Stitch’s Stuff: December 3rd – Tokyo Ghoul

Stitch's Stuff

I think I finished the first Tokyo Ghoul series at the beginning of the year.

I still haven’t shut up about it.

The series is one of my major special interests and, it’s a series that I haven’t let go of even though I’ve technically stopped reading the manga. (The sequel series, while it contains interesting aspects of worldbuilding and develops some of my favorite characters very well, has problems I’m currently unwilling to engage with so I’ve dropped the series for now.)Read More »

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[Book Review] Gluttony Bay (A Sin du Jour Affair #6) by Matt Wallace

Gluttony Bay Cover.jpg

Title: Gluttony Bay (A Sin du Jour Affair #6)
Authors: 
Matt Wallace (Twitter)
Rating: So Funny I’m Gonna Die, So Highly Freaking Recommended
Genre/Category: Politics, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural, Food, Cannibalism
Release Date: November 7, 2017

Publisher: Tor.Com Publishing

Order Here: BARNES AND NOBLE AMAZON (KINDLE)

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I’ve been doing drunk reviews of Matt Wallace’s Sin du Jour series from the start because well…

I like drinking.

I also do it because I want to and it’s fun.

I started Gluttony Bay, the penultimate book in the series, while sober. I made it to the end of the first chapter before I straight up needed liquid courage to tackle this book. (If you’re wondering, I went with a rum-vodka-juice mix in my Homecoming glass.)

Matt’s one of my favorite authors and people. He’s writer goals to the nth power. He’s one of like five authors I feel comfortable talking to in my reviews (and then showing them to him afterwards). He’s cool as hell.

But man… Gluttony Bay had me all kinds of fucked up.Read More »

[Stitch Elsewhere] “Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth” Review @ Strange Horizons

Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth

To the gods and ghouls that he cooks for, Rupert Wong is little more than a mouthy piece of meat. At best, the titular character of Cassandra Khaw’s gloriously gory series hardly registers as anything more than an annoyance. At worst, he’s viewed as a tool to be used up, until he can only serve as fuel and food for divinity.

Part of Abaddon Books’s shared “Gods and Monsters” universe, the sequel to Khaw’s 2015 novella Rupert Wong: Cannibal ChefRupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth plucks main-character Rupert Wong from the familiarity of his life in Kuala Lumpur, dropping him headfirst into a conflict between some heavy hitters of the Greek pantheon and members of a mysterious organization known as Vanquis. Persona non grata in his hometown due to events in the previous book that lead members of his own pantheon to view him as a traitor, Rupert is removed from everything that is familiar and is transplanted, rather abruptly, to a dreary London neighborhood that seems downright lousy with Greek gods and figures from other European mythologies.

There are two huge things that Cassandra Khaw does in Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth that make the book—and the characters that inhabit it—too interesting to walk away from. First, there’s what drew me to Khaw’s writing in the first place: how she writes about flesh and food in a way that makes reading about the go-to nourishment of ghouls and gods a chilling, but captivating experience. Then there’s the way that Khaw writes the remains of the Greek pantheon struggling to gain a foothold in a world that has largely written them off as obsolete—and whose new gods are far less open to sharing.

If you’ve been paying attention to me at any point over the past year, you probably noticed that I’m a bit… fixated on cannibalism in fiction. From Tokyo Ghoul to Hannibal to an actual non-fiction book about how very natural cannibalism is, I’ve been hip deep in media and non-fiction centering the subject. It’s been great and gross!

Back in 2015, author Cassandra Khaw (who happens to be one of my pals on top of being a fantastic writer)  wrote a novella called Rupert Wong Cannibal Chef and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. And when the sequel came out this year, well… I just had to review it. When else would I get to talk about one of my favorite writers’s work, cannibalism, and Greek mythology?

Head on over to Strange Horizons to read my review of Cassandra Khaw’s gloriously gory Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth today!

Giveaway Post #1 – Strange Special Interests

This is the first of several giveaway posts meant to celebrate the second anniversary of my website and share the things I’ve been focused on this past year.


Giveaway Post 1

I have a ton of strange special interests.

For the past six or seven months, one of my most obnoxious interests has been cannibalism in fiction and nature. Normally, I’m a big baby. I can’t watch most horror movies and only made it three episodes into the Hannibal series before I had to turn it off. I don’t do body horror.

But then, I had two back to back hits with fictional cannibals and hello new conversation topic that made the people around me incredibly uncomfortable.Read More »