english review only

Summary: Every time she bleeds a murderer is born. Experience the horror of Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne. The rule is simple: don't bleed.

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

My review: Sweet Baby Jesus!!!

I had this book forever on my shelves, it came with my one and only book box I got years ago. I decided to pick this up cause I wanted to read a smaller book that wasn't a comic book.

This book. It's a short one but IT'S AN INTENSE PACKAGE.

I had so many feeling, about the characters, about the whole story. ABOUT EVERYTHING.

I truly want to check out more books by Tade Thompson, cause I truly love his writing and how his mind works to write incredible stories like that, that keep me up all night.

Reading-wise, 2020 has been a blast so far. The upside of being sick in bed is that it gives a pretty good excuses for reading the books one might have accidentally bought in an end of year TOR sale. The Murders of Molly Southbourne was indeed one of those.

I didn't know anything about it going in, except that I had seen it passing my feed a lot some time ago. And I think it was for the better. I was definitely not expecting this kind of strange, original tale and coming-of-age of Molly and her 'hemophilia'. I'm still a bit surprised it was possible to put so much story in so short a novel.

The only downside for me was some thing, rather important for the worldbuilding and as far as I can tell not so very important for the overall story, where quite randomly dropped on the reader and never really explained well. I hope the sequel will take care of that. But don't let that stop you from reading this.

Kaaro is a resident of Rosewater, a community that grew up around an alien biodome that emerged in Nigeria in 2055. Unlike most of the residents he possesses certain psychic abilities, including the ability to read people, locate things, and enter the "xenosphere" that exists because of the dome's emanations. An unwilling member of a secret government agency, he discovers that an unknown cause is killing "sensitives" such as himself. As he is drawn into a fight for his survival, he uncovers secrets that change his world and reveal the true nature of the alien presence that defines his life.

Taro Thompson's book is one that I decided to read based on the considerable praise he received, and in this instance the book lived up to the hype. HIs premise is an interesting one, and from it he builds a world of considerable complexity that manages to be different while still remaining plausible. Part of his success in this regard is in how he teases his information in a way that just enough is provided for the nature of the story, without all of the information dumps that too many authors clumsily resort to in books like this. Yet it's the characters who make the novel worth reading, particularly the central figure of Kaaro. who for all of his abilities proves to be just as human as anyone else. It makes for a great example of smart science fiction done right, and I'm already looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

I think it's a testament to Thompson's skills as a writer that I'm taking so long to read his book. I find a lot of novels to be skimmable in parts, but Thompson writes in a way that makes me want to take in every word. Still, I need to finish it today, as I still have those two other books I need to complete soon for upcoming podcasts.

Thompson is a good writer in a way that I hate. A third of the way into the novel, he drops a casual mention about an element of his world that I am practically dying to learn more about. As I have poor impulse control when it comes to these things, I skimmed the rest of the book in five minutes to discover 1) that the reveal is near the very end of the novel, and 2) that it is only a partial reveal, which means that I have to read the next book in the series if I want to learn more. Well played, sir.