Snake-Eater

[psocoptera]

Snake-Eater, T Kingfisher, 2025 fantasy novel. Similar to her horror - a woman, a life event, a house, family history, alarming events - but maybe tipped toward fantasy rather than horror, tonally. I continue to like this book and will read it as many times as she writes one; I particularly enjoyed this one because we got to spend time in the desert and it appealed to the little part of me that's always missing the West.

Spoilers: I liked the near-future setting, I thought that was a nice twist. Also this is basically that one episde of Next Gen people always make fun of, where Crusher gets it on with her grandma's ghost ex, but I never thought that episode was as bad as people say, and Vernon did a great job with it here.

By coincidence, my next book is looking to be Motheater, which would have made a nice double-feature review, but it's long enough that I didn't want to wait to do this one until I finished it for fear of losing track of this one.

Comments

[randysmith]

Ah, thank you, my big question about Snake-Eater has been "Fantasy or Horror?" I'll let myself read it now.

(Though it's a continuum rather than a binary; _Hemlock & Silver_ was good, but I almost bounced off of it a couple of times.)

[psocoptera]

Hmmm, it's always hard to guess for someone else but based on what you say about Hemlock & Silver there may be parts of Snake-Eater that feel too far along that continuum? Let me know if you want spoilers or anything; I didn't think it got *more* horror-y past the bit where I think one would be most likely to be like "huh this has gotten horror-y", but ymmv.