R. O. Kwon

[b:The Incendiaries|36679056|The Incendiaries|R.O. Kwon|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1512834150s/36679056.jpg|55674919] is filled with good writing, with metaphors and sentences that sing on just about every page, perhaps even getting in the way of the story. Details (food, alcohol, clothing, decor, cell phones) are stunning. The key characters are three, two men and a young Korean American woman attending a posh East Coast college. One of the men, John Leal, becomes seduced by religion and a pro-life cult out of North Korea, eventually ensnaring Phoebe in Jejah with their increasingly violent plans for domestic terrorism. Most of the book is told by the left-behind lover Will who commits an unforgivable transgression against Phoebe spurring her departure. Odd things pop up, like a long list of names of the infant dead noted in a graveyard. As Crystal Paul writes in the Seattle Times: She does not let her characters off the hook for their detestable behaviors, but she does not villainize them beyond human recognition either. They blow up buildings, manipulate and hurt people, sometimes navel-gaze to an eye-rolling degree. They are troubled and troubling characters and they are precisely as comprehensible and infuriating as they should be.Not an easy read, it kept my interest as do most books of masterful writing.
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/the-incendiaries-is-beautiful-a...… (more)

So much I didn't like about the book--the preciousness toward Phoebe, her piano playing (and many other elements) as a device more than anything else, a story set at college with almost no academics, the writing getting a little self-conscious at times. BUT sometimes the language was just beautiful, and the central questions about faith are dealt with in a way I have rarely seen. I like the ambiguity of what Leal is doing and how--that Will almost gets sucked in but doesn't while Phoebe does. I appreciate the level of difficulty Kwon goes for here, as well as her portrayal of multiple Korean Americans.… (more)

Tedious. Almost all of the characters in this anthology are miserable or unlikable, which really only serves to give kink a bad name.

Suffers from the same self-aggrandising introspective misery-porn levels of wank that a lot of ‘erotic literature’ does. But with the added bonus of outright rape scenes (no, not ‘consensual non consent’ or ‘dubious consent’ we’re talking grimdark torture and rape followed by crying and trauma. Happy kink anthology!)

You’ll get more thoughtful kink on AO3 for free. It’s almost like most of the authors took this as a challenge to misrepresent the subject and write a world where most people don’t enjoy kink, or may even be rapists if they do. Wouldn’t recommend this to a single person in the scene. Or anyone else for that matter.… (more)