The Reading Frog’s Reviews > The Language of Knives: Stories > Status Update

"I drape around his right arm and embroider it further with my kisses, bites, and scratches. Just to see whether I can damage him, affect his reality. Do I have any power over him or not? There is no blood in him and my attempts to make him feel something add scars, but nothing more. There are no weeping wounds."

—Uhm, gulp. How did this weird succubus-esque story suddenly get relatable on an emotional level?

What in the 'Lady of the Lake' / 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' is happening here 😩 I don't see this ending well, but please don't let this evil fuck win.

"That's how he knows he's delirious and the course of antibiotics has done nothing more than kiss the infection in his leg better and hope for the best. A fact he digests dispassionately, riding the heat waves of his fever."

Oh no, is this chapter gonna be about sepsis? Cuz that's literally one of my worst fears as someone who is immunocompromised. A whole different kind of horror 😭

"The kiss that unlocked the hunger and drove Varadin to bite the dead flesh off his wife's lips and Ghena to dig her nails deep underneath her husband's skin at the base of his neck and pull the large strips to her mouth where she chewed with gusto and swallowed."

I'm normally an enthusiastic consumer of cannibalism as an allegory for love/hunger/want/whatever, but idk about this one lol

"The branches, gnarled and twisted as they are, still reveal the hint of human hands-outstretched towards the sky. "As if drowning," that's how Mom described them back when she was up to describing anything."

Botanical/eco horror, my beloved 👏

Aquired this ARC via NetGalley. Might not binge-read this one since it is an anthology.

I'll try, however, to finish it before its publishing date. 👏
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