I went into this looking for office/corporate horror. I suppose I got that, to a certain extent, but this turned out to be a much more artsy and experimental book than I had hoped for.

The book's gimmick is that it's written/produced using actual office stamps. As a result, each page usually only has about 1-4 short lines of text.

At the beginning, readers are told that this is being written by an office worker at the subsidiary, using only the stamps found around the office. On June 5, 2008, workers are told that there will be a power supply interruption between 8:30 AM and 8:00 PM and that they are to remain at their workstations. The doors are locked, and the phone lines are down. The power outage goes on for a good deal longer than planned, but things at the subsidiary become hellish for the women in only 24 hours, if I interpreted things correctly.

All characters were disabled in some way and were only referred to by their disabilities: the blind girl, the mute girl, the lame man, the one-eyed man, and the one-armed man. The narrator never spoke of himself in the third person, but he'd have been "the colorblind man." I got the impression that the narrator was forced to work for the subsidiary after being diagnosed with colorblindness, but the book's setup forced readers to do a lot of interpretation, so I could be wrong. For example, I disagree with those reviewers who thought that the dogs mentioned in the text were a literal pack of wild dogs running around in the building - I think it was a metaphor for the animalistic behavior of the workers.

While reading this, I was reminded of issue #6 of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, "24 Hours," in which customers and employees in a diner become increasingly animalistic and brutal over the course of 24 hours. However, I felt that Gaiman did it better. Things became nasty pretty quickly in both stories, but in Gaiman's there was a solid reason for it. In The Subsidiary, the reason seemed to be "it's dark and people are scared," but that didn't work for me. In only 24 hours, the narrator was telling the deaf girl to pay for the candle he gave her with sex. After three days, the lame man captured a boy who, from the sounds of things, he periodically raped. (I assumed all instances of "girl" actually meant "woman," since the deaf girl was another employee, but the one instance of "boy" seemed to indicate an underage character, in which case the lame man was a pedophile.)

There were no mentions of any of the practicalities of trying to survive in a building where the power had been cut and the doors locked so that no one could leave - nothing about food, water, restrooms, etc. Instead, the text's entire focus was on the things the characters did to each other, which culminated in one character's death. I'm not sure what Celedón was aiming for, but it didn't work for me on any level.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

TRIGGER WARNINGS ALERT Stay away from this one if you prefer safe reads. Don't read my review if the word "rape" makes you unconfortable, because I use it a lot, because this book has a lot of that. My review contains spoilers so beware.


I don't recommend this if you feel uncomfortable reading about:

Pedophilia Nicasius is only 13 and he's used as a sex slave. The worst is that he is supposed to be willing to be forever a sex slave because the king, his master, gets tired of children when they grow up and Nicasious is eagerly searching for a new master. 

Rape and Sexual violence Damianos the Main character is entered in a slave contest where the loser gets raped. He gets drugged by Laurent "his love interest" so that he'll get weakened and lose the contest and Laurent can watch when Damianos gets raped...publicily!! In this book the court takes rape as a sport. Later Damiano's forced to receive oral sex from another slave to the enjoyment of Laurent. I repeat, Laurent is the "love interest". 

No romance  by the end of the book there's not even a kiss

Stockholm Syndrome Erasmus, A sexual slave, gets raped all the time but he supposedly enjoys being a sex pet and is all grateful when he gets to serve another master because said master treats sex-slaves "better". Sorry but in what sick world a sex-slave enjoys being a slave?How is that romantic or sexy? 

Extreme violence  Laurent, the MC "love interest", is a Prince and he gives orders to whip Damianos. This is vividly described and Damianos spends some time recovering from his injuries. How is that romantic? 

Double standards So Christian Grey gets the sh*t here in GR although he NEVER raped ANA, (although, to be honest he pushed her consent, but NEVER raped her) yet Laurent gets nothing but praise??? So dubious consent, sexual violence, and rape are okay when the characters are male? NO JUST NO!! That's not feminist at all, that's not fair. If the main character had been Princess Damiana everyone and their dog would be screaming murder. "Oh the abusive relationship in romance!" But because the victim is a male then it's okay? How is that fair? 

Unsafe reads This is supposedly a slow-burn-romance between two males, but there's a lot of cheating and disloyalty. [ In the sequel of this rape -fest Laurent who is Damianos owner and master, "lends" Damianos to a group of women warriors so that they can use him for reproductive purposes. Laurent's not even slightly jealous! He laughs with joy when Damianos returns to their tent worn-out from having sex with a lot of women in just one night. Damianos is attracted to Laurent but he is more attracted to women than to males. So we the readers don't get a little bit of cute jealousy and the couple doesn't kiss until way into the second book. 

I'm not the most articulated, coherent reviewer, so I invite you to read these reviews if you want more info on the problematic issues of this book.

Cait's review
Lainey's review

This book makes me angry. The writing is exquisite and clever, but it's the most disgusting portrayal of an M/M relationship. Contrary to what this book portrays, Homosexual Men have healthy, committed relationships . This is not the best book to portray diverse couples, because, as it is, a lot of people think wrongly that homosexuality and bisexuality are against nature and that Bisexuals and Homosexual aren't capable of loving, committed relationships. This book only re-inforces the idea of sexually "degenerated" characters. In real life gay people aren't like this. Not at all.

I gave two stars to the sequel because the graphic rapes aren't present. It's cleverly written and it's addictive, but it's still a harsh read because poor Nicaise. It's not fair what happened to him.

Final note: There are reviewers here in GR who praise this book to no end, and yet get all angry and write rants about romances like Twilight, Hopeless, FSOG, Beautiful disaster and other romance books of the romance genre. At time it feels like some of those reviewers are trying to make the people who enjoy, for example, FSOG bad with themselves because "they are supporting a book that portrays an abusive relationship". Yet they go and praise this very abusive book. 

This isn't about me having a problem with the people who like this book. I think it's okay if people enjoy this kind of books because

* Everyone has different tastes and opinions and all opinions are equally valid. You enjoy this book? That's fine.
* WE ALL ARE SMART! WE ALL KNOW HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE REALITY FROM BOOKS. We all know that In real life rape is wrong. The people who love this book to death aren't supporters of rape, this is just a book. But just like the the captive prince fanbase knows the difference between reality and books, the FSOG fanbase knows better than go and get themselves in abusive relationships because of a book.

My problem is when the double standard comes:Contrary to popular GR belief the people who enjoy books that portray abusive M/F relationships are as smart as the people who enjoys Captive prince. Just saying. 

So anyone who enjoys FSOG or any other bad-reviewed romance, but never says it aloud for fear of how their opinion will make them look in a site like GR where people trash "abusive relationship" books, should say it aloud. Most of FSOG bashers are top reviewers who praise this rape-fest so there's nothing wrong with liking FSOG or any other poorly-reviewed romance. 

If you like me feel unconfortable reading certain topics, ignore most of the 5 star reviews, very few of them mention the problematic issues of this book and most lack trigger warnings. Read some 3 stars reviews and some triggers warnings before deciding if this book is for you or not

WARNINGS WARNINGS 
I don't recommend this book if you feel uncomfortable with books that depict graphically

* Pedophilia/rape [ A 9 year old girl forced to marry and later bear a child to a grown man (hide spoiler)]

* Incest/child abuse [ The Buendia family members are constantly falling in love with close cousins, half brothers, nephews. An older woman Amarantha makes out with her underage nephew (hide spoiler)]
* Non sensical Violence [ including the cruel death of a newborn, and that's the ending scene. This book leaves you feeling disturbed (hide spoiler)]
*Prostitution
* Cheating
* Bestiality
* Women treated as objects sometimes by their own parents





If you like me grew up reading marvelous books like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Twilight, The Hunger games, which are all extremely strong in terms of characterization and character development and which are at times trashed by the same critics that praised this piece of cr%p, I doubt you'll enjoy this book because:

* No plot, everything is a messy mix of twisted, and I mean TWISTED, disturbing, cringe-inducing family anecdotes
*No character development. 
* Poor character presentation. Other than I know that Amarantha is somehow fierce it's difficult to describe the rest of the characters personalities. What are their goals? What do they want? What do they fear? Who are they? What are their motivations?
* Poor worldbuilding. Am I supposed to know how Macondo, the setting of this book looks like? All I know is that Macondo founders were trying to reach the sea and they couldn't and were tired of travelling so I know there's no sea close to this town. The rules of this world don't seem to follow a logic, either. It's like Garcia Marques just smoke weed and added whatever he saw when he was under the effects of the weed to add magical elements here and there. I rarely notice worldbuilding issues in my reads because I have a strong imagination. Even books that don't describe the rules of their worlds or the setting properly don't turn me off, but since this book is universally praised as a "master piece" I was expecting more. 
* No coherent timeline, Little to No dialogue
* Author breaking the rule of show don't tell 98% of the book




I should have tried to convince my professor to change this assigment. I should've told him that this kind of topics are potential PTSD triggers for me (which is 100% true, although usually books don't activate triggers for me, certain kind of music and smells are triggering for me) or that they are against my religious beliefs (that'd been a lie, but I wish I had lied) Maybe it wouldn't have worked and still I'd been stuck to read this horrible book, but these professors should be more responsible when assigining this kind of disturbing readings and forcing people to read them taking away our sacred right of DNF a book we don't enjoy .

I'm aware that the author won a Nobel Prize, but it seems to me that it was more like the academy thought it'd be rebellious and edgy to give an award to this author leaving other more talented authors out, therefore steering controversy. Sort of like they did when they gaveBob Dylan the Nobel Prize even if he's a songwriter and poet more than a book writer.

I don't even know who is supposed to enjoy this book. I think that some Hispanic readers might find something good in this book because it seems to me that the author at times was talking about Colombian/Hispanic political issues in a metaphoric way, but honestly there wasn't enough of that.

Also, the opening line of this book is supposedly matter of study in English literature courses around the world 


'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.'


I can see why some readers might find that intriguing and get hooked from there, but I read a lot of books with great opening lines/paragraphs in commercial literature. Angefall by Susan EE, Divergent by Veronica Roth, Maze Runner by James Dashner have strong opening lines that get you hooked. I think every reader gets hooked by different opening lines, so why critics and scholars think this opening line is better than any is beyond me. However, I'll say that the ending scene was strong and extremely disturbing. It's a scene that will make you feel haunted and in search of a happy reading because [ A newborn is eaten by ants. You're supposed to imagine the ants carrying only the carcass of what was moments before a lovely baby ... who was born with a pigtail O_O (hide spoiler)]

I'm only writing this because I need to organize my ideas for my essay. I doubt that writing my honest opinion about this trash will earn me a good mark, so I'm trying to find an angle to write about. Maybe I can write about the role of women in Garcia's books. The other Garcia's book I read was Chronicle of a foretold death which was thankfully short and somehow realistic, but still 100% misogynist. An oudated view of women is common in this author's writings.
My recommendations if you are forced to read this author:

* Write notes for each time a new Buendia appears. There are at least a dozen characters sharing almost the exact name and that is confusing
* Don't expect character development, don't expect world building
* Don't expect brilliant dialogue, although you can expect beautiful monologues
* Expect a lot of info-dumping and exposition
* Expect a lot of magical elements, but not the kind of magic that makes you want to live in this world.
* Expect a lot of misogynism It's like the author comes from ancient times or the Taliban and his views on women are very outdated. As a demi-feminist some scenes were hard to stomach.
* Keep an enjoyable read at hand because sometimes you're tired of this world and you want to get out of it by reading something good.

Long story short, this book is way Overrated. Overrated doesn't cover it. I think the author, may he rest in peace, might have written it under the effects of the weed.




Best reviews I found on GR:
Martine's

Adam's

How far would you go for revenge?

Synopsis:

When a six-year-old girl is abused and left for dead by a pedophile known only as the “Rabbit Man” due to the claw marks left on her body, police follow every lead but reach only dead ends.

Hungry for justice, her grieving father abandons wife and child on a harrowing journey deep undercover into Miami’s sex offender colony under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. His purpose is simple: to find the “Rabbit Man” among them, and put him in the ground.

Months later, with no one to trust and the pedophiles he lives among growing suspicious of his actions, he learns nothing is simple where the monsters live.

 

WHERE THE MONSTERS LIVE is NOT an extreme horror story, but I still want you to have a little ‘heads up’ before you start reading.

The story is not super graphic in an icky way, but it's emotionally graphic. WTML will sucker punch you right in the feels. It's a disturbing story, and the 'uncomfort' level rises drastically if you have a child of your own.
I didn’t notice just HOW 'emotionally graphic' it was until The Dark Defender woke up to ask me what was wrong, and I had tears streaming down my cheeks.

At one point I thought I knew exactly how this story was going to end (we’ll talk about that once you finish reading). That wouldn’t have made it a suck story – but I am happy that WTML didn’t go for the ‘ironic twist’, and I’m very satisfied with how it’s wrapped up – there could be a little wiggle room JIC case the story isn’t done with us yet.

Full review posted HERE - come join in on the discussion of WTML!