While the short stories might be able to stand alone, they’re also clearly meant as a set. There’s a synergy between them that’s important to establishing Yap’s premises.
In all the discussion of this horror, it’s important to recall that Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film is an academic text. There’s a difficulty in reviewing such texts for the lay reader—potential audiences are so different that the writing itself can (unintentionally) exclude. Reviewing as a lay reader, this came across very much as a text of two halves.
Quality has never guaranteed success, but it does seem odd that while sifting through the wreckage of a flop, so little attention is given to the engine, with its cardboard drive-belt and pistons made of Lego, and so much to taking retrospective readings of the industry weather.
If we are to ask such questions—where were you—when the Larsen C ice shelf broke off—when the North Pole became ice-free in summer for the first time—when the Himalayan glaciers melted—if we are to ask them, we must be willing to gaze into the possibility of sheer hell. Who wants to do that? And who can do that alone?
As much as I wanted to fall in love with The Drowning Eyes, as much as I liked its setting and magical elements, as much I enjoyed its characters individually, there were a few structural problems that stood in the way of the book having true momentum.
The Djinn Falls in Love is not merely a collection of djinn stories, but a collection which explores the difficulty of empathic understanding between two sorts of beings alien to one another.
