Reviews

Publishers Weekly described it as "complex" and "scathingly funny, [and] horrific yet oddly inspiring", and lauded Gregory's use of "beautiful imagery and metaphors".^[3]

At Strange Horizons, Carmen Maria Machado judged the novella as "slight", saying that it "skims a little too lightly over its own plot" and gives insufficient attention to the characters' lives, in particular noting that Harrison and Martin's stories felt incomplete, and observing that Stan, "though his personal story is horrific in detail, seem[ed] to function mostly as comic relief". Machado did, however, praise Gregory's use of "the collective first person—we, us" to begin each chapter, calling it a "pleasurable stylistic gesture [that] serves a fascinating purpose—creating a group mind that throbs and thinks above all of [its members]" while also "speak[ing] to a larger point about group therapy." Ultimately, Machado concluded that the book would have benefited from being a full-length novel.^[4]

Tor.com's Lee Mandelo similarly "want[ed] more than [the] novella (...) delivered", and judged that "once the plot began to thicken and the supernatural action got afoot, the interesting character dynamics and development more or less just stopped," faulting it for not sustaining the tension introduced by its "strong" premise, and finding the revelation about Jan's identity to be "pretty familiar and easy to see coming."^[5]

Awards