thanks so much to netgalley for providing me with this arc in exchange for an honest review!

i really wanted to like this one but it simply was not it for me. the writing was nice and flowery but most of the poems simply didn’t make sense. it just felt like gibberish.

2.75 stars. i expected more from this collection.

that's not to say that i hated it. i enjoyed certain sections, particularly 'Ghost Stories' and 'The End'; the former for the chill it sent down my spine and the latter for the vivid and dystopian imagery that left me with a sense of finality (as its so aptly named). imagery is something Christina Sng does well.

what i didn't like? a lot of these poems reminded me of the type of poetry i'd see in droves on Instagram and Tumblr when i was a teen (and the kind i used to write myself). they look good, for sure. but they didn't make me feel the way poetry's supposed to make you feel. they didn't leave me feeling like i'd had an epiphany or a new perspective.

so no, this didn't do it for me and i would not recommend it, except for a select few poems.

Disclaimer: I received a gifted copy of this book from Netgalley And I am leaving my honest review.
3.5
I'm not really familiar with horror-esque poetry, and this was good, but because it's not a genre I'm used to, idk how I feel about it. Don't know if this was for me. I'm not posting this to Instagram (stonedandbookish) bc I've posted a lot today, but this is my feedback.
Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book


This review can be found on my Linked goodreads profile, I don't know how to share the review for some reason.

Thank you to Net Galley for this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

This collection reminds me of Tumblr or Instagram micro posts and stories. A very quick read. I do not think I am the target audience for this book though. But still a very beautiful cover!

This was fun and at times very thought-provoking. I'm always drawn to writing that references other art and storytelling, and that's exactly what this collection is. Also, the cover is beautiful!

I love the "Childhood Tales" section and chuckled several times at these modernized interpretations of classic tales. I also found the sections "In Sickness, In Death" and "The End" to be the most timely in their relevance. It's in these sections that I found this collection most thought-provoking.

I would be excited to see more work from this author in the future!

Thank you NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

//3.5 rounded up

i actually really enjoyed this.
the poems are little fragments of thought, descriptive and intentional.
they're short poems but i really enjoyed them.

the book is cut into sections, each section having it's own theme which i loved.
put shit into perspective for me.

some of the poems were really whizz-bangs, man.

"longing
to be extinguished
every single day
thousand-year-old ghost
still trapped at home"

and

"clinically dead
the brain dreams
in remnants

sky full of stars
wishing
i could live
long enough
to visit them all."

in my opinion, no line was wasted. i found the flow really nice, the breaks were appropriate, and the themes were delightful.
themes were:
Prelude, Real Monsters, Childhood Tales, Ghost Stories, The Enlightenment of Science, In Sickness In Death, The End, and Requiem.

i will definitely read more by Sng. this, though a short collection, was made with love, i can tell, and was beautifully put together.

definitely recommend this to poetry lovers.

I was intrigued by the premise of horror/sci-fi poetry, but unfortunately, this collection was not for me, and I just could not get along with the form of the poems contained within.

A quick read of supernatural/horror poems. Feels more like micropoetry and Tumblr-esque in nature. Fun read for October.

Thank you to Netgalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review!!

TLDR; Nothing special or amazing in this collection, not for me

I've only recently got into poetry, so when I saw this on netgalley, I immediately read it. I had slightly high expectations because of the beautiful cover, but unfortunately, it didn't reach it. It was a fairly quick read. The first half was just not it, personally I find that most of the poems felt like the type you'd post on instagram and tumblr. The poetry on this was a hit or miss, and most of them missed. My least favorite section was the childhood section, but the entire book in general was very underwhelming. I only ended up liking 3 or 4 poems in the entire collection.

Going in, I didn’t expect the poems to be so short. Although it kept the pace quite fast, it was hard for me personally to grab onto something and hold it close. That is not to say that the overall collection wasn’t a nice read. By the time we reached the stars, it felt to me more like a story. How the world is so tiny and yet so vast. The process of life and death, and all the things in between. The horror comes from a look into us as a species and how we cling to survival, yet the things we do will ultimately be our doom. I think the poem that stood out the most for me was Escape. Because as a child, and especially now as an adult, I cling to stories told through books, movies and tv to leave the real world, just for a little while. Thanks to NetGalley for providing the ARC.

Christina Sng unites a form I love with a genre I love, tackling science fiction and the surreal through a poetic approach. A most enjoyable collection, with lots of words to savor.

This poetry collection consists of 58 previously posted poems subdivided into the chapters “Preludes”, “Real Monsters”, “Childhood Tales”, “Ghost stories”, “The Enlightenment of Science”, “In Sickness, in Death”, “The End” and “Requiem”. What they have in common are rather dark topics concerning death, monsters the supernatural and last but not least the end of the world. Interestingly, the author managed to keep the tone far away from melancholic which made this collection an even more interesting read.

My favourites:
The Escape: A very impressive dialogue on escapism through reading.
The Siren: About a mermaids pain.
Magic: A rather funny take on necromancy which made me giggle.

The poems about monsters were an interesting read, however I personally prefer poetry expressing your own experience. The style was quite intriguing as those were mostly fragmented.
The dark versions of the fairy-tales managed to get to the twisted core of the stories and bring out the gruesome side. Puss in boots unfortunately does not hit the spot.

All in all a nice read with witty thoughts on well known themes.

The Gravity of Existence by @ChristinaSng

The Gravity of Existence is a weight lifted, a monster freed, a princess with sneakers,
a spell for a better world. From one of the leading voices in dark verse, this collection delights in the misunderstood, putting a new spin on werewolves, basilisks, sirens, ghosts, aliens, pandemics, fairy tales and myths.

The poet gives new voice to classic heroines and the result is terrifyingly, magically, and fantastically beautifully disastrous but in a good way.

Sometimes a few words is all one needed to present or complete a story, sometimes they are mere glimpses of another world. Interesting read.

The book is worth checking out cause it's fast paced and won't take much time to finish the whole book. Though I know poetry ain't for everybody and many won't like to read it altogether but for me it's definitely refreshing one both pattern wise and emotionally.

Highly recommended.

Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Thank you @netgalley @InterstellarFlightPress for the #arc in exchange for a honest review.

It has been quite some time since I have read poetry and thought that these poems were definitely well written. I really enjoyed the spin on horror and spook that these presented and the way these meshed together well as a whole as well in a very sci fi way. I would definitely be interested in reading more from this poet in the future. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

This poetry book was good, but not for me. If you love haikus, short poems, and fairytales, then you will love this collection. I love fairytales, but I do not like haiku type poems or very short poems. There were some longer poems in here that I very much enjoyed, and a few short poems that I found very poignant, but in general I just found myself wanting more.

My favourite poems in this collection are:
- Sand under a microscope
- Escape
- Blood
- Body parts
- Marriage
- Electroconvulsive therapy session one
- How we die

This was disappointing, but I am trying to rate it based on the writing itself and not on my expectations. There were really well written lines, but overall, I don’t think a single poem stuck with me. I thought that this would either be drenched in metaphor or have some sort of narrative running throughout, but I didn’t end up getting that. It was more like reading many micro takes on Horror/scifi/fantasy ideas, which might be fine, if anything felt new or relevant. The Childhood section was my least favorite and particularly difficult for me to focus on. I love haikus, but nothing about these felt fresh or clever. Certain sections worked better than others. Ghost and The End were more of what I was expecting with this collection as they had a bit more of a thread running through them, and I may have given this 4 stars if the entire collection was written this way. Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC

I've become interested in horror poetry recently, but unfortunately this book really wasn't for me. I found the form to be lacking and, while some of the short, punchy poems did manage to land, most of them didn't at all. If anything, I thought a handful were decent premises for something longer, but when present as just a few lines with a 'twist' ending, they felt cheap.

A somewhat uneven collection, with moments of real brilliance and a lot of mundanity. I didn't much like the fairytale section, finding it a bit trite, but the sci fi poetry was a wonderful idea. I loved the strangeness of the minimalist Insta-poetry form juxtaposed with Star Trek style imagery. I actually think that Sng could write a truly great sci-fi novel in verse. Some of the brief narratives she creates here are fascinating, and although the short form poetry means they inevitably lack depth, they're tantalising fragments. Overall, an interesting collection, although I think it suffered from a lack of a cohesive theme.

2.5 stars. Thank you Net Galley for this arc
The only thing I really like about this book is the art cover that was done by Anna Surgan. An absolute work of art I must say.
Unfortunately I did not feel the same about the content of the book itself. Either these poems do not make any sense, or they were just not for me...

While I don’t normally read a lot of poetry, The Gravity of Existence by Christina Sng captured my attention with its title and cover! On the whole, it was pretty good!

It’s definitely a quick read, and didn’t even take me an hour to read the entire book. While I thought the poems were a bit disjointed and didn’t necessarily go together well, there were some that dug deep and truly made me think. Some of the lines in certain poems were simply so lyrical and genius, they definitely stood out.

As a whole, I wouldn’t say that The Gravity of Existence greatly impacted my opinion on poetry, but it was worth the read considering the short length and the handful of beautiful lines!