August 2022 Review The Only Harmless Great thing
The Only Harmless Great Thing
Written by Brooke Bilander
About from Goodreads.com
In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.
These are the facts.
Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice
Review
The concept of this story really intrigues me since I have never heard of any type of story like this. Which makes me so happy. Over time it feels as if a bunch of stories are kinda the same. Bilander clearly thinks outside of the box and I love it. As an illustrator you really have to think outside the box and take a thought, dream, or trauma and make it into something beautiful. That is what Bilander tried to do, she takes a horrible accident like, the mass deaths caused by radiation at this time it was in absolutely everything from paint (Radium Girls ring a bell?) to make up.
I was super excited to read this especially because it was a concept that I have not ever heard of but,it disappointed me BIG time. At first I was like some of these word choices are really weird, but I thought I was just being picky. The more I read the more I hated it. The book changed perspectives all the time which got super confusing and frustrating which made me go back and reread A LOT! Like, I didn’t even know how many different perspectives there were, I think there were 3 but, honestly I have absolutely no clue. It got to the point where I was just reading words on the page and my brain totally shut off. I have never had this happen while reading before. After that I stopped reading, I only read 40% of the book and I couldn’t handle it anymore. I haven’t put a book down because I hated it, in a very long time. I thought ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’ by Oyinkan Braithwaite was the worst book I read this month but, this one wins by a landslide. I never thought I’d give a book a zero, but since I couldn’t I couldn’t even finish it, I am giving it a zero.
Enjoyed
How the story was something I have never seen before, out of the box thinking
Disliked
Some of the word choices
In the beginning I got confused a lot and had to go back and read it again which was frustrating
The flip flopping of characters was super confusing half of the time I didn’t even know who it was about, I don’t even know If it was 2 characters or 3. I was hella confused
Felt as if I was read words that meant nothing, I have never had this happen while reading
Quotes I love
NA
0 /5 ⭐️
Info
Trigger warning- No clue
Spice level- 0 / 5 🌶
Numbers of pages- 93
Publish date-January 2018
Awards-Nebula Award for best Novelette (2018), Locus Award for Novelette(2019), Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novelette (2019), World Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Novella (2018), and a few others
Genres- Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Historical fiction, Short story
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