DNF @ 51%

A couple of the stories early on were a hit for me, but then others made me feel really rather stupid. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like this would probably work better for the American audience?

I was attracted to the title—how could I not be? But from then on, my experience hasn't been all that great. The first story was okay—a riff on the vampire trope. The second was an exploration of AI, but it lost me at the third, with Thiel. I don't care about Silicon Valley at all. I might return to the collection at some point, but for now, I'm moving on.

Equal parts nightmare and cautionary tale, this collection was both moving and monstrous. Short fiction can be difficult for me to read, but Bryce's writing is propulsive and captivating.

I was provided an advanced copy through Netgalley. This anthology published on 5/28/2025.

I'm sad to say I did not finish this book. I stopped reading at about 15% into the book.
It started off alright, the first story, Her Threshold, was weird. But it felt scattered.
The next story, The Master of Go, confused me. It felt like I was reading a textbook for school. It seemed out of place for what I had expected from the description of the book.
Next, The Three Stigmata of Peter Thiel, got my hopes up. It started off strange and kind of funny. But then it just ended, like the author decided they were just done writing and wanted to move on to the next story.
Sacrifice is a technology was just a two page list of people who died and the country/organization that was "responsible" for their death.
The last story I read before I dnf-ed was The Scapegoat, and even this story could not get me to keep reading.
Often, it felt like they went to the thesaurus to find a more fancy way to say simple phrases. I don't think everything should be written at middle school grade level, but sometimes the big smart word hurts the flow of the story more.
.
As a whole, the part of the book I read felt either rushed, scattered, or just unfinished.

The writing's good, but the stories themselves weren't interesting. This made the book monotonous and it felt longer than it actually was.

I had to DNF about 25% of the way in. The stories were well-written but none of them interested me that much, and I think a lot of them were too short to really say much of anything.

Thank you Brendan Byrne, Wanton Sun, and NetGalley for the ARC!