 E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about a highly requested book, highly requested on this channel, that is The Luminous Dead by Caitlyn Starling, and I'm so glad I finally picked this up. My buddy, Slayin, or Mike, or however you want to be called, man. Let me know what to call you here on YouTube down there in the doobly-doo. But he's like, he kept asking me, especially him, if I had read the book, if I had read the book, now I understand why. It is also, I had no idea it was going to be short, I think it's shortlisted for, it's a preliminary nominees for the Bram Stoker Award. I had no idea that was going to be the case when I started reading it. It took me about two weeks to read, only because I've been down and out and what not, and just not feeling myself, just not feeling, you know, like I normally do. So it took me a little longer, and it wasn't because I disliked the book that took me so long to read it. Another thing is I just didn't want it to end. This is one of those really, really tense stories that gets in your bloodstream, and it's the only thing that you can think of. So I tried not to read anything else while I was reading. I didn't read from Ohio by Stephen Markley, which if you watch my now reading, you know, I've been reading that one for quite a while. Same way I did the Goldfinch, I'm taking my time with that one. But with this one, the thing that kept me reading is I had no idea what Starling was gonna, that's her name, right? Yeah, Starling. I had no idea what Starling was going to do next. It seemed like there couldn't be any more to this story. There couldn't be any more. I kept saying that there can't be any more, and I'd check it out. I have 150 pages left, 100 pages left, 50 pages left, and then it wraps up perfectly. If you are a fan of people being stuck somewhere by themselves with or without only like one other person, there are only two people in this book that are alive. And we're gonna get to that, it's not, I don't think it's a spoiler, but we're gonna get to that in a second because I don't want anybody thinking that this is a certain type of book based on the title and the hand. But there's only two characters in this book. There are other characters that are spoken of, that are talked about, that kind of thing. But they're mainly, you're only getting dialogue and interactions between two people. That's Geyer, who is in, it's G-Y-R-E. Geyer, who is in the suit in these caves, and then you have M, who is the person who hired her to send her down into the caves. And these are the only interactions you get throughout the entire book. How in the hell Caitlyn Starling wrote a 450? I'm gonna say probably not that long. 411 page book from the perspective of one individual with only one other character boggles my mind. I was never bored with any of the stuff. Normally when I read sci-fi or fantasy, I don't care too much for it because I get stuck on the world building. Well if this is gonna happen this way, then you know all these other things would fall into play and I've never come across any realistic world building as far as science fiction or fantasy are concerned. Now I know there's gonna be a load of people. I've tried damn near all of the popular ones. Sanderson, Heinlein, as far as sci-fi and fantasy. I've tried, I tried. Scalzi, I've tried the contemporaries, I've tried the classics, I've tried it. I've hated every single sci-fi novel I have ever read before this one. I'm giving this one an easy five stars, but we need to talk about this cover and we need to talk about this hand. We need to talk about the title mostly. The cover. I was hesitant to even start reading this because I absolutely hate zombies. Now I'm gonna put a spoiler alert right here in case you were worried about finding out what the big bad is or what the horror element is. So if you're worried about that but there are some preconceived notions I had going into this. So if you have preconceived notions about what this cover might entail, you might want to hang around. I'm not going to spoil the storyline as it were for you. I was worried that this was a zombie novel. I didn't ask anybody because I myself didn't want to be spoiled. This is not a zombie novel. In no way, shape or form is it a zombie novel. So if you have any hang-ups regarding that or if you want to read it because you think it's a zombie novel, you should still read it but don't think it's a zombie novel. I thought this was zombies in space. I thought as soon as we ran into a certain thing that that certain thing was gonna end up taking over the dead or whatever. But the story is tremendous excuse me. The story is tremendous and it goes places that I did not foresee. That's truly an accomplishment for a book about a lone individual in a cave with only one other person chirping in their ear and sometimes in the eye. I did get a little confused on how the faceplate worked. I think there was a screen that slid over that she could see a reconstruction. This is where I get confused with sci-fi and fantasy. Anytime they take us too far away from either existing technology or make up their own tech for this and this tech might be around but there were some issues that I saw with it. There were certain things but anytime I started to think about how those processes, I don't know how those things would work, I was automatically taken somewhere else by the author. So I didn't even have time really to sit and wonder what's going on with this piece of equipment and how exactly does this work. In fact if I sat around thinking about it too long I would probably end up disliking this book more than I did. But the the best part about it is while I was reading there was no there was never any suspension of disbelief. There was never any point where I went oh well that's just convenient. There was never any point well okay obviously something else is going to happen so I'm sitting there waiting for something else to happen. Usually I was just terrified. I was so scared for this woman's life and usually I don't I don't care too much about character deaths but I wanted this woman to get out of that fucking cave. It's plain and simple. I wanted her out of that cave and it's been a long time since I've rooted for somebody excuse me. It's been a long time since I've rooted for somebody that hard and I'm not entirely sure how Starling did it but it's an amazing an amazing novel and I hope it ends up winning the Stoker. If it does win the Stoker I will have some faith restored in humanity because the past at least five years for the Stokers other than when Victor Laval won been suspect as hell. I mean that was one that what was it the the Tom Deity win and that book was full of errors. I was just I was I was blown away and it's cemetery dance what you know it's just it's one of the things that I've been talking about recently with the quality of certain work going downhill and I believe this yeah this is Harper Harper's quality is usually really up there but oddly enough if you like tour books this entire time up until I was done with the book I thought this was a tour book just for certain certain things that this is the type of author and type of story that tour usually goes for now it's not a hundred percent sci-fi it's not a hundred percent horror it's sci-fi horror so if you are a fan of sci-fi horror I especially nudge you toward this book event horizon alien those kind of things but this is a very very claustrophobic read and if you've read it I'd love to hear from you good or bad if you didn't like it tell me exactly what you didn't like down there in the doodly-doo if you loved it let me know what you loved if you weren't different let me know why you weren't different but until next time I have been a human you this been another book review I'll talk to you guys later bye bye