#sue rainsford

[phaedraismyusername]

2022 was a soil, rot, and fungus kind of reading year for me and I regret nothing

The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley

A post-apocalyptic novella following a group of isolated men years after a plague killed off all of the women. Its told from the perspective of a young man who's place in the group is to tell stories of what was, and when they stumble upon a secret in the woods, what could be. Its weird, mildly distressing, kinda gross, but super super interesting. Highly recommend.

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

Translated from Norwegian by Marjam Idriss, it follows an international student studying in Australia who finds herself in a bizarre living situation with an older woman in a converted space with no internal walls and no privacy. It focuses on sexuality, exploration, and obsession, with some of the most viscerally tactile descriptions I've ever read. It's uncomfortable and frequently gross in that way only female authors can be, but I don't regret reading it.

Eartheater by Dolores Reyes

Translated from Argentinian by Julia Sanches, this book is about a young girl with a compulsion to eat earth which gives her visions of missing people and victims of violent crimes, and how this ostrasices her from her family as a child, and how she chooses to use this ability to help the community when she's older. I found this one a little harder to connect with, translated novels often feel drier and more distant to me because of what's lost from the native language, but reading the authors note really really helped contextualise it and increased my appreciation for what the author was doing so I recommend reading it too.

Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford

It's short, it's weird, it's a five star read, what else can I say. It follows a young healer, living in a small community with her father, as she learns to exist amongst people who are scared of what she is, but need her skills, and how far she'll go to protect that connection when she thinks she's found it. It's full of the healing power of nature, moral ambiguity, ethical greyness and dark themes. I loved it.

What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher

Possibly my favourite author of the year, This is a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe (which I have not read) and follows main character Alex as they return to the home of their childhood friends after learning one of them is sick and possibly dying. T Kingfisher is an author who's style either works for you or it doesn't, and for me it really really does. The blend of humour, dread, and body horror was a joy and I read it in one sitting with no effort at all. And it's chock full of fungus, which is apparently my jam now.

[prosedumonde]

Peu importe qu’il soit revenu avec une étincelle qui n’était pas là avant. Peu importe qu’il soit devenu cruel, qu’une faim fébrile le domine maintenant. Cela n’a aucune importance, parce que je n’aurai plus à attendre vainement, avec mon coeur vide, avec mes entrailles desséchées.

Sue Rainsford, Jusque dans la terre

[elvendeity]

- follow me to ground, sue rainsford

[missbookiverse]

Said she still didn’t think any of us realized the damage that it did, being told the world you’re living in is dying and then living inside the waiting.

SUE RAINSFORD: REDDER DAYS (P. 166)

[semper-legens]

49. Follow Me To Ground, by Sue Rainsford

Owned?: No, library Page count: 195 My summary: Ada has a simple life. She and her father cure the sick people who come to their house, opening their bodies and buring them in the Ground while they heal. She is not human, of course, not like the Cures who come to her father's home. But when a young man arrives at her house, Ada starts to do the unthinkable. She wants him. And she will cure him of the sickness that lies beneath his skin, whatever it takes… My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Yet another book I entirely judged by its cover before deciding it was something I would very much like to read. This is an odd little volume. Some time has passed between me picking it up and actually reading it, and from the way it's presented I half-remembered it as being a short story collection. It's not, it's all one narrative, tracking the life of a young woman named Ada who magically cures the people of a nearby town. Her life is full of mystery and secrets; held by her, by her father, by the Cures who come to their home in search of health. I found it to be an engaging little book, full of lyrical prose and intrigue, though the actual story was weaker than I had liked. Still, that can be forgiven in as short a tale as this.

Conceptually, there were a lot of interesting things going on in this book. I liked how vague it often was about the actual mechanics of how Ada and her father worked, while still being clear in establishing certain rules. Ada and her father sing to heal, can open people up without the use of tools, and any sickness taken from a Cure must go somewhere, usually materialising in the house. Ada was not born, she was made and grown in the Ground, a patch of land near the house painstakingly tamed by her father, and both of them are different from humans. The prose was mythical and folkloric, holding the cadence of a fairytale, so I was surprised when the narrative made it clear that it was, if not the present day, then something close to it - characters use cars and electricity. This was a rich, if necessarily limited, world.

The story itself, however…once we've established Ada and her father, it became something of a twisted love story between Ada and one of the Cures, Samson, who seems to be the father of his sister's child, though exactly what happened there is something of a mystery. The broad details couldn't be plainer, however. Ada buries Samson in a misguided attempt to cure him, or make him inhuman like her, or both, which leads to catastrophe when he finds a way out. The problem is that I found myself not…particularly caring about the Samson thing? There were far more interesting elements of Ada's life than this man she's arbitrarily fixated on, and I kept hoping that the story would spread out to something other than our heroine's thwarted romantic ideals. No such luck, though. As I said, it was a short story, so there wasn't a lot of room for much else in it. I still enjoyed reading it, but it didn't turn out to be the kind of thing I look for in a story, sad to say.

Next, working-class unsung heroes get their day in the sun.

[volturialice]

🥺 and 😈 and ☕️ tell meeeeeeee

🥺 what’s a truly underrated book/series you recommend and wish the whole world would read?

I already mentioned a few here, but I also think more people should read little oddities Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford and Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker

and not actually underrated but no one I know is talking about it and I wish they would: Our Share of Night/Nuestra parte de noche by Mariana Enriquez

😈 who’s your favorite villain/antagonist? are they special to you like a protagonist is?

Other than the ones mentioned here, I also love the "antagonist who truly genuinely thinks they're the hero" types like God/John Gaius from the Locked Tomb and the Gentleman from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I guess the pattern here is I love affably evil™ men with no self-awareness and horribly maladjusted women who knowingly and gleefully take out their issues on the innocent (I'm bisexual)

☕️ drop a HOT unpopular opinion about a book/character. be savage.

suldrun my beloved fellow Night C!rcus hater (I don't even need to tell you about that one) <33

[ok disclaimer that I wrote this at like 1 AM so it's even more savage than usual and if I flambéed anyone's fave to a scorched crisp then remember it's just MY OPINIOOOONNNNN]

some other books that make me feel like the only one brave enough to point out that The Emperor Is Naked:

Already mentioned The Cruel Pr!nce and The House in the Cerule@n Sea, but I also disliked Lone W0men, the N!nth House books (first one was ok but whaaaat even was book 2), and anything I've picked up by Sarah G@iley (has cool ideas and cannot execute them even a little bit.)

A Study in Dr0wning. don't get me wrong I love Ava Reid's prose but christ on a cracker that was a drag. I suspect many of the people who rave about it were just so calibrated to expect bad/mediocre prose in their YA that encountering decent writing bowled them over

Daughter of the Moon G0ddess is a hot mess that IMO only got all that buzz because these clowns out here don't watch xianxia and so mistook it for having a shred of originality when actually it's a frankenstein's monster of scenes from Princess Agents and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms + 16 megapopular genre tropes in a trench coat. don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with being tropey and unoriginal but you have to be like, good at storytelling then

my other unpopular opinion is that everyone needs to stop trying to make me read The Song of Ach!lles. fetch is not going to happen, it could be the best-written book in the world and I would still loathe every word. I hate that fictional man so much I keep 16 heel-destroying weapons on my person at all times. I think everyone who wants to rec me specifically TSOA should be forced to sit through minimum 3 different performances of euripides' The Trojan Women before they're allowed to mention it in my presence

send me bookish asks 📚

[bloodmaarked]

sorrowland // rivers solomon

first published: 2021 read: 28 may 2024 – 31 may 2024 pages: 357 format: hardback

genres: fiction; literary fiction; horror (fantasy and realistic); lgbt (queer, lesbian) favourite character(s): i was very apathetic towards them all... least favourite character(s): see above

rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 thoughts: 2024 seems to be a year of being disappointed by works from authors i previously liked... first faridah àbíké-íyímídé with where sleeping girls lie, then abi daré with and so i roar, and now rivers solomon with sorrowland. i'd anticipated reading this since having 5-starred an unkindness of ghosts back in 2020, but it wasn't nearly as good. from chapter one i was unimpressed and unfortunately, that just continued throughout the remainder of the book.

i didn't recall what the plot of this was before i started reading, and a lot of the time if that happens, i won't make the effort to thoroughly reread the blurb - it's already on my reading list so it can't be that bad right? so i was surprised by the horror and creepy atmosphere of the book, but luckily this was in a good way. i'm not big on reading horror, but i appreciated how it was crafted, and i could envision it all happening (the hauntings in particular) as if it was playing out on screen, imagining it like it was a Mike Flanagan series. vern's body horror i was less keen on, but that might be personal preference. it was grotesque and off-putting; it reminded me of follow me to ground by sue rainsford, which was also weird and gross, and which i also didn't like much. but if you like weird horror then you might enjoy that and sorrowland.

when it comes to the characters, i just didn't care much for them and how they were written. vern was a main character i felt distant from; she wasn't unlikeable (or i don't think she was intentionally written that way), but i didn't like her lol. the kids were a bit annoying, howling moreso than feral. perhaps i would've enjoyed this more if it had a closer focus on cainland, rather than that being a "background narrative"? i found what we learned about vern's mother, vern's husband, (i forget his name), lucy and eamon a little more interesting than the time we spent with bridget and gogo, both of whom i wasn't bothered about.

i don't know what it was but i was quite certain from the very beginning that this book simply wasn't for me. part of it was the writing style, which was a bit more obscure in the first chapter or two but seemed to become more digestible thereafter. having read AUOG four years ago, i can't say for sure but i feel like the writing style was quite different. i can't pinpoint what else it was that turned me off so fast but, although it captured me enough that i could read large chunks in one go, i wasn't actually enjoying the ride. i won't speak on the social commentary because again, i just didn't care. sorrowland was not objectively bad, but in the end i was quite glad to get the whole thing over and done with. the deep is still on my list and i'll still give it a go when i get around to it as i've heard overwhelmingly positive reviews, and it's pretty short so not a massive investment if i don't like it.

[thebestestbat]

i real quick listened to The Salt Grows Heavy by cassandra khaw bc it was only 3 hours and.... idk it was ok. it reminds me of the memory theatre by karin tidbeck, and if i had to pick a third it would be follow me to ground by sue rainsford. they're all novellas and involve violence against kids through a very metaphorical magic lens.

and...well, at least with the salt grows heavy and the memory theatre, i feel like it relies too heavily on the metaphor, using magic and fairy tale fantasy as a way to describe detailed IMAGES of structural violence and interpersonal abuse, but not really capturing (in my opinion) the REALITY of it. and you can do that with heavy fantasy metaphor! such as pan's labyrinth: specifically i'm thinking of the scene with the pale man, which is fully couched in metaphor and works really well.

i think follow me to ground does a better job, in some relationships, during some parts of the book? also i liked sue rainsford's prose best of the 3. it comes the closest to escaping a theme of "these people are abusive. why? well.....theyre evil....." (though doesnt quite make it, i.e. with the sister who has no characterization besides abusing her brother, killing her husband, and trying to manipulate the MC.)

the memory theatre and the salt grows heavy even to me kind of go "these people are abusive. why? well, they're adults. that is, the Bad Adults." which doesnt really work for me

[thyon-nero]

2023 TBR

Soul of the Deep by Natasha Bowen

The House With The Golden Door by Elodie Harper

A Wizard of Earthsea series by Ursula K LeGuin

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

House Of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Have you read any of these books? What are your reading plans for 2023?

[ceaselesslyborne]

23/09/22

New week, new stack. Quite honestly the highlight of my days at the moment.

- CJ

[twoclaws]

“Follow Me to Ground,” Sue Rainsford.

[phaedraismyusername]

It's possible that this recommendation works for my brain only but if you have a deep love for everything that Like Real People Do by Hozier brings to the table then Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford might be a book for you

[readbooksovermygrave]

Some cool covers of books I’ve finished recently:

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

Blood Rubies by Michael McDowell & Dennis Schuetz*

Follow Me to the Ground by Sue Rainsford

*tw for rape and child molestation // i wish I had done my research on this book beforehand because the situations made me super uncomfortable and I kinda wish I didn’t read it. so while the book has a cool cover, I don’t recommend if you’re triggered by content pertaining to sexual assault

[orrphelia]

"Sick is sick, and it has to go somewhere, and some sicknesses are dangerous when taken out of a body."

Apparently, I have a pattern when it comes to taking photos of books.

[missbookiverse]

Magischer Horror im Gartenbeet

Ada und ihr Vater sind anders als die restlichen Dorfbewohner:innen. Wir erfahren nie, was genau sie sind oder in was für einer Zeit oder Welt wir uns überhaupt befinden. Das macht den Charme dieses Romans aus: eine unhinterfragte Spur von Magie in der Luft, die gleichermaßen wunderbar und beunruhigend über allem wabert.

Wenn es jemandem schlecht geht, besucht er oder sie oder sier Ada und ihren Vater, denn die beiden haben heilende Fähigkeiten. Um ihre Patient:innen nicht zu verstören, werden diese vor jedem Eingriff eingeschläfert. Danach werden ihre Körper geöffnet, um die Krankheit herauszuholen. Dieser Vorgang wird ohne viele Details beschrieben und wirkt dennoch unheimlich bildlich. Wer das Buch in vollen Zügen genießen möchte, muss sich allerdings von einem Drang nach wissenschaftlicher Genauigkeit verabschieden, denn das meiste entsteht durch den leichtesten Anstoß des Textes im eigenen Kopf.

Dank ihrer Heilungen werden Ada und ihr Vater von den meisten ihrer Mitmenschen trotz ihrer Wunderlichkeit akzeptiert, von manchen sogar geschätzt. Immer wieder gibt es kurze Einblicke in die Köpfe der Dorfbewohner:innen, die dieses Bild vergrößern. Und im Endeffekt tun sie wirklich nur Gutes, helfen den Menschen und schaden niemandem, zumindest bis Ada eine Art Pubertät durchlebt und beginnt, sich nach mehr zu sehnen.

Das unterschwellige Grauen ist von Anfang an spürbar, z. B. im sogenannten Ground, der Erde im Garten, in der besonders schwer Erkrankte zur Genesung vergraben werden. Doch erst im letzten Drittel wird klar, wie unmenschlich Ada womöglich wirklich ist und wozu ihre fehlende Moral sie befähigt. Die Geschichte entwickelt sich still und leise, wie ein über Jahre wachsendes Wurzelwerk, das wahlweise im Nährboden des Magischen Realismus, aber auch im Horror-Ackerland, erblühen kann.

Erstmals 2020 erschienen | goodreads | Verlagsseite

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FOLLOW ME TO GROUND Sue Rainsford

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