i feel like there’s really no words to explain how much i love this novel, no review could really truly do it justice. the drama, the camp, the exquisite prose, the fact i read this while on a trip to edinburgh… the way it miraculously and weirdly aligned with everything happening in my life. lote is a grand multilayered fabulous and brilliant deep dive into beauty & luxury & queerness & dialectics & asks big questions about all of the above— there’s just too much to cover and try to understand in one review. i feel like to really “get it” you’d have to re read it twice, annotate it all, and even then it would still be just as funny and real and luscious. there was no shortage of mystery, suspense, non linear world building, trips to the archive, a whirlwind journey into the world of complicated queer/trans friendships, and hilarious commentary on the pure ridiculousness (and violence) of white artists, historians, archivists, cultural institutions. so much to fit in just one story, and yet shola von reinhold managed to weave it all into one gorgeous mystical tapestry that challenges you to think and decode and meditate on it all. honestly rarely give books 5 stars and hardly finish them, but i seriously couldn’t put this one down! thank you literary friction on NTS for leading me to this book which has (ironically) been largely obscured from popular shelves < / 3 and above all thank you shola!!

love letter to queerness and blackness for all the souls who have been repressed and buried throughout history

This by far exceeded my expectations. A book that is very smart in its critique of academia, of gatekeeping, of antiquated, bloated institutions that are too big to fail and perpetuate systemic harm. It’s also about the importance of history and representation in history and said representation curating relevancy in knowledge today. Peripherally art, beauty, decadence—Puritanism writ large policing minorities. The operating of individuals in spaces not meant for them. It also is actually dark academia, not merely the aesthetic, but the motifs and themes you’d think would encapsulate that trend of subgenre. Honestly, this is incredibly dense in topics and theme, and I think it’s wildly successful at conveying the complexity situationally. It could easily have been overwhelming. I am sure some of it went over my head just by virtue of consuming it on audio. The more intricate a story, the more I just need to read it. Great worldbuilding, fascinating, complex characters that are rendered outside of the quintessential minority pool that publishers often dictate to authors. It’s unapologetically queer. The ending surprised me. The only fault was it picking up steam, as initially I wasn’t sure how interesting an archivist, exploiter academic angle would be, but once it clicked for me it didn’t let go.