Emilie AutumnBesprekingen

It's such a neat effect how much power and impact the sentence "cold water for blood" took me to a creepy place in my mind. Everyone who has tried to wash blood out knows exactly the experience. It's quite an effective use of words

This depicts anxiety and how it creeps in and takes hold so well. It's even worse it's over something so insignificant but prominent. It's not a thing that makes much sense unless you have experienced the anxiety yourself.

It comes on hard, it doesn't really have a systematic way to happen, and then it's there and you're dealing with it.

Another neat aspect of this short story is our protagonist sees everyone around her incorrectly. Doctors and medical people are often not persons able to enter and touch bodies and here she sees them as people she needs to make impressions with and panics when she cannot. Minor moments freak her out. She is terrified to be seen in a bad light by these people she likely will never see again in her life.

As well as the well-known terror of waiting for a medical diagnosis or hospital visit.

While terribly short, I think the shortness adds to the anxiety, a rapid speed story with a fast pace. It's basically an anxiety inducing story about anxiety.

I think it's masterfully clever.

It even grips onto a bit of existential terror if that's what scares you, the reader. It didn't me, but I noted it. An extra layer of terror for many.

This nails the medical experience so well it's great. Especially the repeated visits and the many different diagnoses. It's all a lot of moving around and being treated how this story touches it. It's not personal and sometimes the lack of it being personal can be even more scary.

I didn't terribly care for the ending but it only slightly damaged the original 4.5 star review. It wasn't a deal breaker for me. It was just the obvious way out a lot of stories and movies seem to be taking and through that it felt a bit lackluster.

4 stars.

Mental illness, but make it ✨ Fashion ✨

I read the first edition. I did want to give a second star for the design of the book, since I really like it, but that wouldn’t do justice to the story.

This is a tricky one to review. There's a good book hidden in here between forty pages of trash on either side. Seriously--if you can get past the absolutely obnoxious present-day hysterics setup in the first 40 pages, there's an intriguingly sad and gothic story about an asylum and the strange, supernaturally-tinged sisterhood it engenders woven all through the rest of this book. The problem is you have to wade through a self-absorbed tumblresque tale of a modern day mental hospital to get to it, and then have to wade back out to get to a twist ending that really doesn't add anything to the story because it's impossible to care about the self-absorbed prevaricating main character who narrates the modern day portions of this book.

There's all sorts of secret codes and links throughout the book leading to the author's songs, matched thematically to chapters--she's quite a good musician, if an uneven writer, and it adds a really entertaining ambiance to the book if you can be bothered to figure out all the puzzles seeded through each chapter. It's fun but it's not enough to make me interested in the supposedly "autobiographical" parts of the book or to make me stop wishing for more of the eerie, depressing story of the historical asylum.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. At first it was interesting, but then I found myself struggling to get into it about a quarter through. I just had a hard time relating to the main character.

This goes into my DNF pile.

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is Emilie Autumn's semi-autobiographical account of being in a mental institution paired with a fictional parallel story of Emily in Victorian England who is forced into a torturous mental asylum. This pairs well with many of her songs that openly criticize the mental health industry and speak of her personal experiences with bipolar disorder and its treatment. I highly recommend her music, which is a unique fusion of classical music and industrial metal.

The modern part of this story exposes the hypocricy, inefficiency, and inhumanity of the current mental health industry. Emilie admitted to being suicidal to her therapist who then refused to further prescribe her bipolar medication until she voluntarily commits herself to an institution even though she is no longer suicidal. So she goes to institution that strips away any privacy, labels her as having an eating disorder, and forcing her to take numerous drugs without concern for her physical or mental health. She's treated as a malicious invalid and diagnosed completely ignoring any answers she actually gives. It's a frustrating, dehumanizing experience.

The other half of the story is with Emily during Victorian England where she is sold to a prestigious school by her poor family to develop her musical talent for free. Nothing suspicious about that. When she gets older, she finds it's a glorified prostitution ring and fights against her captors only to land in the Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls. It's even worse than every other place she's been with extreme abuse and experimentation. This part of the story was a little too over the top and fantastical for my taste especially compared to the other story. All of the characters are pretty black and white, only in extremes of good and evil. The horror elements are surprisingly well done. As a whole, the novel is enjoyable, but the modern half is a bit better than the Victorian half.

I honestly don't think I've ever rated a book so low, if it was possible to give zero stars and still provide a review I would. That being said, I am ANGRY at how infuriated this book has me, as well as how much of a disappointment this book was.

1. IT IS A BLOODY VIDEO GAME FOR YOUR KINDLE!! Not even a good one at that.
2. The story, if you can get past the game and allow yourself to read it is terribly offensive and triggering to those who suffer from depression, mental illness, suicidal ideation, self harm, and a myriad of other things.
3. The story is actually awful. The characters are poorly written and you can tell the author goes for shock value rather than quality and consistency.

The overall theme/plot line of the book had me going in hoping for another awesome read. I'll admit that I love books set in asylums, and that I was hooked from the plot teaser I read on Amazon. I ACTUALLY REQUESTED A $3 REFUND OF MY KINDLE PURCHASE! Which I honestly didn't know you could do.

This is a collection of heartfelt teatime poems made by Emilie Autumn. I am no good with poetry and I'm not a fan of hers. I just like to discover works by people I know nothing of. I'm glad I stumbled in it somewhere in the internet. The poems are simple and most of it are cheesy, but I like it. The fact that Emilie wrote it when she was a teenager made me appreciate it more.

I read this more than two years ago. I listened to Emilie's voice this time and I still like her teatime poetry.