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Indulgent, at times brilliant but mostly just messy and unsatisfying story with an interesting protagonist that it then ends up wasting on a convoluted mess of a plot. Where I thought Chainsaw was going turned out to be more interesting than where it actually was going.

(Also: I found the endless references annoying. Yes, we've seen all the 80s slashers, yes, we all love them, but just referencing them is not paying homage to them, it's just ... name-dropping.)

This is probably someone's favourite book of the year. It's not mine - it's pretty far from the kind of stuff I usually love - and I was still really impressed and moved.

A love story with a backdrop of a paradimensional war, with the focus on beautiful writing and all the worldbuilding strictly as an afterthought. This is a novel that knows exactly what it wants to be and succeeds in that admirably. There's nothing superfluous here, only beautiful prose and a story that cannot but end tragically. Maybe.

At first I thought this was just your average ponderous sci-fi/fantasy epic, the kind that tends to bore me. Then Gideon began to speak and suddenly the story turned into a real delight. Somehow the main character's resentful teenage stupidity elevated the book from dull into hilarious.

It's been a while since I've read anything so uncompromisingly violent and brutal. This is a compliment! If I'm reading a horror story, I like it to be rough and merciless, and the Loop certainly fit the bill.