insects, infested edifices
• 33:14
  turgid with egg chambers right from the rot.
• 33:16
  Despite the horror of the visuals, they did not smell of
• 33:19
  anything but a green, dark wetness.
• 33:21
  There's so many elements here that are like they're put in but
• 33:24
  but nothing ever comes of them. This author could learn from
• 33:27
  like the basics of like Chekhov's gun.
• 33:28
  You know, if you show a gun in Act one, it needs to go off in
• 33:30
  Act 3. She throws these in here like
• 33:33
  the creepy dolls and the terracotta monks.
• 33:35
  Nothing really ever comes of them.
• 33:36
  They're not mentioned again. It's not really a thing.
• 33:38
  The books do get unmentioned, but this is such a brief mention
• 33:41
  and set up here that I forgot they were even there.
• 33:43
  So we'll get to that though. That's it though.
• 33:45
  I'm very into the whole haunted house thing.
• 33:47
  I love that. I think there are so many books
• 33:50
  that do it better than this one though.
• 33:52
  And so Craig de Louise episode Code 13 is one that springs to
• 33:55
  mind as being an amazing haunted house.
• 33:57
  It's got the whole creepy house changing proportions thing going
• 34:01
  on. House of Leaves is another
• 34:03
  fantastic choice. I recently just finished reading
• 34:06
  horror stuff since finishing this script by Grady Hendrix.
• 34:09
  And that's set in kind of like an IKEA knockoff.
• 34:12
  And but even that has some really cool bits with like, you
• 34:15
  know, the shop floor being haunted and like changing
• 34:19
  passageways and the whole creepy setup and kind of elements of
• 34:23
  like not being sure where you are.
• 34:24
  I think that does a great job with it.
• 34:25
  And I just think there's a lot more books that do this kind of
• 34:29
  haunted house setting better, which is a shame.
• 34:33
  Although in the comments, if anyone can recommend a really
• 34:35
  cool haunted house book that has this kind of setting, you know,
• 34:38
  and this kind of back story, but it's done better, I'd love to
• 34:41
  read it because again, I feel like this has potential, it's
• 34:44
  just not realised. So if there are any books out
• 34:47
  there that are like this, but with actual, you know, realised
• 34:49
  potential, then I'd love to read them.
• 34:51
  Cat immediately kills the mood by being catty about, so I guess
• 34:55
  she's living up to a name. It isn't too late to head back
• 34:57
  to Kyoto or something, You know, Talia has wanted to get married
• 35:00
  in a haunted house since she was a kid.
• 35:02
  I'm not going to take that away from her.
• 35:04
  He swallowed hard between each sentence, face calcified.
• 35:07
  Not after what it took to get us here.
• 35:10
  I don't want to diminish Talia's wants and dreams here, but
• 35:12
  someone has to say it. I tried for a smile.
• 35:15
  Which freaking kid grows up wanting to get married in a
• 35:17
  haunted house? I mean come on.
• 35:19
  I wish more was made of this. I wish we got like some back
• 35:22
  story for Talia and found out like why she wanted this in the
• 35:25
  1st place. Why it was important to her.
• 35:28
  I wish that had some relevance on the plot, but it doesn't.
• 35:30
  Even this is never brought up again.
• 35:33
  It feels like they just needed a reason to get them to the house.
• 35:36
  It's like it's like the reason was made for the book, not that
• 35:39
  the characters actually had a real reason.
• 35:40
  Does that make sense? The point of them being there is
• 35:43
  for the plot, not the point of them being there is because
• 35:46
  Talia wanted this and felt like this, and her motivation was
• 35:48
  this and this. You know, I thought of the rooms
• 35:50
  and the Osseries they'd become the books separating flat bodied
• 35:54
  beetles, hollowed, hallowed in their decay.
• 35:56
  I think this is all a mistake. Us coming here, us being here, I
• 36:00
  think they're going to regret it, that's all.
• 36:02
  I would be more creeped out about her worries and her fears
• 36:05
  about the house and everything if I wasn't just distracted by
• 36:08
  her pettiness. And I just feel like, again, a
• 36:10
  lot of this creepiness is unearned.
• 36:12
  I know she's heard a whispered voice twice now, but other than
• 36:15
  that, there's no like, creepy atmosphere in the house.
• 36:17
  I don't really know what she's worried about.
• 36:19
  Again, it feels like she's worried for the plot, not
• 36:22
  because of something that's happened in the plot.
• 36:24
  Like, OK, it's a creepy house filled with history and
• 36:27
  potentially made out of bones, but you're a jealous ex who's
• 36:31
  hearing voices after having some sort of mental health problem.
• 36:34
  I feel less creeped out by a ghost story.
• 36:37
  I'm more worried this is like an unhealthy woman who may be out
• 36:40
  to get some sort of revenge. But even then, like, I thought
• 36:43
  if this is all in her head and she's making this up and she is
• 36:46
  having some sort of, like, mental breakdown, I was like
• 36:48
  this. That could actually be like a
• 36:49
  really cool twist on the story. But it's not even that.
• 36:52
  Anyway, then Lynn arrives. Lynn was ahead of his time,
• 36:55
  ahead of the curve ahead of us with a Wall Street job, a Wall
• 36:58
  Street wife, a brownstone mortgage with a hydroponic herb
• 37:01
  garden on a baroque little balcony.
• 37:04
  Again, how old are these people? He's brought a crap tonne of
• 37:07
  beers in an icebox and everyone is making a big massive pot of
• 37:10
  soup or casserole or something in the communal space.
• 37:14
  I have questions. Why hasn't he brought his wife?
• 37:16
  Is that not just normal to like bring your wife to a wedding?
• 37:19
  But OK, I guess not. I guess the author didn't want
• 37:23
  to add in another character but she wanted to make him married.
• 37:26
  Also, Lynn is the only one I think, who hasn't slept with
• 37:28
  everyone in the group, so he's special for that reason.
• 37:31
  Cat narrates. If you're going to debauch
• 37:33
  history, go big. I feel like this is begging for
• 37:36
  teenagers on Tumblr in the early 2000s to quote this.
• 37:38
  You know, there's a really weird interaction I don't understand.
• 37:41
  Is Faye still in the other room? Said Talia.
• 37:43
  Who said Lynn, He was one of your groomsmen.
• 37:46
  I had like 16 groomsmen. You can't expect me to remember
• 37:49
  them all. It was an event after all.
• 37:51
  You made him fly to Iceland? Talia, thin to mouth Lynn draped
• 37:55
  an arm around me. I made everyone fly to Iceland.
• 37:58
  He's the reason you're here. We're getting married, that's
• 38:00
  the whole point. You came.
• 38:01
  Oh, Nah. Lynn glanced at me, smoking.
• 38:04
  I thought I was just here to see Cat.
• 38:06
  I froze long enough for Talia to see and for her mouth away with
• 38:09
  condolence. Linda, with his thoroughbred
• 38:11
  wife and his Immaculate life, still blind from those late
• 38:14
  night Manhattan lights, took no notice at all.
• 38:17
  I don't understand if he's joking or not.
• 38:19
  It's just really bizarre. He does this thing throughout
• 38:21
  the book while like he pretends not to know the others.
• 38:24
  And I don't know if that's meant to be like him trying to be
• 38:27
  like, Oh, you guys treated Cat badly and when she had a
• 38:31
  breakdown and I'm siding with her and I don't I don't, I don't
• 38:34
  understand. Lynn seems to just be like
• 38:36
  obsessed with Cat for some reason and like protecting her
• 38:39
  and making sure she's OK. And he's like, I'm only here for
• 38:41
  you. And it's like if you told me
• 38:43
  that Lynn and Cat were best friends, I didn't believe that.
• 38:46
  But then Cat and phase are meant to be best friends, but we never
• 38:48
  see them acting like that. I don't understand any of these
• 38:52
  characters or their relationships or the motivations
• 38:55
  or and many of their actions. It just it.
• 38:58
  It's so bizarre. Either way, Lynn doesn't seem
• 39:00
  like a very nice person. None of these people seem like
• 39:03
  they're very nice people. None of them seem like they're
• 39:05
  friends. Even Faze and Talia don't even
• 39:07
  really seem like they like each other that much and they're
• 39:09
  apparently getting married. They all seem like they hate
• 39:11
  each other. I don't know if we've touched
• 39:13
  that yet, but there's some kind of drama between Faze and Philip
• 39:16
  where they kind of hate each other.
• 39:18
  Lynn hates everyone except Kat. Everyone seems to hate Kat
• 39:21
  except for Lynn and Faze. Kat hates Talia, Talia hates
• 39:26
  Cat, Cat has resentment towards Philip but he's hot so it's OK.
• 39:30
  Philip seems to have weird guilt about dumping Cat.
• 39:33
  And then I, I don't know, I don't, I don't care, I don't
• 39:36
  care. I don't understand why any of
• 39:38
  these people are friends. That's that's the summary I
• 39:42
  think I've said before in my other videos, and I'll say it
• 39:43
  again, when you're an adult, you don't need to hang around with
• 39:47
  people you don't like. It is OK to go off and make
• 39:49
  other friends. You don't need to stay with your
• 39:52
  same group of childhood friends that you've all had incestuous
• 39:54
  relationship with and have all this like drama around.
• 39:58
  If you don't like each other, don't be friends.
• 40:00
  It's that simple. Phase comes back in, holding
• 40:03
  like a little box of presents for everyone.
• 40:05
  And I'm here, sorry. Phase's voice came from behind a
• 40:07
  soji screen, quickly overshadowed by a shrill of
• 40:10
  splintering timber worm wounded fibres coming apart.
• 40:14
  The panel to our right shuddered before it fell over.
• 40:17
  No fanfare, no collateral damage to the adjunct architecture, not
• 40:20
  even a plumbing of grey dust, only an audible smack as it hit
• 40:23
  the floor, A sound like a pawn colliding with a cheek.
• 40:26
  We froze like hairs. Crap, Said Faze.
• 40:29
  Faze stood smiling at us from behind the devastation. 6 feet,
• 40:32
  but not quite of shame and self loathing.
• 40:34
  He cradled a stack at slim rectangular boxes, each packet
• 40:37
  wrapped in guilt bows on everyone.
• 40:40
  Sorry. We laughed as a group this time,
• 40:42
  and we all sounded drunk on being alive.
• 40:43
  Philip got up and walked over to phase, punched the other man
• 40:46
  square in his shoulder, half enough to dislodge his cargo.
• 40:49
  The gifts stumbled free gloss and gold trimmed ribbons.
• 40:51
  Philip caught them all naturally, 1 armed and
• 40:54
  effortless Golden Boy to phase as dross.
• 40:56
  This Lin muttered with too much Glee, is how super villains are
• 40:59
  born. So I thought this was like
• 41:02
  trying to set up some sort of like phase feeling lesser than
• 41:05
  Philip, but it's just confusingly written.
• 41:07
  I wish, I wish there was like more of a relationship developed
• 41:10
  between them because like, this does come up later, Faze feeling
• 41:14
  lesser than him. And it's like, it's like an
• 41:15
  integral part of the story. It's you know what, honestly, it
• 41:18
  ends up being like the only relationship in this book that
• 41:20
  actually matters. So they open the gifts.
• 41:22
  The room laid stream with wrapping paper.
• 41:24
  Faze and Talia had bought us gifts, statuettes of deepest
• 41:27
  jade, the green of an ancient lake.
• 41:30
  They were, each of them shaped like a woman, her head bowed as
• 41:32
  though sacralized by grief, her legs faded into a half finished
• 41:36
  column. She is being buried alive,
• 41:38
  buried by a Lord's hope, buried to hold steady the weight of her
• 41:41
  master's manner. Hito Bashira.
• 41:43
  I stroked A restless thumb of my effigy's cheek.
• 41:46
  There were neither eyes nor mouth on her, no way for her to
• 41:49
  scream or see. How'd they know to gather these?
• 41:51
  I wondered. The trip was billed as a
• 41:53
  surprise. Had Talia known?
• 41:55
  Had Philip, our Golden Boy, God, king of small towns, perfect
• 41:58
  Philip, who no woman would reject, coyly spoken to Talia
• 42:01
  beforehand. Take another drink for how hot
• 42:04
  Philip is. Gonna be honest, like a bit of a
• 42:06
  creepy gift. Cool.
• 42:07
  For those of you unfamiliar, he'd have a share a really cool
• 42:10
  little history there. It's like a historic ritual
• 42:13
  sacrifice where a person was buried alive under a big
• 42:15
  building or a structure as a sort of offering to protect the
• 42:19
  building from natural disasters or damage.
• 42:21
  So I guess this has like similar links to the back story of the
• 42:25
  mansion here with, you know, the woman being buried alive waiting
• 42:28
  for her husband to return and then other girls being buried
• 42:31
  alive every year. Similar, similar stories.
• 42:34
  So to gift a little statue of someone this has been done to,
• 42:37
  it's both in theme with the house they're currently in, but
• 42:40
  also quite an odd morbid gift for a wedding, right?
• 42:43
  But the question is like, how did Faze and Talia know to give
• 42:47
  these gifts for the house if they didn't know the Baxter of
• 42:49
  the house before they got there? They didn't know what house they
• 42:52
  were going to it. It's bizarre.
• 42:54
  And and like I say, odd choice to say thank you for coming to
• 42:57
  my wedding with a symbol of ritual murder.
• 42:59
  I thought these little statues would like play more of a role
• 43:02
  in the story. Maybe they would do something
• 43:05
  later, They would come back up. They would be relevant later.
• 43:08
  They're not. I don't think they're ever
• 43:10
  mentioned again. This is like that one and only
• 43:12
  thing. I thought the idea of like
• 43:14
  either Faisal Talia knowing about the house before they got
• 43:16
  there. I thought, you know, hinting at
• 43:18
  that. I thought that would be relevant
• 43:20
  to the plot. It's not.
• 43:22
  I thought that might be relevant to like some sort of character
• 43:24
  development or character relationship.
• 43:27
  It's not. I don't.
• 43:30
  I don't understand the point of this.
• 43:31
  It makes no sense. Talia then suggests they play a
• 43:34
  game, which the name of it translates to a gathering of 100
• 43:38
  ghost stories, which is a game about telling scary stories and
• 43:41
  blowing out candles as you do. And as you blow out the last
• 43:44
  one, which is often the 100th 1, you can play a smaller version
• 43:46
  with fewer candles. And as you blow out the last
• 43:49
  one, it's meant to open the doors to the spirits and let
• 43:51
  them into our world. Talia has already prepped for
• 43:54
  this game by lighting 100 candles in another room.
• 43:57
  Not sure when she found the time to do that, but OK.
• 43:59
  I thought there might be some relevance to her being the one
• 44:01
  to suggest it, but there's not. And I thought like, this would
• 44:07
  be really cool. I was like Oh my God, like we're
• 44:08
  going to get some like really creepy stuff here, it's going to
• 44:10
  be great. No, that doesn't happen.
• 44:13
  Before they can play this game and it actually gets
• 44:15
  interesting, Lynn decides to start to like, stir up some
• 44:18
  trouble by saying to Philip about Talia.
• 44:22
  You're still sweet on her, aren't you?
• 44:23
  Said Lynn, face cracked into a grin he pushed from the wall.
• 44:27
  What? He threw a shrug, hands tossed
• 44:29
  up so quickly that his fingers, if they had been birds, would
• 44:32
  have broken in the violence. We're all thinking it, the
• 44:35
  stupid little figurines that Talia gave us.
• 44:38
  This was supposed to be a surprise allotment.
• 44:39
  How did she know? Dude, come on, tell me.
• 44:42
  That's like the only relevance of the figurines.
• 44:43
  That's it. Like they never come back up
• 44:45
  again. Philip moves to attack Lynn, but
• 44:48
  Cat stops him and says. He glared at me then, and his
• 44:51
  eyes were cold, so cold your heart would freeze in that blue.
• 44:54
  You're right, he said. Philip, we all knew, had his
• 44:57
  universal script. I'm above that.
• 45:00
  But you're not above sleeping with someone else's wife.
• 45:02
  Lynn collared his own neck with his hands and rubbed his Adam's
• 45:05
  apple after Philip had let him go smile.
• 45:07
  Enduring is a bad habit. I didn't sleep with Talia, but
• 45:11
  that's not what he was saying earlier to Cat, so I don't know.
• 45:13
  I'm confused whether he did or not, I don't have a clue.
• 45:16
  I don't care, it's not real, none of it's relevant.
• 45:18
  I don't care, he then says. His rage began to Slough as he
• 45:21
  spoke. I don't know, I lost my temper.
• 45:24
  That bum hole does it to me all the time.
• 45:26
  I think I can keep my crap together, but something about
• 45:29
  Lynn just makes me want to punch a wall.
• 45:31
  Yeah, Nah. Own it, mate.
• 45:32
  No one makes you violent but yourself.
• 45:34
  Calm down. There's more jealousy and
• 45:35
  nonsense. It's boring.
• 45:37
  Let's skip over it. Even though it's literally the
• 45:39
  entire book. Cats are like, is he right?
• 45:43
  Do you still like her? And Phillip's like you sound
• 45:45
  like you want it to be. And he doesn't even give a
• 45:48
  proper answer. We never find out.
• 45:49
  He then goes to apologise to Lynn and Kat starts hearing the
• 45:52
  creepy voice again. You know the little whisper.
• 45:54
  A female voice, solicitous and sweet.
• 45:56
  Distantly the brain stem screeched, stress hormones
• 45:59
  wailing at my motor system, demanding I run, run now, escape
• 46:02
  into the sanctuary of multiplicity, disappear into the
• 46:05
  waiting herd. Do anything, so long as I remove
• 46:07
  myself from probable harm, Anything.
• 46:10
  Just go. Go now.
• 46:11
  But my limbs would not concede to their urging.
• 46:14
  I want to find this creepy, but the overflowery language just
• 46:16
  takes me out of it. This is what I mean about like
• 46:18
  Cat's narration not fitting with her voice in the dialogue
• 46:22
  writing. My limbs would not concede to
• 46:24
  their urging. When your character doesn't talk
• 46:27
  like that to other people just sounds pretentious and
• 46:29
  ridiculous and it takes me out of it there.
• 46:32
  There can be reasons why your character speaks differently in
• 46:35
  dialogue to other characters to how they speak in their head.
• 46:38
  Maybe they're hiding different aspects of their personality.
• 46:41
  Maybe they're trying to protect tend to be one thing when
• 46:43
  there's something else, but that's not the case here.
• 46:45
  It it's just jarring for no reason.
• 46:48
  I want tension. I want creepiness.
• 46:50
  I want real fear. I don't want someone to be badly
• 46:53
  trying to be PO and failing. Edgar Allan Poe was a master of
• 46:57
  horror and creepiness and creating tension and using this
• 47:01
  absolutely beautiful descriptive language.
• 47:04
  He did that with so much skill. He didn't just pile words in for
• 47:08
  the sake of it. You know, every word was chosen
• 47:11
  with such intention. He focused so much on making
• 47:15
  sure his work had a proper rhythm and that like, it speed
• 47:19
  up and slowed down, like the literal prose speed up and
• 47:22
  slowed down to create tension and like build suspense in
• 47:27
  certain places. This is all just like in
• 47:31
  comparison. You know what?
• 47:33
  The word pebbled in my throat, cold and dead.
• 47:36
  Haltingly, head full of static, I lurched stiff leg towards the
• 47:39
  mirror. This was a dream.
• 47:41
  This was not a dream, this was a haunting, A possession, and any
• 47:44
  second now I cut my throat. The first casualty of the night.
• 47:47
  After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the
• 47:50
  scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant,
• 47:53
  tattooed, tongue pierced other, must always die first.
• 47:57
  The slurred remnants of my consciousness chewed on the
• 47:59
  thought as my eyes stood across the mirror.
• 48:01
  My stomach clenched. And this is the first of many
• 48:04
  attempts to kind of get matter in this.
• 48:05
  So normally I love a book that's self aware of its genres, usual
• 48:09
  conventions and actively subverts or critiques them.
• 48:12
  I think there's some great examples of this.
• 48:14
  So not horror, but look at Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in
• 48:18
  my family has killed someone and everyone on this train is a
• 48:21
  suspect. He's also got two more out there
• 48:23
  was like a Christmas Story and there's a like a fourth book in
• 48:26
  the series, but I've not read those two yet.
• 48:27
  But the first two are great. They're about like, this author
• 48:30
  who and his main job in life is to write about like murder
• 48:35
  mysteries and whodunits. And he writes about the genre
• 48:38
  conventions and like, here's how you can write your murder
• 48:40
  mystery and that sort of thing. And he finds himself in the
• 48:43
  middle of a real murder mystery twice or more with the other
• 48:47
  books, I guess. And so he uses his knowledge of
• 48:50
  the genre to try and figure out who actually is the murderer and
• 48:53
  who actually, like, committed these crimes and so on.
• 48:57
  They're great books. They're funny.
• 48:58
  They're smart. They're really great at leaning
• 49:00
  into and at times subverting expectations at the right times.
• 49:05
  Yeah. And I love those books.
• 49:06
  And I think even within the horror genre, this can be done
• 49:08
  really well. So look at the original Scream
• 49:11
  film, which was so revolutionary at the time.
• 49:13
  You know, your murderers were literally horror film fans who
• 49:16
  were saying, like, these are the conventions of horror films.
• 49:18
  These are the rules of horror films.
• 49:20
  If you do this, this happens. If you do this, this happens.
• 49:23
  And that's why they became, and that's why like the reveal at
• 49:28
  the end of the film was so surprising and dramatic.
• 49:30
  But at the same time, they've been telling everyone from the
• 49:33
  start what they were doing and why they were like explaining
• 49:36
  their reasons with, you know, the rules of horror films like
• 49:38
  this and this. And it was, it was great films
• 49:41
  like Cabin in the Woods and more recently from that, films like
• 49:44
  The Final Girls. These take the genre conventions
• 49:47
  of horror films and slashes and so on.
• 49:49
  And they lean into them and at times subvert them.
• 49:52
  And it's really cool. It's really meta.
• 49:54
  So my point is this can be really great and really
• 49:56
  effective. Similar to this.
• 49:57
  If you've ever seen The Woman in Black, yes.
• 49:59
  So it was originally a book and then it became a play and it's
• 50:02
  also been a film as well. But I'm specifically talking
• 50:05
  about the play version and it's absolutely amazing.
• 50:07
  Two person play, so damn creepy. Like I was terrified at times.
• 50:13
  It was brilliant. And when I went down to London
• 50:16
  to see that, I got to do a really cool workshop with the
• 50:19
  actors from that play. And the whole acting workshop
• 50:22
  was about how to create a suspense on stage, but also, so
• 50:25
  like, it's a great set of rules that can translate to writing
• 50:29
  and creativity and films and all sorts of stuff.
• 50:31
  And it was all about managing the audience's expectations and
• 50:35
  knowing when to lean into what they expect and when to subvert
• 50:38
  what they expect and how. That's a huge part of creating
• 50:40
  tension and suspense and horror in general.
• 50:44
  It's something that's always stuck with me.
• 50:45
  And so in general, I like the idea of this book getting a
• 50:48
  little better and being like, I feel like I'm in a horror film
• 50:51
  right now. In horror, X must die first,
• 50:54
  therefore I can expect this person to die first and so on.
• 50:58
  And like, I feel like this could work, but it's weird that it's
• 51:01
  only been introduced now like 25% of the way into the book.
• 51:05
  And I don't understand why like Cat's suddenly doing this.
• 51:08
  Like we've had nothing before that says Cat has any interest
• 51:12
  in horror in film or books or any other medium, so I don't
• 51:16
  understand why she's suddenly like, getting met her about it.
• 51:19
  If we knew she was a horror fan, it would make sense.
• 51:22
  The other characters start doing it too.
• 51:23
  Like I think Lynn starts doing it at one point and again, if
• 51:26
  maybe he'd been established as a horror fan, it would make sense,
• 51:29
  but he's not. So it feels weird that they're
• 51:33
  suddenly doing this out of nowhere.
• 51:35
  Also, Cat been like, I'm either queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue
• 51:39
  pierced or other. And so she's like, that's why
• 51:41
  I'm going to die first. But at this point we don't know
• 51:44
  that she's any of them. We were like, well, we know
• 51:46
  nothing about Cat. Is she queer?
• 51:48
  Turns out, yes, she's bisexual, but we don't know this at this
• 51:51
  point, so this line makes no sense in context.
• 51:54
  Is she deviant? Is she tattooed?
• 51:56
  Is she tongue pierced? We don't know any of these
• 51:58
  things. As far as we know, she's none of
• 52:00
  them. It's bizarre.
• 52:01
  It's really bizarre. It's just, it's done so poorly.
• 52:05
  I think if you want to get meta, you need a context for it to get
• 52:08
  meta. In another example.
• 52:10
  So I just finished the book How to Survive a Horror Story by
• 52:13
  Mallory Arnold and it was fine. It was.
• 52:16
  I'm not sure if I liked it all that much that it had its ups
• 52:20
  and downs. I didn't.
• 52:20
  The ending was very good. Actually, the ending kind of
• 52:23
  made me rate a bit higher than I was going to, but I thought it
• 52:25
  was really cool. And the premise of it is this
• 52:28
  famous horror writer has died, and he's collected a bunch of
• 52:31
  other horror writers all in his mansion for, like, the reading
• 52:34
  of a will. And he's basically said, OK,
• 52:37
  like, you will inherit my house, my entire fortune, my
• 52:40
  everything, if you can get out of this house.
• 52:42
  And to get out of this house, you have to solve a bunch of
• 52:45
  riddles. You have to go through all these
• 52:47
  different like horror tropes, essentially.
• 52:50
  And so again, it's quite meta. But again, that makes sense
• 52:52
  because you've got the setup that the man setting this up is
• 52:56
  a horror writer. The people living through this
• 52:58
  are horror writers. They know the genre, they know
• 53:01
  the conventions, so they know what to expect and what to not
• 53:05
  expect and so on. And that's how it can be like
• 53:07
  really good when you get meta in this.
• 53:10
  We never get any inkling that any of them are horror fans in
• 53:14
  any way. They they don't read horror
• 53:16
  books, they don't watch horror films.
• 53:18
  They just suddenly start getting meta for no reason.
• 53:20
  I'm just like, I need some context for the metanus of it
• 53:24
  all. I need a reason for you to start
• 53:26
  talking about horror films. You know, the average person
• 53:28
  doesn't do that. So imagine I went to the shop
• 53:30
  one day and I was like, well, you know, in a crime book,
• 53:33
  someone would burst through the doors right now and we'd all be
• 53:35
  held hostage. Like that would be really weird
• 53:38
  for me to do because nothing prompted that.
• 53:41
  I just went to the shop on a normal day.
• 53:43
  Now, if I was like a known crime author and then I saw this was
• 53:49
  shady and this was shady and this was shady.
• 53:50
  And I was like, Oh my God. Like in my genre that I write
• 53:54
  and I know and I live, this is what happens in crime books.
• 53:57
  And I'm seeing a clue here and I'm seeing a clue there.
• 53:59
  I'm seeing a clue there. It might be logical for me to
• 54:02
  say, oh God, in a crime book, this is what might happen next.
• 54:05
  But in your average day-to-day existence, you don't do that.
• 54:08
  You don't say that. So in a book, when you want to
• 54:10
  get metal like that, you need to set it up.
• 54:12
  You need to have a reason why the characters are talking like
• 54:15
  that, and you need something to actually set them off, to draw
• 54:18
  those comparisons and so on. And I've been talking about this
• 54:20
  for too long. The point is, it annoyed me.
• 54:22
  It really annoyed me. So Talia comes in to check on
• 54:25
  Cat and says she was staring at the wall and Cat says was I?
• 54:28
  And then Talia snaps back with that slimming of her mouth
• 54:31
  again, and when she spoke it wasn't with her satin Polish,
• 54:34
  bitterness coursing up her tone. You know we don't have to like
• 54:38
  each other, but you don't have to be a bitch.
• 54:41
  Bitch is the kind of word that reads like a gunshot, rings like
• 54:45
  a punch. I snapped straight at the sound.
• 54:47
  The word clarified again, distant warm candle glow and
• 54:50
  Talia's glacial stare. What is your problem with me?
• 54:53
  I mean, besides the one I already know.
• 54:55
  Honestly, I'm still team Talia here.
• 54:57
  Kate's like, did you actually mean it when you asked if I was
• 54:59
  OK? And then it gets all weird
• 55:01
  between them. F me, shoot and score.
• 55:04
  That's what I get for trying to be nice to you.
• 55:06
  That's what you get for being fake.
• 55:08
  That's Can't Sing, That's Talia. What do you want from me?
• 55:11
  Her voice brittled. I'm trying for Faze.
• 55:14
  I don't like you, and I don't think I'm a bum hole for it.
• 55:17
  You tried to break us up, but you know what?
• 55:19
  I'm working on that. I would trade a lot of money for
• 55:21
  you to not be here, but this is where we are effing meet me
• 55:24
  halfway. If it helps, I wish you weren't
• 55:27
  here either. I hope this house eats you,
• 55:30
  Talia. Her charity only good for so
• 55:32
  much. I hope the same about you.
• 55:34
  So so far Cat is an awful person.
• 55:36
  I am completely team Talia here. I don't get why Cat is so
• 55:40
  horrible to Talia. We never find out why she
• 55:43
  dislikes her so much. We never see Talia really doing
• 55:45
  anything that warrants Cat to dislike her.
• 55:47
  It's just, you know what awful to chapter 4 now, and I'd really
• 55:52
  like some more creepiness here instead of petty fighting and
• 55:55
  jealousy between immature people of unknown age.
• 55:58
  But sadly, we don't get it. This chapter starts with them
• 56:01
  playing the candle game and telling stories in a room full
• 56:04
  of candles. You know, dark room, creepy
• 56:07
  candlelight, creepy stories. There's also a bunch of creepy
• 56:10
  dolls in there. As the game is progressing,
• 56:13
  they're slowly blowing out the candles, so this could be really
• 56:16
  damn cool. Except all the interesting stuff
• 56:19
  up and off page, just like between the chapters, we're not
• 56:21
  showing it. All the stuff that could
• 56:23
  actually build atmosphere and tension and maybe tell us
• 56:26
  something really cool about the characters and their backstories
• 56:28
  and their motivations. All of it happens off page.
• 56:31
  We don't see any of it. We are now 42% of the way into
• 56:34
  the book and it's honestly kind of boring so far.
• 56:37
  We killed a candle with every story until there was one last
• 56:39
  flickering survivor. It's light twitched through the
• 56:41
  Soji screen. The walls here frothed with
• 56:44
  waves and rough ocean through its lambent waters, the paint
• 56:47
  glittering as though tinctured with crushed sapphire.
• 56:50
  Woodblock octopi watched as incuriously and at this point I
• 56:54
  was like I don't want to read this book anymore.
• 56:56
  This is a pet hate of mine but I'm sorry if you already heard
• 56:59
  me rant about this a million times in videos.
• 57:01
  It's not octopi. Octopi is wrong.
• 57:03
  It is octopuses as the plural. You can also use the archaic
• 57:07
  octopods if you want, but the correct modern plural is
• 57:11
  octopuses. Octopi never has and never will
• 57:15
  be correct. Stop saying octopi.
• 57:18
  And it's not just me that like talks about this right?
• 57:20
  My favourite ever book, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.
• 57:23
  Literally in her the opening page she says I knew a little
• 57:26
  about octopuses. Not even that the scientifically
• 57:29
  correct plural is not octopi, as I'd always believed.
• 57:32
  It turns out you can't put a Latin ending I on a word derived
• 57:35
  from Greek, such as octopus. Octopuses, not octopi.
• 57:39
  Where was her editor annoyed me. This is why I will never like
• 57:43
  this book. I can forgive many a thing.
• 57:46
  I can forgive annoying characters and bad storytelling
• 57:48
  and flowery writing. But I cannot forgive the wrong
• 57:52
  use of the plural of octopus. So Kat says she's going to tell
• 57:56
  the like, sorry, all that aside, do you see what I mean?
• 58:00
  That was all we got for setting up the atmosphere and the game
• 58:02
  and everything. And like, that game could have
• 58:04
  been so interesting. There could have been so much to
• 58:06
  it, and that's all we got. It's annoying as hell.
• 58:08
  Kat says she's going to tell the very last story, Story 100.
• 58:11
  But first, blah, blah, blah, she's drinking beer.
• 58:15
  Cool. Lynn's drinking plum wine.
• 58:17
  My teeth were just sugar now. Third, with so much plaque, I
• 58:20
  couldn't stop working my tongue over them.
• 58:22
  Over and over, like a horse, like a dog that had gotten into
• 58:24
  a bag of toffee. Back forth, back forth.
• 58:27
  I've got a story again, this sort of imagery with the teeth,
• 58:30
  something that's repeated throughout the whole book, and
• 58:32
  it could be super creepy and uncomfortable.
• 58:33
  I hate teeth. They gross me out.
• 58:35
  But again, I feel like this is just a bit overwritten.
• 58:39
  I don't need more than one simile, I don't need like this,
• 58:41
  like this, like this, it's too much.
• 58:43
  Face spoke up first, Sometimes he still remembered how to be a
• 58:46
  best friend. You don't have to.
• 58:47
  You've had a rough night, just suddenly enjoy how she had a
• 58:50
  rough night. When was she having a rough
• 58:52
  night? Because she was mean to Talia,
• 58:54
  that means she's had a rough night.
• 58:55
  Why they suddenly babying her? This makes no sense.
• 58:58
  I'm so confused. And it's not that I've missed
• 59:00
  out stuff and like just not told you about stuff that's happened,
• 59:03
  I've told you at all. Kat is now very drunk but she
• 59:05
  brags about having the bestest ever ghost and tells Linda and
• 59:09
  puts her finger to his mouth like a patronising dog owner.
• 59:13
  She's sloppy and Phase and Talia try to get a drink water but
• 59:16
  cats too busy being horrible. I've known phase.
• 59:19
  I strangled the rest of the sentence and sat down again, a
• 59:22
  knot of acid sizzling just under where my ribs fought from my
• 59:25
  sternum. Like Chapel doors or a wishbone.
• 59:28
  Oh God, sorry, I just realised how gross this is.
• 59:30
  I've no face since before the thought of effing him was a wet
• 59:34
  spot in your crotch. I got damn vomit. 2 fingers
• 59:37
  bolted over my lips. Just let me tell my story.
• 59:40
  It's my drunk voice and but yeah, please just tell you a
• 59:42
  story. Seriously.
• 59:43
  Like I want something scary in a horror book, not a bunch of
• 59:46
  adult children bickering. I hope to hell in that moment
• 59:48
  that she was listening. Half because I was tired of
• 59:51
  being unloved, being pitied like a form panting its last handful
• 59:54
  of breaths into a ditch because I hoped it was all true.
• 59:58
  A little bit of magic. Even if it was hungry, even if
• 1:00:00
  it was a house with rotting bones and a heart made of dead
• 1:00:03
  girls. Ghost.
• 1:00:04
  I'd give it everything it wanted just for scraps.
• 1:00:07
  Some unabridged attention, some love, even if it was from a
• 1:00:11
  corpse with blackened teeth. Anything to feel alive right
• 1:00:13
  now. Again, I really want to like
• 1:00:15
  this. Like I do feel like this could
• 1:00:16
  have been such a great depiction of depression and loneliness and
• 1:00:20
  how you know she she feels so lonely and excluded from her
• 1:00:23
  friend she reaches out to like a potential ghost for attention.
• 1:00:26
  Like, that could have been so amazingly creepy, but Kat is
• 1:00:29
  just so horrible and unsympathetic that I'm really
• 1:00:32
  struggling to care about her all Once Upon a time I repeated.
• 1:00:36
  Once Upon a time there was a house in the middle of a forest,
• 1:00:39
  and it stood silently until a group of honey somethings barged
• 1:00:44
  through the door looking for ghosts.
• 1:00:46
  Philip and Faze gave each other high fives.
• 1:00:48
  They their dinner. They drank their beer, they
• 1:00:52
  played a game to call it the dead from their rest.
• 1:00:54
  As I said, they didn't have to. The house already knew they were
• 1:00:57
  there. I saw it backwards, weight
• 1:00:59
  balanced on the heels of my palms.
• 1:01:01
  Watch that one fly as it wiggled from a crack in the ceramic
• 1:01:04
  boy's skull and buzzed to another doll, squeezing through
• 1:01:07
  its black lipped mouth. I thought I could hear its feet
• 1:01:10
  scratching the lacquer. Lincol on 1st, did you see
• 1:01:13
  something? A cow?
• 1:01:15
  I whispered, it should have sounded like a joke, something
• 1:01:17
  stupid, but a wind frizzened through the cracks in the soji
• 1:01:21
  and it was as if the manner was laughing at me.
• 1:01:23
  I was sure it's voice dripping with termites, A pale little
• 1:01:27
  bride with a smile full of ink. Right on cue all the lights went
• 1:01:31
  out. So again, this could have been
• 1:01:34
  great, but there was just no tension built for me before any
• 1:01:37
  of this. I know it's a short book, but I
• 1:01:39
  just wanted more. You can do so much in just a
• 1:01:43
  short few pages with building tension.
• 1:01:45
  And also just this game in general.
• 1:01:46
  Like playing this game could have been a really great
• 1:01:49
  opportunity for us to learn about the characters from the
• 1:01:51
  stories they chose to tell and how they reacted to each other's
• 1:01:54
  stories. Like, you know, a bit like
• 1:01:56
  haunted but but not, you know, like each of the characters in
• 1:01:59
  the theatre has their own story to tell and they do like
• 1:02:02
  performance and it tells us something about their back story
• 1:02:04
  and also how they see themselves and the world and how they ended
• 1:02:06
  up there and so on. We could have had something like
• 1:02:08
  that here, but like, you know, shorter but with just as much
• 1:02:12
  impact. So the author could have like
• 1:02:13
  built up this tension slowly as we see each person getting more
• 1:02:16
  and more creeped out as more and more stories are told.
• 1:02:19
  And slowly as each candle is blown out and the room gets
• 1:02:21
  darker and darker. Cat gets drunker and drunker
• 1:02:24
  slowly. And so we see her becoming a
• 1:02:26
  more and more unreliable narrator.
• 1:02:28
  And again, even her portrayal of like being drunk, I feel doesn't
• 1:02:31
  work for me because like, she's there apparently slurring her
• 1:02:34
  words and like this. And like, that's kind of clear
• 1:02:37
  in her dialogue. But then when she's narrating
• 1:02:40
  and she's like, yes. And then the wind.
• 1:02:42
  But I don't like when I'm reading a drunk, unreliable
• 1:02:45
  narrator, I want even their narration to seem drunk.
• 1:02:48
  So I'm getting that they're unreliable and they're not
• 1:02:50
  really aware what's going on. And I want to feel that
• 1:02:53
  disorientation when I'm reading. What I want to see is like the
• 1:02:55
  slow build up through like each story.
• 1:02:58
  You know, we could could have learned about what drives each
• 1:03:00
  character. We could have learned about what
• 1:03:01
  each of them thinks is the scariest thing.
• 1:03:04
  And we actually vaguely learn later that each of these
• 1:03:07
  characters has like a really cool background.
• 1:03:09
  Like each one's from a completely different country and
• 1:03:11
  culture and all this sort of thing.
• 1:03:12
  And they all came together in like a different place and
• 1:03:14
  they're all different and like races and ethnicities.
• 1:03:18
  So it could have been a really cool opportunity to be like, OK,
• 1:03:21
  well, like this person's from here, let's have them tell a
• 1:03:24
  ghost story or like something from like their cultures
• 1:03:27
  mythology. This person's from here.
• 1:03:29
  So we could have a ghost story from this culture.
• 1:03:31
  This person's from here, we could have a ghost story from
• 1:03:32
  this culture. Even something like that could
• 1:03:35
  have been so damn good. Let's say either Faisal Talia is
• 1:03:38
  having like worries about getting married or something.
• 1:03:41
  Maybe they're ghost stories that they tell, could have hinted
• 1:03:43
  towards that and like whatever insecurities they have.
• 1:03:46
  If you want to build up the insecurities that Fais has
• 1:03:48
  towards Philip, you could have had like some ghost story about
• 1:03:51
  like some little man getting revenge on the big guy.
• 1:03:53
  Do you know what I mean? Like we could have learned so
• 1:03:56
  much about the characters and their motivation from the story.
• 1:03:58
  They chose to tell, but instead we don't know what any of it is,
• 1:04:01
  none of it's told and it's just such a waste.
• 1:04:04
  It's a real shame. Anyway, now they're apparently
• 1:04:07
  scared because they think Cat, who's drunk, saw something and
• 1:04:10
  apparently that means they're all scared now.
• 1:04:12
  And so they all grab their phones for light and for some
• 1:04:15
  reason Talia goes running off. We never really found out why
• 1:04:17
  but she goes running off, Faiz and Philip full of her.
• 1:04:20
  But Lin and Cat stay behind. Lin says he doesn't care about
• 1:04:23
  the others or what happens to them.
• 1:04:24
  And then the book tries to get Metro again, like for no reason
• 1:04:27
  with no build up he knows. Hold his head against my temple.
• 1:04:30
  Exhaled Cat. This is literally the part where
• 1:04:33
  the supporting cast dies horribly.
• 1:04:35
  You're bisexual. I'm the Comic Relief.
• 1:04:37
  It's going to be one of us. But Philip's white, he'll be
• 1:04:41
  fine. Faze is the hero, so he won't
• 1:04:44
  die in the first effing act. And Talia, well, maybe Talia's
• 1:04:48
  thoroughly effed, but I don't care about her, he said.
• 1:04:51
  It's so casually, like it was the easiest line in the
• 1:04:53
  universe. That's nice.
• 1:04:55
  It also feels like a really weird, like, info dump of like,
• 1:04:57
  cat sexuality in here. It feels kind of pointless and
• 1:05:00
  like I'm all about, like, having representation in books.
• 1:05:03
  We do generally need more queer characters in literature and I
• 1:05:06
  think that's great. I just don't understand like the
• 1:05:09
  choice to make her queer when it has no impact on this.
• 1:05:12
  I just, I don't know, her only relationships in this book are
• 1:05:15
  with men. The only complications in this
• 1:05:17
  friendship are because she's had relationships with men.
• 1:05:20
  The fact like she's bisexual doesn't come into this at all.
• 1:05:24
  And it feels like an odd thing to throw in just to try and like
• 1:05:27
  maybe make this a bit more meta and be like, queer characters
• 1:05:30
  die first so you expect her to die first or something like
• 1:05:33
  that. I don't, I don't know.
• 1:05:34
  I don't know what the author was thinking but I feel like it
• 1:05:36
  doesn't work in general. I think all of this could have
• 1:05:39
  been handled so much better. Anyway, Talia appears back out
• 1:05:42
  of nowhere and she says she's found something and then Phase
• 1:05:45
  and Philip reappear too. Again, all the interesting stuff
• 1:05:48
  happens off page while we just have to sit and listen to their
• 1:05:50
  petty drama. Cat starts to freak out because
• 1:05:53
  she thinks doors and corridors have appeared where they weren't
• 1:05:55
  there before. Again, this whole creepy house
• 1:05:58
  changing thing is one of my favourite like creepy bits of
• 1:06:01
  fiction. It really gets to me.
• 1:06:02
  Episode 13 House of Leaves both did it brilliantly and I love
• 1:06:06
  that even Horror Story did it a little bit as well.
• 1:06:08
  I just didn't care that much here.
• 1:06:10
  It just happened out of nowhere with no build up and even Oh my
• 1:06:13
  God Marcus Cluers we used to live here.
• 1:06:16
  That does it really well as well.
• 1:06:18
  So damn creepy that book. Loved that.
• 1:06:21
  Although I feel like I wanted more from it.
• 1:06:22
  It ended. I was like no give me more.
• 1:06:24
  They all handled the whole changing house horror so much
• 1:06:28
  better than this random line. Anyway, Cat's like oh that
• 1:06:31
  appeared out of nowhere and then that's as tense as it ever gets.
• 1:06:34
  And then Talia, Phase and Philip all go running down this
• 1:06:38
  apparently newly appeared hallway, and cats like don't go
• 1:06:41
  down there, but then they do anyway.
• 1:06:43
  The words came together, but I swallowed them stillborn.
• 1:06:45
  It was too esoteric, too ambiguous to get across.
• 1:06:47
  Maybe I'd been wrong, but if I wasn't, I got up Lin bellowing
• 1:06:51
  protests and staggered after the clacker, sandals on wood, half
• 1:06:54
  blind as I followed my Dante's into damnation.
• 1:06:57
  On to chapter 5. We're travelling through the
• 1:06:59
  house, we could have had some really cool stuff with like the
• 1:07:01
  house changing and moving and her not being sure where she is
• 1:07:04
  and feeling really like, disoriented, but instead that
• 1:07:07
  all happens off page between the chapters and just suddenly
• 1:07:09
  they're on a bridge. Kat's still drunk.
• 1:07:11
  She starts going across a bridge that's across a garden.
• 1:07:14
  Lynn's trying to tell her not to go.
• 1:07:16
  The writing's kind of confusing here and it's all a bit all over
• 1:07:18
  the place, but from what I can tell, Kat now thinks the others
• 1:07:21
  are in danger. She implies she needs to save
• 1:07:23
  them. Because they were there for me
• 1:07:24
  when you weren't. I blotted tears from my eyes,
• 1:07:27
  slowing thought for a moment on the value of pointing out what
• 1:07:30
  had happened as the world smeared into a sodium haze.
• 1:07:33
  Somehow Lynn had taken no notice of the spatial weirdness.
• 1:07:36
  So I said nothing. We were effed, clearly, might as
• 1:07:39
  well die without any bad blood. They kept me going, they got me
• 1:07:42
  to come out of the house. They made me feel normal.
• 1:07:44
  Well, if you just called and so, and now I'm confused.
• 1:07:47
  Apparently like they all hate her because she said she didn't
• 1:07:50
  want Faze and Talia to be together.
• 1:07:53
  But then apparently like they're all weird about her because she
• 1:07:55
  had this breakdown. But apparently they were there
• 1:07:57
  for her when she had the breakdown, which is why they're
• 1:07:59
  friends. But then like Lindsay and the
• 1:08:00
  one who's always been there for her, but then he abandoned her
• 1:08:02
  during her breakdown, but now he's back and he's the one who
• 1:08:05
  likes and there's no consistency.
• 1:08:07
  I do not understand any of this. The characters are so poorly
• 1:08:10
  written for a book that's all about their drama.
• 1:08:13
  It's very confusing. So she complaints that Lynn
• 1:08:15
  wasn't there for her and didn't even tell her that he got
• 1:08:18
  married. And he's like, I didn't think
• 1:08:20
  you'd want to know, 'cause you're unhappy.
• 1:08:22
  Again, I think there's potential in how these characters respond
• 1:08:25
  to someone with mental health issues.
• 1:08:27
  That could be an interesting part of the story.
• 1:08:29
  That could be an interesting part.
• 1:08:31
  Like to link it to the horror elements in this.
• 1:08:32
  But none of it's handled well and none of it's interesting.
• 1:08:36
  None of it's well executed. Lynn apologises.
• 1:08:39
  And Cat says you came back and that's what's important.
• 1:08:41
  We're friends again. I'm still sorry, Lynn said,
• 1:08:44
  threading his fingers with mine. It, it's OK, you're here now,
• 1:08:48
  but we gotta go now. This time, Lynn didn't argue.
• 1:08:51
  And that's it, That's all their friendship drama resolved
• 1:08:54
  quickly. Done like that, and it's never
• 1:08:56
  brought up again. It never has any consequences.
• 1:08:59
  That's it. Then again, all the action
• 1:09:01
  happens off page and the next sentence is literally by the
• 1:09:04
  time we found them, Talia was all dressed up in someone else's
• 1:09:07
  wedding clothes. So we've gone from zero to 102
• 1:09:10
  pages again at this point. I appreciate the repetition of
• 1:09:13
  the teeth imagery. This is cool.
• 1:09:14
  Against the Vermilion of the overcoat, Talia's skin seemed
• 1:09:17
  depthless. Not brown, but black as ink on
• 1:09:20
  teeth. Like I say, I like this motif
• 1:09:22
  throughout the book, it's just not always as creepy as I want
• 1:09:24
  it to be, but I appreciate it being there nonetheless.
• 1:09:27
  It's one of the few things I do like about the book where the F
• 1:09:30
  Lynn wasn't smiling for once. No attempt to defuse, disarm.
• 1:09:34
  You know what doesn't effing matter?
• 1:09:36
  You know this probably belong to a dead person, right?
• 1:09:38
  The hell is wrong with you? Face trotted out from a side
• 1:09:41
  room, wearing execution as blacks, a regular suit, slightly
• 1:09:44
  rumpled bow tie and everything. If you're going to be a bum
• 1:09:47
  hole, get out. Sorry.
• 1:09:49
  Lynn said, not sounding like he was at all, just pointing out
• 1:09:52
  the obvious. Faze pinched his brow.
• 1:09:55
  You 2 are drunk idiots at this point.
• 1:09:57
  I was so confused. I was like, I don't know if Lynn
• 1:09:59
  and Kat are just drunk imagining all the creepy stuff and like,
• 1:10:03
  these guys are trying to like, actually get married and they're
• 1:10:05
  like, oh, this is all weird. Or if it's all really happening.
• 1:10:09
  I didn't know. And I was like, that kind of
• 1:10:10
  added to like, the creepiness of it all.
• 1:10:12
  But like, it's weird because like, the author seems kind of
• 1:10:14
  aware of all of this confusion, but instead of writing it well,
• 1:10:17
  she just kind of makes it a plot point.
• 1:10:19
  Are you talking about the ghost girl?
• 1:10:21
  Philip circled around from behind me, cupped me below the
• 1:10:24
  arms and lifted me straight up, propped me against an alcove
• 1:10:27
  where vase blooming with dead flowers sat.
• 1:10:30
  The petals crumbled to ashes as they leaned back.
• 1:10:32
  The air tasted like honey had a chewiness to it.
• 1:10:35
  No one's seen her, don't worry. No, not like honey, I corrected
• 1:10:38
  myself. It was sinewy, sweet as a knot
• 1:10:41
  of tendon after you'd gnawed on it for minutes.
• 1:10:43
  A faintly corrupt delight. We need to go after the
• 1:10:46
  ceremony, said Philip. We need to go, I said again.
• 1:10:49
  It'll be fine. Spoken like a true white guy.
• 1:10:53
  Lynn rolled a frustrated noise in his throat.
• 1:10:55
  Entirely animal. Ahead of us, Faiz and Talia
• 1:10:58
  joined shy hands in front of an altar to the faded dead, the
• 1:11:01
  small gods of whatever still lived in the eaves.
• 1:11:04
  You could feel the house pulling a breast, You could feel its
• 1:11:06
  eyes. I could.
• 1:11:08
  Ignoring everything Kat said, how does any of this seem like a
• 1:11:11
  good idea? Even assuming it's all just the
• 1:11:13
  delusions of an incredibly drunk mind, this is just plain weird.
• 1:11:17
  How the F does any of this make sense to you people?
• 1:11:19
  And like I say, I love a bit of metafiction, but this just all
• 1:11:22
  falls flat for me. Talia tells Lynn to go away
• 1:11:25
  because no one wants him here except Cat, and Cat says fine,
• 1:11:28
  we're leaving. And then phase is like new cat
• 1:11:32
  stay. We just want Lynn to go, but
• 1:11:35
  then Talia is like, no, they can both go.
• 1:11:36
  And I'm like, can I just please be the one to go because I don't
• 1:11:39
  want to read any more of this. And it's awful.
• 1:11:41
  They are all acting like children on the playground.
• 1:11:43
  Then out of nowhere things just get crazy.
• 1:11:45
  It it's so weird how they all just like accept this is a
• 1:11:48
  creepy horror situation and go on with go along with it without
• 1:11:51
  like questioning anything. I, I don't know, I don't know.
• 1:11:54
  Cat and Lynn turn to leave, but then Lynn just changes his mind
• 1:11:57
  at the last minute. And out of nowhere, for no
• 1:12:00
  reason, with no prompting because they just stood there
• 1:12:02
  doing nothing, Lynn lunges at Talia, grabs her veil, tears her
• 1:12:07
  veil, and then suddenly there's a reveal that oh, that's not
• 1:12:10
  Talia after all, it's a demon. I don't know if this is like a
• 1:12:14
  demon that's possessed Talia or possessed her dress or replaced
• 1:12:18
  her. I don't know what, it's not
• 1:12:19
  clear, but suddenly Talia's gone.
• 1:12:22
  It's a demon. She hid nothing this time, the
• 1:12:24
  thing beneath Talia's veil. My girl from the mirror.
• 1:12:28
  There wasn't a face to remember, because there wasn't a face to
• 1:12:30
  find. Black hair tendriled across
• 1:12:32
  contourless meat, no features to be seen, only suggestions, only
• 1:12:36
  smooth flesh. And that grinning mouth, those
• 1:12:39
  red lips stretched as far as they go.
• 1:12:41
  Black teeth and the smell of ink.
• 1:12:44
  As I gawked, Talia's kimono bled itself of colour, pinks and
• 1:12:47
  golds running from every layer, pouring into the dust at her
• 1:12:50
  feet. So all was left was white, the
• 1:12:52
  colour of expensive chalk and boneless to cook in the sun.
• 1:12:55
  The Oha Guru Batari began to laugh before any of us could
• 1:12:59
  think to scream. This is actually a part that I
• 1:13:01
  like this description, so I will say that now.
• 1:13:03
  So again, if you're not familiar Oha Guru Batari, they are these
• 1:13:07
  spirits which appear as like beautiful women in wedding
• 1:13:09
  dresses, have like blank faces except giant mouths with
• 1:13:13
  blackened teeth. Super creepy.
• 1:13:15
  It makes sense with the name of the book, you know?
• 1:13:17
  It's why the book has its name. Makes sense for the teeth
• 1:13:21
  imagery throughout the book. That's all really cool.
• 1:13:23
  They're known for having a creepy laugh and being known to
• 1:13:26
  lure young men in. I love this inclusion.
• 1:13:28
  I think it's a really creepy character.
• 1:13:30
  Really good to bring this element of like Japanese
• 1:13:33
  folklore into this. I think it's great.
• 1:13:36
  I think this description of the demon thing basically creepy as
• 1:13:41
  hell. Love that.
• 1:13:42
  I just wish there'd been more build up to the reveal.
• 1:13:44
  They were just stood around and they're like you leave.
• 1:13:46
  No, you leave. No, you leave.
• 1:13:48
  Oh, I'm going to grab the veil. Oh, there's a demon now.
• 1:13:50
  There was no build up. It's all just rushed and there's
• 1:13:56
  no tension. There's no like, we don't
• 1:14:00
  understand the motivation for anyone.
• 1:14:02
  We don't really understand how any of this has happened.
• 1:14:04
  It's just, I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:14:05
  It's just like, oh, petty drama one minute.
• 1:14:07
  Oh, and now he is a demon and we're meant to find it scary and
• 1:14:10
  I don't. Chapter 6.
• 1:14:11
  And everyone's scared now. The demons that were painted on
• 1:14:14
  the walls and the room dividers now all seem to come to life and
• 1:14:17
  they turn to face them with mocking expressions.
• 1:14:19
  This is creepy as hell. I love that.
• 1:14:20
  I think this is a really cool moment.
• 1:14:22
  And we get these like, cool creepy descriptions for like,
• 1:14:25
  you know, a little tiny bit, but instead of it being used to
• 1:14:28
  like, build attention and like, build fear and make it a really
• 1:14:31
  horrifying moment, it's all ruined because told you she was
• 1:14:34
  probably going to be possessed and everything was going to
• 1:14:36
  hell. Lynn said, more satisfied,
• 1:14:38
  maybe, than anyone had the right to be.
• 1:14:40
  No, he didn't. But I'm glad we've got clarity
• 1:14:41
  now that she's actually been possessed and that's what's
• 1:14:44
  happened, because it wasn't clear before.
• 1:14:46
  The dead girls are singing Talia's Place, Faze's changeling
• 1:14:49
  bride. Why?
• 1:14:50
  As a tongue of wax, let her laugh to ebb to a giggle, low
• 1:14:54
  and coquettish. Demurely, she raised her sleeve
• 1:14:56
  to her mouth, her chin ducked and moved towards each of her
• 1:14:59
  steps, causing a scramble back of his.
• 1:15:02
  He whimpered, head lolling. Yeah, I love this description of
• 1:15:05
  her, I think it's brilliant. Again, I just wish it had more
• 1:15:08
  impact. Because we don't really care
• 1:15:10
  about Talia at this point. We don't really know what's
• 1:15:12
  happened to her, We don't know really why she's been possessed.
• 1:15:15
  I mean, I guess she was the bride, so that kind of makes
• 1:15:17
  sense, but there's no build up to it.
• 1:15:20
  If anything, we thought Cat was the one being haunted, but now
• 1:15:22
  she's taking Talia. I don't know, we kind of don't
• 1:15:25
  care. This is a really creepy
• 1:15:26
  description that is wasted on utterly boring book with
• 1:15:30
  horrible characters that we don't care about.
• 1:15:32
  I think if we'd seen more of her and Faye's being a happy couple
• 1:15:36
  too, we'd care about it more and it would have more impact
• 1:15:38
  because we'd be like Oh no, this wonderful happy couples being
• 1:15:41
  split up by this like demon possessing the bride.
• 1:15:44
  What a shame. But as it is, we don't care.
• 1:15:47
  We don't give a damn. So the Oha guru Batari starts to
• 1:15:51
  say the Japanese phrase that Cat's been hearing for the whole
• 1:15:53
  book. And this time Cat translates it
• 1:15:56
  to everyone and says it's from a poem.
• 1:15:57
  Then a memory filled my mouth. If I were one that had a heart,
• 1:16:00
  that would cast you aside and turn to someone else.
• 1:16:02
  Then waves would rise above the Pines of Suno Matsu Mountain.
• 1:16:07
  That's the poem, the thing she keeps repeating.
• 1:16:09
  It's part of the poem. I said she's still waiting for
• 1:16:11
  her husband to be after all these years.
• 1:16:13
  She's hanging on to the hope he's coming home.
• 1:16:16
  That, or she's saying it ironically, declared Lynn.
• 1:16:18
  Which I can tell you now worries me because that sounds like the
• 1:16:22
  recipe for an angry, effing ghost.
• 1:16:24
  He paused. Or an angry ghost effing.
• 1:16:26
  I find the attempts of humour in this alongside the creepiness
• 1:16:30
  like it doesn't work for me. It's just jarring again, like
• 1:16:33
  because I neither find it funny nor creepy.
• 1:16:36
  Faze finally decides to ask the spirit where Talia is, and to
• 1:16:39
  give her back. I mean, took him long enough,
• 1:16:40
  really. Faze hit her his first bore into
• 1:16:43
  her sternum through it. But there was no crunch, no wet
• 1:16:46
  pop of bone concaving, no sound to speak of, nothing but
• 1:16:49
  softness, the oh, her guru's body bending into the impact,
• 1:16:53
  swallowing his arm to the elbow. For a moment I thought she might
• 1:16:57
  have a mouth buried in the mound of white silt that we were a
• 1:16:59
  sliver of a breath away from, hearing Faze scream self bloody.
• 1:17:03
  Again, this could be really creepy and if I cared about the
• 1:17:05
  characters it might have an impact on me.
• 1:17:06
  But I don't, so it doesn't. And then the demon just
• 1:17:09
  vanishes. The painted demons all around
• 1:17:11
  them, they stay and they're still watching them.
• 1:17:14
  Again, this would be creepy, but like, there's no tension,
• 1:17:17
  they're just forgotten about. And you know what?
• 1:17:18
  They're never mentioned again after this scene.
• 1:17:20
  They don't do anything, they don't have any impact.
• 1:17:24
  There's no point to them. I don't know.
• 1:17:25
  Even the descriptions of the demons here are so overwritten
• 1:17:29
  with simile, simile, simile, simile that you don't feel
• 1:17:31
  creeped out by it and you should.
• 1:17:33
  Again, so much potential that's just wasted.
• 1:17:36
  Lynn again is like, we need to leave.
• 1:17:38
  And then Philip's like, no, we need to stay and find Talia.
• 1:17:40
  And then Faze cries on the floor and Cat finally drinks water
• 1:17:43
  because, you know, she's drunk. Of course, Cat uses this moment
• 1:17:48
  to tell us how hot Philip is again, because it's all she
• 1:17:52
  cares about. Philip, for all of his easy
• 1:17:54
  swagger, knew the trick of standing smaller, being shorter.
• 1:17:57
  Most days you couldn't tell he was 6 foot three, an artist
• 1:18:01
  rendition of the American Dream, Broad shoulders, muscled thighs,
• 1:18:04
  a ruggedy Neolithic jaw. But now he'd given that up,
• 1:18:08
  exchanged his approachability for something more contentious,
• 1:18:11
  A predatory stillness that drove a scream through the medulla
• 1:18:14
  oblongata. We get it, you're into him.
• 1:18:17
  Please give us a break. Go ahead and stay, I guess.
• 1:18:19
  But this is when the murder star, you know, this is when the
• 1:18:22
  murder star. Lynn's voice cracked twice
• 1:18:24
  through the sentence. He removed his glasses, wiped
• 1:18:26
  them along the hem of his shirt. We're going to die here.
• 1:18:29
  So even though Cat started off being the voice of the meta
• 1:18:32
  narrative, now it's Lynn for some reason again, we don't know
• 1:18:35
  why he doesn't have a back story of, like, being into horror
• 1:18:39
  books or films or being a writer or reading a lot of stuff.
• 1:18:43
  Like none of that. It just started Cat.
• 1:18:46
  Now it's Lynn because I guess someone has to because the
• 1:18:48
  author fancied it, but the characters have no motivation.
• 1:18:51
  It's silly. Lynn then just starts singing
• 1:18:53
  out of nowhere. Gonna die, gonna die, gonna die.
• 1:18:56
  La La la, we're all gonna die because they're dead or lonely
• 1:18:59
  in the dark and they all miss the sun.
• 1:19:01
  So apparently he's insane now. I think that's what I meant to
• 1:19:04
  believe. It's just come out of nowhere
• 1:19:06
  over 3 pages, just ramped up quickly.
• 1:19:08
  It's bizarre. Again, it has no impact.
• 1:19:10
  It's also rushed. Phase also decides to jump in on
• 1:19:14
  the whole meta thing and says there's a library in the house,
• 1:19:17
  so there must be a book with information at this point.
• 1:19:20
  In my original script, I said this would have more impact if,
• 1:19:22
  one, we'd seen a library before because, you know, Chekhov's
• 1:19:25
  gone. And two, we hadn't been told the
• 1:19:28
  house was decaying with holes in the ceiling because if there are
• 1:19:31
  books, do we really think they're in good enough condition
• 1:19:33
  to read and give information about?
• 1:19:35
  And three, why would he suddenly get meta like this when Phase
• 1:19:39
  has never referenced horror films or stories or stuff
• 1:19:42
  before? Or I don't know, why is he doing
• 1:19:44
  it now? Turns out, oh, I was wrong.
• 1:19:46
  We did have that one mention of books earlier and something
• 1:19:50
  about rotting, but like it wasn't a library, but it was
• 1:19:53
  like, oh, there's some books in this room.
• 1:19:55
  You know what I mean? I don't care.
• 1:19:56
  I really don't care. Can you tell how much I just
• 1:19:59
  like this book? You know, it's so funny.
• 1:20:01
  Few books have got me as like annoyed to review as this one.
• 1:20:05
  It's it's a lot when I've reviewed bad books before, like
• 1:20:09
  Haunting Adeline, like Zodiac Academy, like they're just bad.
• 1:20:12
  The premise isn't well thought out.
• 1:20:14
  The characters are annoying the setting.
• 1:20:15
  Annoying. The actions are problematic,
• 1:20:17
  there's just not really much to them.
• 1:20:19
  There's nothing redeeming about them.
• 1:20:21
  So like, they're bad, but then you're like okay, cool, throw
• 1:20:23
  out the book, whatever. This I think annoys me so much
• 1:20:26
  more because and want to like it.
• 1:20:29
  I feel like the story has so much potential, the premise has
• 1:20:32
  so much potential, the setting has so much potential, the demon
• 1:20:36
  has so much potential. Like this would be a book that I
• 1:20:40
  would love if it was just well written with a good plot and
• 1:20:44
  good characters. And I want character
• 1:20:46
  development. I want a ghost story that ties
• 1:20:49
  into the characters and their story and their journey and we
• 1:20:52
  don't get any of it. And I think that's why it's
• 1:20:53
  frustrating me, because there's potential here that's just left
• 1:20:57
  unfulfilled. Dude, that's just fiction.
• 1:21:00
  In real life, people don't just leave around solutions like like
• 1:21:03
  it's some kind of video game. I said we have to go.
• 1:21:06
  I'm sorry, I'm sorry about Talia, but we're going to need
• 1:21:08
  to leave. It's too late.
• 1:21:09
  We should go. We should go.
• 1:21:11
  We need to go. You need help.
• 1:21:12
  It's Kat saying this. Kat was the one who was like
• 1:21:16
  getting meta 1st and being like in horror films, I'd be the
• 1:21:19
  first to die, blah, blah, blah. You can't go from being the
• 1:21:22
  voice of meta to suddenly trying to be the voice of reason and
• 1:21:25
  logic. It doesn't make any sense.
• 1:21:27
  None of these characters are consistent in any way.
• 1:21:30
  Philip suggests Cat and Lynn, you leave Faze and me will stay
• 1:21:35
  and find Talia. And then Faze is like, no, you
• 1:21:38
  can't go. We all have to stick together
• 1:21:40
  for God knows what reason. I don't know why they don't just
• 1:21:43
  like call someone for help. They've all got phones that
• 1:21:45
  they've been using as tortures. So why don't they just like be
• 1:21:47
  like, hey, we're in a creepy old house, our friends gone missing,
• 1:21:50
  come help us please. I don't know why they don't do
• 1:21:52
  that. It's never explained.
• 1:21:54
  Then there's just a lot of sitting around and talking about
• 1:21:56
  what they could do instead of actually doing anything.
• 1:22:00
  That's the annoying thing about this book.
• 1:22:02
  There's a lot of sitting around and talking and arguing and
• 1:22:05
  being petty, and then they do something off page and then we
• 1:22:08
  watch them sit around and talk and be petty and then they do
• 1:22:11
  something off page and then they sit around and talk and be petty
• 1:22:15
  again and again. I think that's really annoying.
• 1:22:19
  Cat notices that Faze's eyes are weird and she narrates Read 100
• 1:22:23
  books on heart. So she's the she's the voice of
• 1:22:26
  Metro again for some reason. OK, this has happened.
• 1:22:28
  I guess we've switched back. Read 100 books on Horror and
• 1:22:31
  you'll find that every last one possesses at least one mention
• 1:22:33
  of someone's eyes gone strange, unfocused and unsettling to
• 1:22:36
  witness. I'd always thought it sounded
• 1:22:38
  kitschy, hammy, a lazy trope implanted into the creative
• 1:22:41
  subconscious by sub par mentors. Pure Hollywood dross.
• 1:22:45
  But the look tenanting phase eyes remedied those
• 1:22:47
  preconceptions. All the lights were on.
• 1:22:50
  All the ghosts were home too. It wasn't the face of a killer
• 1:22:53
  or the face of a suicide, but someone too exhausted to be
• 1:22:56
  either, which was somehow all the worse.
• 1:22:59
  When you're tired enough, you'll do anything for sleep.
• 1:23:01
  It's just so inconsistent as like, again, this would have
• 1:23:03
  more impact if we'd known that Kat, for example, liked reading
• 1:23:07
  horror books, like that line, read 100 books on horror and
• 1:23:09
  you'll find that would have so much more impact and make so
• 1:23:12
  much more sense for her to say. If we knew that in her life,
• 1:23:15
  she'd read 100 horror books. Like maybe she's a horror
• 1:23:19
  author. Maybe she studied horror
• 1:23:21
  literature at university. Maybe she just carries a horror
• 1:23:25
  book around with her all the time.
• 1:23:26
  And we could have a thing where like, you know, when she's
• 1:23:28
  alone, she's reading it in the house or like we see her slip it
• 1:23:31
  into her bag when Philip gets there or something like that.
• 1:23:33
  Like we could have just had a small thing of like knowing she
• 1:23:36
  likes to read horror books or maybe she references them
• 1:23:39
  sometimes. And she could have been like
• 1:23:40
  when she first allowed, she could be like, oh, I read a book
• 1:23:43
  about this where blah blah blah happened and something, anything
• 1:23:46
  to let us know she reads horror books.
• 1:23:48
  Because otherwise, why would she bring this up?
• 1:23:51
  Why would she say this? It bothers me.
• 1:23:53
  Similarly, out of nowhere, Phase says we have to do the ritual.
• 1:23:57
  Phase said no variation in intonation.
• 1:24:00
  What? The Hitabashari ritual.
• 1:24:02
  We have to do it. It'll give Talia back.
• 1:24:05
  I know it. Len's voice spiked.
• 1:24:07
  We're not bringing someone to get your effing girlfriend back.
• 1:24:09
  Where has this come from? Where's any of this come from?
• 1:24:12
  When they were given the statues, Kat mentioned what
• 1:24:15
  Hitabashari was, but they never discussed it between them as a
• 1:24:19
  group. There's nothing that says Faze
• 1:24:22
  knows what this is. There's nothing linking it
• 1:24:24
  necessarily to the house. There's the back story of like
• 1:24:27
  the girls being buried every year, but it's never called
• 1:24:30
  that. It's I, I don't know.
• 1:24:32
  I don't know. This doesn't make sense.
• 1:24:35
  It doesn't tie back in what we've seen in a cohesive way.
• 1:24:38
  It whatever, OK. And again, Phase isn't supposed
• 1:24:42
  to know anything about the history of its house or its
• 1:24:44
  history before they got there. Maybe he did because of the
• 1:24:47
  little figurines that him and Talia got everyone.
• 1:24:49
  Still, why would he know about it?
• 1:24:50
  Why would he know what it is? We haven't been told he knows
• 1:24:53
  anything about that or its history or whatever.
• 1:24:55
  I I don't understand. And OK, let's say, let's say
• 1:24:59
  Phase doesn't know the history of the house.
• 1:25:01
  He knew it before they got there, and that's why they
• 1:25:03
  decided to give the figurines to everyone and so on.
• 1:25:05
  In in the story with the history of the house the girls buried to
• 1:25:09
  keep the original ghost company, right?
• 1:25:12
  That's the reason for in the story, in the original myths of
• 1:25:16
  Hita Bashari, they're basically human sacrifices to protect a
• 1:25:19
  building or protect a structure of some kind.
• 1:25:22
  OK. It's meant to be like, hey,
• 1:25:24
  we're giving you this, you protect the building, please.
• 1:25:27
  How the hell, knowing those two things, would he jump to if we
• 1:25:32
  give you a sacrifice, you'll give our possessed friend back.
• 1:25:36
  It's not logical. It doesn't make any sense.
• 1:25:38
  I hate this book, He goes on to say the whole logic out the
• 1:25:41
  window. I'll be the sacrifice.
• 1:25:44
  She's my fiance. I'll I'll be the one to do it.
• 1:25:47
  Phase sinambulated through phases.
• 1:25:49
  Annunciation gone. The crispness of his voice
• 1:25:52
  diluted by misery. Really, he's sinambulated.
• 1:25:55
  You can just say sleepwalk. You couldn't say he was slurring
• 1:25:59
  his words a bit. You couldn't have said like he
• 1:26:00
  was just, I don't know anything. Anything simpler, anything that
• 1:26:05
  would have the same effect but be more accessible to the
• 1:26:08
  average reader. Anything that would be a little
• 1:26:10
  bit more visual. You know what I mean?
• 1:26:12
  Anything that could make us really hear his words.
• 1:26:14
  I this is what I mean about it being overwritten.
• 1:26:17
  I feel like she's choosing big words over the right words
• 1:26:20
  sometimes. Sometimes less is more.
• 1:26:23
  Again, this doesn't make sense with what we know about like the
• 1:26:25
  history of the house. In the history of the house, to
• 1:26:28
  appease the original ghost, they buried young women so they could
• 1:26:31
  be her friend and keep her company.
• 1:26:33
  Why would Faze think that he like sacrificing him would be
• 1:26:37
  what she want? Maybe he could argue the
• 1:26:40
  original bride ghost wanted a husband.
• 1:26:43
  I'm due to be a husband. Sacrifice me and maybe she'll
• 1:26:47
  let Talia go. Maybe that will appease her and
• 1:26:50
  she'll stop haunting this. Maybe she'll finally leave if
• 1:26:52
  you do that. If he said that, that might make
• 1:26:55
  sense, but that is never once spoken.
• 1:26:59
  Not at all. Instead he's just like Oh yeah I
• 1:27:02
  love Talia and if we give her anyone they'll give her back so
• 1:27:06
  kill me because I love her. Like none of this makes sense.
• 1:27:11
  So they are just sit around arguing instead of actually
• 1:27:12
  doing anything and then out of nowhere Faze decides to be nasty
• 1:27:15
  to Cat. I thought they were meant to be
• 1:27:16
  best friends. We've seen nothing of them
• 1:27:18
  acting like best friends. We've seen like one basic
• 1:27:20
  interaction with them where like Faze vaguely stuck up for Cat
• 1:27:25
  vaguely, and now the next like big interaction they have is
• 1:27:28
  this like you can't just say Oh my best friends and then like
• 1:27:31
  never have them interact or do anything and then suddenly have
• 1:27:33
  like, oh, he's nasty out of nowhere.
• 1:27:36
  You don't understand any of this.
• 1:27:37
  He's backed choppily, kneeling in tears again, the pitch of his
• 1:27:40
  voice going stratospheric towards the end.
• 1:27:42
  The yokai applauded. Of course they'd love it.
• 1:27:45
  You've never had a proper relationship.
• 1:27:46
  You know what it's like to need someone to love, someone to, to
• 1:27:50
  give a crap you don't know because you're always too busy
• 1:27:52
  running away to whatever new effing thing you have waiting.
• 1:27:55
  You don't understand, you never. These people all hate each
• 1:27:58
  other, don't they? It's, this is just a book about
• 1:28:00
  toxic friendships. It's not a horror book, it's
• 1:28:02
  just annoying people doing horrible things to each other.
• 1:28:05
  He's like blah blah blah, let's go get the book from the
• 1:28:07
  library. And then Cat's like, do we even
• 1:28:09
  know there's a book there? I heard myself say, of course
• 1:28:12
  there is. We saw them when we got in this
• 1:28:13
  place. This place is rotten with books.
• 1:28:16
  There were libraries everywhere. We're going to have answers
• 1:28:18
  there. I know.
• 1:28:19
  And like I say, I was so confused by this.
• 1:28:22
  I actually like flip back to see if books had been mentioned
• 1:28:24
  anywhere else. And like I said, there was that
• 1:28:26
  one small mention of in another room, books, or at least corpses
• 1:28:30
  of books, the volumes of mulch eaten by insects.
• 1:28:33
  That's not libraries everywhere, that's not even books.
• 1:28:36
  That's like corpses of books. Like it said, no mention of
• 1:28:39
  libraries. It's just a room with some
• 1:28:41
  rotten books. I, I don't care anyway.
• 1:28:44
  Then there's a lot of swearing, like every other word, and I'm
• 1:28:47
  not going to repeat it. Lynn still wants to leave.
• 1:28:49
  Nothing's changed there. Cat thinks they shouldn't split
• 1:28:51
  up. Philip decides they need to find
• 1:28:53
  the library library that's appeared out of nowhere, so they
• 1:28:56
  go to this previously non existent library.
• 1:28:58
  And in this chapter, it wasn't so much a library as much as it
• 1:29:01
  was an archive of corpses. Manuscripts chewed up by the
• 1:29:05
  sentries edges went out by insects.
• 1:29:07
  They're leather fested with mould, with mushrooms, wide
• 1:29:11
  brimmed with fluting bodies, tiered like cheap apartments and
• 1:29:15
  blanched by the half light. Some could barely be labelled as
• 1:29:18
  books anymore. They're paper digested, then
• 1:29:20
  regurgitated as building material.
• 1:29:22
  There were so many of them. Wasps nests, almost intestinal
• 1:29:26
  in luck, built atop the remains of a terrarium, it's inhabitants
• 1:29:30
  long dead. So this is just the room with
• 1:29:33
  writing books that was mentioned earlier.
• 1:29:34
  It's not a library. It's not many libraries.
• 1:29:37
  I OK, first thinks he finds a book and he tells them
• 1:29:40
  everything. But then everyone else is like
• 1:29:42
  what he says. The book says that this place is
• 1:29:46
  consecrated to the four kings, and each of them requires a
• 1:29:49
  different sacrifice. And the four kings apparently
• 1:29:51
  requires sacrifices of blood, bone, semen and an organ.
• 1:29:55
  I don't know where he gets this from.
• 1:29:56
  He's not even like reading a book.
• 1:29:58
  He's just like looking at these like, disintegrated pages.
• 1:30:00
  I OK Phez is like, I'll do it. I'll cut my heart out for Talia
• 1:30:05
  because he doesn't want to go on without her.
• 1:30:07
  And so Cat slaps him and says you're not cutting your effing
• 1:30:11
  heart out. What the effing F do you think
• 1:30:13
  this is an effing Shakespeare tragedy or some effing crap like
• 1:30:17
  this? We're not effing letting you.
• 1:30:19
  And then she cuts off. Do you see what I mean about
• 1:30:21
  like the flowery language next to this is just jarring.
• 1:30:24
  There's more swearing followed by drink, guys, more
• 1:30:28
  descriptions of how hot Philip is.
• 1:30:30
  Whoa, guys. Wonder Boy Philip Glossy is the
• 1:30:33
  cover of Forbes $100. Clean fade and a jawline to
• 1:30:37
  slice open your heart slid between us.
• 1:30:39
  You could always count on Philip to save the day.
• 1:30:42
  Forget the initial argument. He had room to play heroes.
• 1:30:45
  Stop it. I don't care.
• 1:30:46
  How many more times do you want to compare him to a magazine
• 1:30:48
  cover? And I'm done with this.
• 1:30:51
  Cat kicks Philip like a child. And then in the next room,
• 1:30:55
  apparently the OHA guru Batari appears again and starts
• 1:30:58
  laughing. That could be creepy, but again,
• 1:31:00
  no. Chapter 8 opens and apparently
• 1:31:03
  off page something creepy happened that we never get to
• 1:31:06
  see. I don't know.
• 1:31:07
  And now Phase has again off page.
• 1:31:10
  All the action happens off page. Phase has pulled out his own
• 1:31:13
  tooth and tried to offer the house blood and semen.
• 1:31:17
  Lovely. I mean, I'm glad that wasn't on
• 1:31:18
  page, but here we go. All this stuff like in pulling
• 1:31:21
  his tooth out on whatever, that would be so much more grotesque
• 1:31:24
  if it did happen on page. Like that is something that I
• 1:31:27
  would find really uncomfortable because I I already have issues
• 1:31:30
  with teeth. Like seeing that I would, oh, I
• 1:31:33
  would be so uncomfortable. I would be so creeped out.
• 1:31:36
  That could be so visceral. You could really like, you know,
• 1:31:39
  make the reader feel it. I'm not really a fan of gore in
• 1:31:42
  general, but I still think it would be better to have it on
• 1:31:44
  page than just oh by the way, between chapters that happened,
• 1:31:47
  all the horror happen happens off page and instead the stuff
• 1:31:51
  we see on page is all focused on petty arguments and
• 1:31:54
  interpersonal drama and I just kind of don't care.
• 1:31:57
  People tell Phase he's crazy. Cat goes on about how hot and
• 1:32:00
  muscly Philip is, and then Philip calls Phase melodramatic
• 1:32:04
  drink again for Philip being hot.
• 1:32:06
  Lynn decides that of nowhere to start smoking weed because why
• 1:32:09
  not, I guess. Cat joins in because, you know,
• 1:32:12
  why not be more impaired? Apparently the creepy spirit
• 1:32:15
  bride is just hanging around now.
• 1:32:17
  She's just just sat there doing nothing.
• 1:32:19
  Yeah, like I, at this point in the book, forgot she was even
• 1:32:21
  there because she's so non consequential.
• 1:32:24
  It's just like, oh, I know what makes a horror book.
• 1:32:26
  Let's put a demon in the room and then just not mention her
• 1:32:29
  while we sit around smoking weed.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah. This is not horror.
• 1:32:32
  This is not creepy. This is not good storytelling.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah, apparently she's just around now and she's sitting
• 1:32:37
  beside them. And I don't know.
• 1:32:39
  He lit cigarette, hand rolled cook with tamarind peel and
• 1:32:43
  weed, and squatted beside me, smoke curling between his teeth.
• 1:32:46
  The OHA guru Batari followed, kneeling beside him.
• 1:32:49
  Beside us, Lynn didn't look at her once, but I did.
• 1:32:53
  I stared at the yokai as I took a toke from Lynn's joint.
• 1:32:57
  She had the angles of someone carefully starved from cradle to
• 1:33:00
  nuptials, clavicle and collarbone in stark chioscuro.
• 1:33:05
  Her skin didn't just look like porcelain, it was porcelain,
• 1:33:08
  enamelled and gleaming, faultless save for her red
• 1:33:12
  mouth. No eyes, no nose, no fill trim,
• 1:33:15
  not even the conceit of cheekbones.
• 1:33:17
  But even her flesh wasn't as pale as the shiramuku.
• 1:33:21
  She wore the satin the colour of expensive chalk.
• 1:33:25
  Again. Is anyone else just getting
• 1:33:26
  like, no atmosphere from this at all?
• 1:33:28
  She should be creepy, she should be terrifying, but it's just
• 1:33:31
  like, OK, she's there, I guess. Cool.
• 1:33:34
  Lynn says that phase isn't Kat's responsibility and they should
• 1:33:37
  go. Kat says he is because he's a
• 1:33:40
  best friend again. It's like you don't even like
• 1:33:42
  each other. How?
• 1:33:43
  Like why do we care about your friendship?
• 1:33:45
  We've not seen you be best friends.
• 1:33:46
  Why do I believe this? I why should I care?
• 1:33:49
  Why should any of us care? I nodded.
• 1:33:51
  There wasn't much else to say, so we sat for a long minute,
• 1:33:53
  passing the cigarette between us until it shrivelled to an ember.
• 1:33:56
  Phase and Phillip fighting the whole while.
• 1:33:59
  So apparently they're fighting, that's just happening.
• 1:34:01
  And what? It's like an aftersaw.
• 1:34:02
  OK, no tension there. They diversified the character
• 1:34:06
  attacks, petty insults. All those years of friendship
• 1:34:08
  run through the abattoir back and forth until every secret was
• 1:34:12
  turned inside out. Any second now something was
• 1:34:14
  going to snap, a neck or a temper or a spine.
• 1:34:17
  And this sums up the whole book, to be honest.
• 1:34:19
  Like the whole pinnacle of this book revolves around Phase and
• 1:34:25
  Phillips tension in their friendship.
• 1:34:27
  Except that friendship is never built up.
• 1:34:31
  We're not told they were close. At one point it's hinted at that
• 1:34:34
  they kind of have a rivalry, but it's never really.
• 1:34:36
  They never have a back and forth.
• 1:34:38
  There's no tension built between them.
• 1:34:40
  It's like we're told, oh, this could cause tension in the
• 1:34:42
  future. Cool, blah blah blah blah blah
• 1:34:45
  blah blah blah blah blah blah. All the tensions reach boiling
• 1:34:48
  point is like, wait, how did we get here?
• 1:34:51
  It was never building. It was just told this could
• 1:34:53
  potentially happen. Oh look, it's happening right
• 1:34:55
  now. There's nothing that makes us
• 1:34:57
  care about this. I'm so, so tired of this.
• 1:35:00
  OK, Lynn says that phase or Philip is going to kill one
• 1:35:03
  another and Cat narrates getting better again.
• 1:35:07
  This is the problem with horror movies.
• 1:35:09
  Everyone knows what's coming next, but actions have momentum,
• 1:35:12
  every decision and equal and justified reaction.
• 1:35:15
  Just because you know you should doesn't mean that you can stop.
• 1:35:18
  Again. The meta thing is not working
• 1:35:20
  for me. I hate it.
• 1:35:21
  Philip punches face and breaks his nose.
• 1:35:24
  Lynn says this is the part where we all die and we're 86% of the
• 1:35:27
  way through the book. So I was like, thank God,
• 1:35:30
  finally kill them all please. That's the only thing that could
• 1:35:32
  save this book for me. If these horrific characters
• 1:35:35
  have horrific deaths and I get to celebrate it, face pulls out
• 1:35:40
  a knife. God knows where he got it from.
• 1:35:42
  This was never spoken about earlier.
• 1:35:44
  Like again, I wish she'd Chekhov's gun this like if she'd
• 1:35:48
  like set it up earlier where like, you know, maybe he carried
• 1:35:50
  a knife for protection or like we saw him like pick it up after
• 1:35:54
  the meal when they weren't running off or simply, but no,
• 1:35:56
  suddenly he just has a knife out of nowhere.
• 1:35:58
  It's like even in the in the middle of this video, if I just
• 1:36:01
  like, oh, by the way, here's a knife.
• 1:36:03
  Like you'd be like, wait, where did that come from?
• 1:36:05
  It doesn't make sense because where would I get a knife from?
• 1:36:08
  Where did he get a knife from? Suddenly, though, there's a
• 1:36:11
  knife. He stabs Philip in the stomach
• 1:36:13
  and Oh my God, look at that Philips dying.
• 1:36:16
  I feel like this should have been a big dramatic turning
• 1:36:19
  point, a point of no return. It should have been dramatic and
• 1:36:23
  tension filled and we should have had it building and
• 1:36:26
  building and building, but instead it just falls flat and
• 1:36:28
  it's like, oh, his knife came out of nowhere and oh, he
• 1:36:31
  stabbed in the stomach. I like I say, I wish they'd
• 1:36:33
  built up that relationship more. Like they hinted that kind of
• 1:36:36
  rivalry, but they never really showed it.
• 1:36:38
  They never built it, their really feelings of jealousy over
• 1:36:41
  Talia. Did Phase really feel inferior
• 1:36:44
  to him? And if so, like how was that
• 1:36:45
  show and how did it come out? Like we could have had all of
• 1:36:48
  this shown with like dialogue between them.
• 1:36:50
  We could have had it shown with the stories they chose to tell
• 1:36:52
  in the game. We could have had like Philip
• 1:36:55
  like acting touchy feeling with Talia and Phase getting jealous
• 1:36:58
  about it and trying to get between them, something like
• 1:36:59
  that. I don't know.
• 1:37:00
  I don't know. It's never explored.
• 1:37:03
  And therefore this payoff of Phase stabbing him in the
• 1:37:05
  stomach, it feels like a nothing.
• 1:37:07
  It just, oh God, I don't care. Faze cries.
• 1:37:11
  The OHA guru Batari laughs because Oh yeah, by the way,
• 1:37:14
  she's still there. Yep, cool, doing nothing, just
• 1:37:17
  laughing away. Faze apologises and he's like,
• 1:37:20
  I'm sorry. Sure you are.
• 1:37:22
  Lynn's voice shook. Sure, absolutely.
• 1:37:25
  You have absolutely no motivation at all to kill a guy,
• 1:37:28
  your fiance yesterday, the Greek God to your sedentary geek.
• 1:37:31
  No reason, nothing like that ever crossed your consciousness.
• 1:37:34
  In fact, you're so sure about this being an accident, you can
• 1:37:37
  guarantee this never crossed your subconscious either.
• 1:37:39
  Doesn't like an attempt to explore this potential rivalry
• 1:37:42
  between them, but like, it's too late now.
• 1:37:44
  Why are you doing it now after he's already dead?
• 1:37:46
  I God knows. And also like we don't even know
• 1:37:50
  at this point if he even knew that Philip and Talia used to
• 1:37:54
  date for a We know this could be the first time he's hearing
• 1:37:56
  about this. I don't know.
• 1:37:57
  There's no, no build up, so stupid Cat then says, but
• 1:38:01
  Philip's dying so we, I, let's make it count for something, I
• 1:38:05
  guess. And they decide to use Philip's
• 1:38:09
  dying body because he's not quite dead yet.
• 1:38:11
  He's dying on the floor. They decide to use him for this
• 1:38:13
  ritual sacrifice that they've decided they need to do because
• 1:38:16
  phase was going through decayed pages of books and was like the
• 1:38:20
  four kings, the four sacrifices. Oh, we need to do.
• 1:38:24
  I don't know where he got it from, but apparently it's now
• 1:38:26
  factual and they're using Philip's body.
• 1:38:29
  They need blood, bone, semen and organs.
• 1:38:32
  So, so they basically had to like, you know, masturbate the
• 1:38:36
  dying Phillip and get his semen. That sexual assault that feels
• 1:38:40
  like sexual assault. So Cat says that let's make it
• 1:38:43
  count for something, I guess. And the very next sentence is we
• 1:38:46
  dug a hole at the base of the fourth pillar.
• 1:38:48
  What? What is this fourth pillar?
• 1:38:49
  Where does this even come from? Where are these pillars?
• 1:38:52
  We dug a hole at the base of the fourth pillar and placed
• 1:38:54
  Phillip's viscera into the cradle of shallow loam, 1 coil
• 1:38:58
  at a time. Time Faiz and Lynn fought over
• 1:39:00
  whether we should cut his throat or whether we should measure out
• 1:39:03
  his awful and fill another three holes, just to be sure.
• 1:39:07
  One last act of mercy for the man we've known since we were
• 1:39:09
  all 16. Or have his death matter.
• 1:39:12
  But then the man aside. A long, slow breath, a dying
• 1:39:16
  man's breath spun of silk filaments, and suddenly there
• 1:39:19
  was Talia, propped up against the wall, still garlanded in her
• 1:39:23
  wedding whites. It was exactly like the fairy
• 1:39:26
  tales from what fairy tales? What fairy tale it was exactly
• 1:39:30
  like the fairy tales promised. A little blood, a little bone, a
• 1:39:33
  little semen, and a little bit of organ.
• 1:39:36
  And the manner returned the girl of Fazer's dreams.
• 1:39:39
  She smelled of the earth and summer sunlight, honeysuckle and
• 1:39:42
  fabric softener and skin warmed on a stoop in the sun.
• 1:39:46
  When Faze took Talia in his arms, Philip's heart gave out
• 1:39:49
  one last exhausted pump. I thought he was already dead to
• 1:39:52
  get her back. He died alone while our backs
• 1:39:54
  were turned. Then how do you know?
• 1:39:56
  24 years of being the centre of everyone's attention.
• 1:39:59
  And that's how he went out. Not with a bang or a whimper,
• 1:40:02
  just a sigh in the world going colder and the last light from
• 1:40:05
  the lanterns dimming to nothing, fireflies and blind eyes.
• 1:40:10
  We went home after that. What else are we supposed to do?
• 1:40:13
  And that's where the main book ends.
• 1:40:14
  That is it. There is an epilogue.
• 1:40:15
  I'll talk about it in a minute. But like, it's so annoying that
• 1:40:19
  Philip gets absolutely no character development.
• 1:40:21
  He doesn't have the character arc.
• 1:40:23
  He's just there being rich and hot, and then he dies being rich
• 1:40:27
  and hot, stabbed by Faze, and that's it.
• 1:40:29
  Why am I supposed to care? There's an epilogue.
• 1:40:32
  Like I say, Catlin and Faze go to memorial for Philippine
• 1:40:35
  Canada. Talia is apparently in hospital
• 1:40:38
  nursing her nightmares. It turns out after they left,
• 1:40:41
  they all set the house on fire and they tried to claim that
• 1:40:44
  Philip died in the fire. Everyone believes them and they
• 1:40:47
  just got away with murder. Lovely Cat goes back to uni
• 1:40:50
  again. How old are these people?
• 1:40:52
  OK, and then the very last paragraph of the book is.
• 1:40:55
  Lately I've begun to wonder if the OHA guru Batari followed us
• 1:40:58
  from the Manor. I see her sometimes, or at least
• 1:41:01
  I think I do, reflected in the windows, her face as Wayne as
• 1:41:05
  mine. But it is always my reflection,
• 1:41:07
  the eyes smudged of definition, the mouth blotted in shadow so
• 1:41:11
  it looks like there's nothing but blackened teeth.
• 1:41:13
  And that's it. That's where the book ends.
• 1:41:15
  I don't understand why the spirit that was supposedly tied
• 1:41:19
  to the house waiting for her husband like would follow you.
• 1:41:23
  I thought she was tied to the house.
• 1:41:24
  I thought she was there waiting for him so why would she follow
• 1:41:27
  you? I thought like if she took Talia
• 1:41:30
  and gave her back when she got Philip then wouldn't Philip
• 1:41:32
  fulfil that need and she wouldn't need to fall?
• 1:41:34
  I it doesn't make it. The story makes no sense and
• 1:41:37
  none of this makes any sense. I don't get it.
• 1:41:39
  Or maybe it's trying to imply that like this was all in Cat's
• 1:41:43
  head and because she's still not mentally well it's following
• 1:41:45
  them now and that like they all just got paranoid and Faze
• 1:41:48
  killed Philip for no reason. But then where was Talia the
• 1:41:52
  whole time? I don't know.
• 1:41:53
  I don't know. This is so stupid I hate it.
• 1:41:56
  The setting, the use of the Oguru Batari, the other little
• 1:41:59
  demons and spirits, it could have all been so damn good.
• 1:42:03
  The house, the back story, that could have been amazing.
• 1:42:06
  Tying in all the Japanese myths and folklore and that could have
• 1:42:09
  been incredible. It could have been so damn
• 1:42:12
  creepy and well thought out and tying those old myths to like
• 1:42:17
  modern day stories and relationships could have been so
• 1:42:20
  good. But as it stands all we got was
• 1:42:23
  a crappy story about a toxic friend group who kept being
• 1:42:26
  toxic until one of them killed another and then they covered up
• 1:42:29
  the murder. The spirits and creepy stuff in
• 1:42:31
  the end had like no real impact, not even in terms of like we
• 1:42:35
  could say it's like a mental health story and it was their
• 1:42:37
  paranoia. And because it wasn't really, it
• 1:42:39
  was what they did. Like even then it doesn't stand
• 1:42:42
  up as a good story. What was the point of this all?
• 1:42:45
  It was such a waste of potential.
• 1:42:48
  Here's how I would fix the book if this was me.
• 1:42:50
  First, let's address Kat's mental health issues.
• 1:42:53
  Maybe instead of just generic depression and a suicide
• 1:42:56
  attempt, we turn her into a proper unreliable narrator,
• 1:42:58
  right? Maybe she was having some kind
• 1:43:00
  of hallucination or she was able to tell what was reality and
• 1:43:03
  what wasn't. Maybe she had some kind of like
• 1:43:06
  psychosis or something going on. She's now on medication and she
• 1:43:09
  thinks she's functioning well again, but when all the creepy
• 1:43:12
  stuff starts happening in the house, she doesn't know if it's
• 1:43:14
  real or in her head. So she doesn't know if she can
• 1:43:16
  trust herself and she doesn't want to tell the others in case
• 1:43:19
  like they think she's crazy again.
• 1:43:21
  So we get her doubting herself and not knowing what's real and
• 1:43:23
  what isn't. And as the story goes on and
• 1:43:25
  progresses, she still doesn't know what's real.
• 1:43:27
  So we don't know what's real and we get her being a proper
• 1:43:29
  unreliable narrator. Secondly, I want to know more
• 1:43:32
  about the character relationships and who each one
• 1:43:34
  is as an individual. Tell me their values.
• 1:43:36
  Tell me what drives them. Show that they actually do like
• 1:43:39
  each other and care about each other and like, especially when
• 1:43:42
  they're in peril, show those moments of friendship.
• 1:43:45
  Show those bonds. Show those like, you know,
• 1:43:47
  instead of just like we ate and got drunk together, Show like
• 1:43:49
  them actually having a heart to heart.
• 1:43:51
  Show them actually being kind to each other.
• 1:43:53
  Show them supporting each other. And horror games like Until Dawn
• 1:43:57
  do this really well because it has these complex characters who
• 1:44:00
  aren't all good or bad, but you can tell they do care about each
• 1:44:03
  other and that their relationships mean something and
• 1:44:05
  that there's a rich back story there.
• 1:44:07
  So even when things are complicated, you get really
• 1:44:09
  invested in the characters and what happens to them and you
• 1:44:11
  want to save them. I mentioned earlier, but like a
• 1:44:13
  really good way to show this would have been in the 100
• 1:44:15
  candles game. The stories each of those
• 1:44:18
  characters chose could tell us about who they are, what they
• 1:44:20
  valued, what they thought of each other.
• 1:44:22
  And it would be a great way for the audience to infer a lot
• 1:44:25
  about the characters and like come up with their own theories
• 1:44:28
  about oh, they chose the story for this reason.
• 1:44:29
  The stories don't shows this about their psyche and so on.
• 1:44:32
  Each of the characters had really different cultural
• 1:44:34
  backgrounds. So it's mentioned Philip was
• 1:44:36
  Canadian, Lin was Chinese, Phase was half Japanese.
• 1:44:40
  I'm not sure what the other half of his family was.
• 1:44:43
  Talia was from somewhere else. And again, I think it would have
• 1:44:45
  been really cool if they'd brought in cultural elements
• 1:44:48
  into their ghost stories as well.
• 1:44:49
  Because we could have got like some really cool interesting,
• 1:44:51
  like mythology and folklore and like, you know, stuff like tying
• 1:44:55
  in there. It would have been really,
• 1:44:56
  really damn cool. Thirdly, I wish the actual back
• 1:44:59
  story of the house and the use of the Ohaguru Batari had been
• 1:45:03
  better incorporated because as it stands honestly that could
• 1:45:06
  have been any ghost or any monster in any location and the
• 1:45:09
  outcome would have been exactly the same.
• 1:45:11
  I wish they'd utilised this amazing setting and back story a
• 1:45:16
  lot more like. So for example, if the haunting
• 1:45:18
  started because the bride was waiting for her husband to
• 1:45:20
  arrive who died on the day of their wedding, then why did she
• 1:45:23
  kidnap Talia or not Faze or possess Talia or not Faze?
• 1:45:26
  Surely it would have made sense for her to steal a groom for
• 1:45:29
  herself, no? Or maybe she possessed Talia
• 1:45:31
  because she's the bride and so she wanted to hide as Talia
• 1:45:33
  until the wedding and then she was discovered too early so it
• 1:45:36
  got like out of hand or something.
• 1:45:37
  Like I don't. I just, I wish they'd made it
• 1:45:40
  more relevant to the story and the outcome and how everything
• 1:45:43
  was settled and so on. Since you had like such an
• 1:45:46
  incestuous friendship group, maybe you could have had that
• 1:45:50
  playing into it all a little bit more.
• 1:45:51
  I don't know, Like, like if Talia wanted to get phase back,
• 1:45:54
  then she could be like, OK, we need to sacrifice a woman to
• 1:45:56
  keep the bride company as the story suggests.
• 1:45:58
  So come on Kat, we're going to kill you because I want my
• 1:46:01
  future husband back. Something like that.
• 1:46:03
  And then Kat's considering it because of her history's phase
• 1:46:05
  and she's like, well, he is my best friend.
• 1:46:07
  We've shown this best friendship in the story.
• 1:46:09
  That would be good. So of course I'm going to want
• 1:46:12
  to sacrifice myself for him. Plus, you know, I've just been
• 1:46:15
  suicidal or depressed or whatever.
• 1:46:16
  So like, maybe I'm feeling like I don't have much to live for.
• 1:46:19
  So yeah, I'll factors, I'll sacrifice myself for phase, but
• 1:46:21
  at the same time she's like, Oh no, but actually like, why does
• 1:46:24
  Talia get to get to have the happy ending with him?
• 1:46:26
  And I don't like, maybe I should have had that with her.
• 1:46:29
  Like, that could have all tied into it.
• 1:46:30
  That could have been really damn cool.
• 1:46:31
  You know, maybe she's still jealous of Talia and she's like,
• 1:46:34
  well, you don't even want phase. You actually want to be with
• 1:46:37
  Phillips. You've got that going on.
• 1:46:38
  I'm the one who really loves Phase, even if it's just as a
• 1:46:41
  best friend now. So you should sacrifice yourself
• 1:46:43
  for him or something like that. I don't know.
• 1:46:45
  As it stands, I feel like Lynn was an absolutely nothing
• 1:46:48
  character in this. He had no impact on the story.
• 1:46:51
  I don't understand why he was there.
• 1:46:53
  Nothing. He did have any consequence.
• 1:46:55
  He did nothing. You could Take Me Out the story
• 1:46:57
  and it would be exactly the same.
• 1:46:59
  So if I was improving this book, I would actually give him a
• 1:47:01
  role. Maybe if you want to do the
• 1:47:03
  whole meta narrative thing, he's the friend who's a writer or a
• 1:47:07
  reader. He's the one who's coming in
• 1:47:08
  with all the meta stuff because, you know, he is really into
• 1:47:11
  horror and he starts to like see it and he's like, here's the
• 1:47:13
  tropes and blah, blah, blah. Or just give him something to
• 1:47:16
  do. Same with the creepy demon
• 1:47:18
  paintings on the wall coming to life, right?
• 1:47:19
  I love that idea. I found the descriptions creepy.
• 1:47:22
  I think that imagery was creepy. I love that.
• 1:47:24
  Why didn't they actually do anything?
• 1:47:26
  Why did they never pose a threat?
• 1:47:28
  Why did they never interact with the people?
• 1:47:30
  Why weren't they used in the story at all?
• 1:47:31
  They were just there and then they were never mentioned again.
• 1:47:33
  They were forgotten about. And again, you could take these
• 1:47:36
  moving demons out and it would be the exact same book, just
• 1:47:39
  like you could replace the demon with any kind of monster or
• 1:47:42
  ghost or anything and it would be the exact same book.
• 1:47:45
  And that's a problem. Like you literally could have
• 1:47:47
  had these people in like, like like a house like this, OK.
• 1:47:50
  You could have had five people in a Victorian house in
• 1:47:52
  Yorkshire where no one had died and it has no back history.
• 1:47:55
  And it's blah, blah blah. They all get together the night
• 1:47:57
  before a wedding. And then Faze finds out Philip
• 1:47:59
  had a thing for Talia. Talia runs off because she's all
• 1:48:02
  sad. Faze and Philip argue, Faze
• 1:48:04
  stabs Philip, they all cover up, bam, same book done without any
• 1:48:08
  of the supernatural elements. It would have been exactly the
• 1:48:11
  same. The exact same things would have
• 1:48:12
  happened and it would be just as not creepy.
• 1:48:14
  There is a lot more I can say about this book.
• 1:48:16
  It is a book with a lot of potential, but it was just a let
• 1:48:19
  down for me and I find that really, really sad.
• 1:48:21
  I wanted so much more from it and I think that's why I'm so
• 1:48:24
  frustrated like I said earlier, because this is a book that
• 1:48:26
  could have been amazing and it just wasn't.
• 1:48:30
  I thought I would end this video by looking quickly a few reviews
• 1:48:32
  that other people have left and seeing what other people
• 1:48:34
  thought, the positives and the negatives.
• 1:48:36
  This was a two star review. That said the prose was
• 1:48:38
  burdensome to read and I usually like that sort of thing, but
• 1:48:41
  with this I had to wade through it for some reason.
• 1:48:43
  The metaphors and imagery were unusual and I would literally
• 1:48:45
  have to stop and think about how it made any sense.
• 1:48:48
  Very purpley but also a little poetic which I do struggle with.
• 1:48:52
  This wasn't person's full review but I definitely agree with a
• 1:48:54
  lot of what they said but it's interesting because not everyone
• 1:48:56
  felt the same. This person gave it four stars
• 1:48:59
  and said most of this rating is frankly for the prose.
• 1:49:01
  The book takes its prose from gothic horror and the amount of
• 1:49:04
  disturbing phrasing added to the atmosphere in a terrifying way.
• 1:49:07
  It's not character developed or character heavy in any way.
• 1:49:10
  Like most gothic horror. The main character is the
• 1:49:12
  setting. It's disturbing and also
• 1:49:14
  horrifying. Are the characters fully fleshed
• 1:49:16
  out? No, but they don't really need
• 1:49:18
  to be for this. The book does what it wanted to
• 1:49:20
  do and it does it very well. And I understand where this
• 1:49:23
  person's coming from. And as always, they're
• 1:49:25
  completely entitled to their own opinion.
• 1:49:26
  That's absolutely fine. But just personally I disagree.
• 1:49:29
  I wish the house had been more of a character, you know, So
• 1:49:32
  like, for example, in Riley Sager's Only one left or pose
• 1:49:37
  the Fall of the House of Usher and or even T Kingfishers, what
• 1:49:41
  moves the dead. Yeah, the houses in those books
• 1:49:43
  are very much characters. They are very much part of the
• 1:49:45
  story. Those books would be very
• 1:49:47
  different in very different settings.
• 1:49:48
  Like in the Only One Left, you have the whole house being on
• 1:49:51
  this Cliff edge and tilted and feeling like it could fall at
• 1:49:54
  any moment. And at the end of the book it
• 1:49:56
  does. And that's like a whole like
• 1:49:58
  metaphor and analogy for, I guess, the lies and storytelling
• 1:50:02
  of the characters who live in the house.
• 1:50:04
  And you feel very off kilter and off balance while you're in
• 1:50:06
  there because you don't like the house is so tilted and you don't
• 1:50:09
  quite know like, where you're standing and what's safe and
• 1:50:13
  what isn't. So it makes sense in those books
• 1:50:15
  that the house is a character, House of leaves, the house is a
• 1:50:18
  character. Even in episode 13, to some
• 1:50:20
  extent, the house is a character.
• 1:50:21
  But in this, the mansion is just a setting that is underutilised
• 1:50:25
  and not really explored enough. It's there, we get some
• 1:50:29
  descriptions that should be creepy, but it's not creepy.
• 1:50:32
  There's no tension, there's no nothing.
• 1:50:34
  And I I also disagree with this review that the characters don't
• 1:50:37
  need to be fleshed out more. I think for me to enjoy this
• 1:50:39
  more, I either need the characters to be fleshed out or
• 1:50:43
  for the house itself to play a bigger role.
• 1:50:45
  But as it stands, the book did neither, and it just left me
• 1:50:47
  wanting more. As for the prose being inspired
• 1:50:49
  by gothic literature, I'd agree that this is clearly what the
• 1:50:52
  author's going for, but as I said over and over, it just
• 1:50:55
  didn't work for me because it was too out of place with the
• 1:50:58
  basic sweary, cheesy modern dialogue, and the bits which
• 1:51:02
  could have been done often ended up being overwritten for my
• 1:51:05
  tastes. I felt like there were some good
• 1:51:07
  ideas in there, and like I say, there are a few descriptions I
• 1:51:09
  really did like and really did find creepy, but overall I think
• 1:51:12
  it needs a lot of editing to be enjoyable by a lot of people.
• 1:51:16
  I think where it fails being like gothic horror literature is
• 1:51:21
  that it wants to be lyrical, but it isn't.
• 1:51:23
  It doesn't have that rhythm, that flow.
• 1:51:26
  It doesn't have that imagery that is beautiful and vivid.
• 1:51:29
  Also, the thing about like gothic literature, whether it's
• 1:51:32
  whether it's Poe or whether it's something like Frankenstein, is
• 1:51:35
  that the descriptions are often detailed and and lyrical and
• 1:51:39
  full of this beautiful, vivid imagery.
• 1:51:41
  But it's never more complex than it needs to be.
• 1:51:43
  And I feel like in this, it's complex for the sake of
• 1:51:45
  complexity and I just find it a little off putting.
• 1:51:48
  Another reviewer said two stars, unfortunately not as epic as the
• 1:51:51
  cover. Basically just a friend reunion
• 1:51:53
  where every single person is toxic, but it's in a haunted
• 1:51:55
  house. I think that's pretty spot on.
• 1:51:57
  And this person said again, two stars.
• 1:51:59
  Great premise, poor execution. The ending was slightly cheesy
• 1:52:02
  too. Agreed, and I also think the
• 1:52:04
  ending was incredibly rushed, which didn't really work for me.
• 1:52:07
  Another person said the writing style is so choppy and
• 1:52:09
  unnecessarily flowery it's impossible to read without
• 1:52:12
  getting distracted. At times the use of adjectives
• 1:52:14
  is so redundant it becomes laughable despite its original
• 1:52:17
  intent. Why do I need to read 3 or 4
• 1:52:19
  synonyms one after the other when they mean the exact same
• 1:52:23
  thing? I got the concept, thank you
• 1:52:25
  very much. The characters ruined everything
• 1:52:27
  else. I dare you not to hate every
• 1:52:29
  single one of them from page 4. They're petty jealous.
• 1:52:31
  Arguing took such a big part of this novella, there wasn't much
• 1:52:34
  space left for the horror. I came for the dead bride and
• 1:52:37
  Japanese demons, not these ridiculous squirrels about who
• 1:52:40
  slept with whom. I completely agree 100%.
• 1:52:44
  This person however, gave it a four-star review and said I
• 1:52:46
  really love the incorporation of so much Japanese language and
• 1:52:49
  culture in this story. The inclusion of mythological
• 1:52:51
  Japanese creatures really added to the story and I agree that I
• 1:52:54
  loved those elements, but I didn't feel they were actually
• 1:52:57
  incorporated in the story. It's like they were kind of
• 1:52:59
  stuck on almost like an afterthought.
• 1:53:02
  And I wish it had been incorporated more.
• 1:53:05
  I wish we'd have more of those elements.
• 1:53:07
  Give me more Japanese creatures and mythology and folklore and
• 1:53:10
  culture like I want. I want more of that, You know,
• 1:53:14
  that's, that's what I went into this book wanting and I just
• 1:53:18
  felt like it under delivered. Oh, OK.
• 1:53:20
  Anyway, this is where I'm going to end the video because I have
• 1:53:22
  been ranting so much and I'm so sorry.
• 1:53:24
  I have been very like, I've been way more emotional in this
• 1:53:27
  review than I thought. It's just, again, nothing annoys
• 1:53:29
  me more than wasted potential. So I've had a lot of big
• 1:53:31
  feelings about this and but I would love to hear your thoughts
• 1:53:34
  on this book down in the comments.
• 1:53:35
  If you loved it, if you hated it, let me know.
• 1:53:37
  If you disagree with me, let me know as well.
• 1:53:39
  That's absolutely fine. Otherwise, please let me know
• 1:53:41
  what are the horror books you love or hate or you would
• 1:53:43
  recommend to me either to read for fun or to make bad book
• 1:53:46
  reviews about. I can do either.
• 1:53:48
  I just love a good horror book. And if you do want to see what
• 1:53:50
  I've been reading recently, you can follow me over on Goodreads
• 1:53:52
  because I've been reading quite a bit of horror recently, quite
• 1:53:55
  a few thrillers. I've been reading loads.
• 1:53:56
  It's been really great. Actually, it's been a really
• 1:53:59
  good reading year so far. I am making little reading wrap
• 1:54:03
  UPS over on my second channel, but I'm a little bit behind with
• 1:54:06
  posting them at the minute, but I'm slowly getting on top of it.
• 1:54:09
  But yeah, if you want, you can follow me over there or
• 1:54:11
  occasionally I will post about little books and stuff that I'm
• 1:54:14
  reading over on Instagram so you can follow me there as well at
• 1:54:17
  Rachel Oates with Air 0 instead of an O.
• 1:54:19
  Thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you guys so much.
• 1:54:22
  Thank you so much for your time, for your attention.
• 1:54:24
  If you'd like to help support me and my channel, I do have a
• 1:54:26
  Patreon where you can join for as little as like a dollar a
• 1:54:30
  month or a pound a month or something like that.
• 1:54:31
  And then at the higher tiers you can get sent out exclusive
• 1:54:34
  stickers and prints and cool stuff like that.
• 1:54:36
  Go have a look at that if you want, but absolutely no
• 1:54:38
  pressure. But for now, thank you for
• 1:54:40
  watching. I appreciate you guys, you are
• 1:54:41
  wonderful. Have a great rest of your day.
• 1:54:44
  I'll see you again soon.