skybridge

verifiedfixed.net · @verifiedfixed.net@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Luminous Dead 7/10

As highly as this came recommended to me and as much as I wanted to love this, about 2/3rds of the way through I really started to struggle with this one. This book is essentially for caving sickos (said affectionately) with a sprinkling of psychological thriller, toxic yuri, and a small dash of Tremors. Unfortunately, I found all of these elements outside of the caving very lacking, and I'm just not that into caving. I started struggling where I did because the descriptions of the caves and how they turn stopped making much sense to me (even with the included maps), especially as the MC begins doing a lot of backtracking, and the twists of the psych thriller part did not feel very well enmeshed into the rest of the narrative or compelling, nor did they have any kind of gratifying explanation in the end, they Just Happened and you get to kind of assume if it was a Biology thing or Trauma or Magic or whatever. This is of course not to say that these things always need an explanation, but without a grand reveal they just felt even less compelling than the actual body horror that was going on. All in all, good read but enjoyed it more in theory than in practice.

#book

Published 2026-07-22 12:22 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere