There's only one sentence that can open this review: What the fuck just happened?

The All-Consuming World is Cassandra Khaw's debut novel, and it's a blend of ultraviolent action and post-human space opera that races by in a blur of dramatic heist-y tropes and ornate-but-sweary prose. In this future, humans have ways to control aging so you can live as long as you like, cloning technology if you want that life to involve dangerous life threatening stuff and don't mind the inconvenience of reconstructing yourself. AI Minds also exist, in various generations and societies, most of whom seem to exist and interact through a collective program called The Conversation. We don't see much of what this setup means for ordinary folks of the universe, because the characters we spend our time with are on the unpleasant margins of this world. To survive their mercenary life, Maya and Rita have both been cloned and augmented repeatedly, to the point where Maya's body is degrading from the imperfect technology and Rita is mostly machine. Forty years after a mission which went disastrously wrong, killing two of their former crew (the "Dirty Dozen") and scattering the rest of them, Rita reveals that one of their dead friends, Elise, is still out there in virtual space, and that finding her might be the key to discovering Dimmuborgir, a lost planet with valuable secrets. Why Elise's survival took forty years to reveal is explained in universe as "Rita is a manipulative piece of work with an agenda she isn't sharing with anyone", but it serves as a spur for the pair to get the remnants of their band back together at an interesting time in everyone's lives, and to mount an imperfect rescue, allying with a couple of AIs while avoiding the many, many more who want to kill them.

There's a lot of meaty worldbuilding in that set-up (and shades of Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha and The Stars Are Legion), but The All-Consuming World is mostly interested in the dynamics of its aging cyborg gang, and particularly the relationship between Maya and Rita. We see the story mostly through Maya's eyes (including the prosthetic one she has installed, with no anaesthetic and lavish descriptions of eye socket speculum usage, after the original is gouged out seconds after hatching a new clone body... don't say I didn't warn you about gore). Her perspective is deeply warped by love and codependence for Rita, which is generally rewarded with abuse, manipulation, and speculums to the eye socket. Maya's internal dialogue already acknowledges the gap between her unwavering loyalty and Rita's sadistic responses, but when her old colleagues come back into her life, their reactions to seeing her still in thrall to Rita and the juxtaposition with their own lives provokes Maya to question even more of herself. Those colleagues include popstar and former almost-flame Verdigris, mercenary-turned-law-enforcement Constance, and Ayane, who doesn't really have any identifying features beyond "is hot and violent", which doesn't really work in this crowd (she also did the eye gouging). Maya also connects indirectly, through family, with another member of the Dirty Dozen, and it's through these relationships that the tension of The All-Consuming World builds.

This tension is all quite dramatic, and combined with scenes from AI Pimento (who is working for the AI that gave Rita the information about Elise and holds the location to Dimmuborgir), and from Elise herself, we get a decently three dimensional picture of this gritty, complicated conflict. Unfortunately, the focus on character has two drawbacks: first, because most of the interactions we see involve Maya, and Maya's brain is very specifically wired to care about Rita and almost nothing else, we don't get much character development for anyone other than her and the other two point of view characters. There are a lot of external clues as to how things have changed, and a great deal of information, from various perspectives, about the group's mercenary days and the extent to which that was actually a good time. There are also some identity shifts: notably Verdigris and Constance both come out to Maya as trans in the same scene (Verdigris is genderfluid and uses both he and she pronouns; Constance is non-binary and uses they/them). All of the mercenaries have moved on from, or become stuck on, different elements of their pasts, and while it's interesting to see through the eyes of Maya, a character who is terribly equipped to figure all of this out, let alone show any empathy and insight into what people's pasts mean to them rather than applying it all to herself, it also loses the opportunity to see some of these folks through their own eyes. Most characters feel like they have a convincing inner life that's hidden from Maya, but some (Ayane, and also Rita) just feel two dimensional as a result.

The second drawback is that, while it's interesting to get invested in these characters, their problems and the extent to which they are too old for this shit, there's a whole lot else that could be going on in The All-Consuming World and just... isn't. While we're watching the old comrades of the Dirty Dozen argue in space, there's this sense of a huge world full of AI-clone conflict and space exploration and histories and secrets of this universe that are beyond the grasp or interest of Maya and her cohort and, therefore, don't really appear here. In a weird way, this isn't a book that's very interested in what the characters themselves would identify as the story: their goals, the reasons behind the AI attacks, the importance of Dimmuborgir and the results of their finding it (this, in particular... well, you'll see when you get to the end). Once you're clued in to the fact that this stuff doesn't really matter, then it's easy in some ways to sit back and enjoy the ride, but I can't help but feel a sense of wasted potential that we didn't, at least, get more of a balance. It doesn't help that The All-Consuming World is pretty short, when it feels like there's enough to carry a much longer story here (then again, Khaw usually writes at novella length or shorter, so this being a short novel is in-keeping with their storytelling style).

We also need to talk about the writing. The story of The All-Consuming World is told in lavish, almost purple prose interspersed with regular swearing, as for example with Ayane's introduction from the opening chapter:
"[Ayane's] casual numinosity is frankly offensive. It is empirical, how stunning she is, a fact that exists external to the hypothesis that beauty is qualified by the beholder. Maya had not consented to having her breath shanked from her by something as egregious as Ayane retreating into a halo of artificial light, and she is pissed at this misstep by the universe, pissed she hasn't become inoculated to such bodily treason, that Ayane after all these years could still have such an effect."
There's a ton of interesting choices being made here which add to the characters being developed: Maya's weakness for physical beauty, even as she only has the capacity at this point to love Rita; Ayane being hot and dangerous (note how her beauty "shanks" Maya); the juxtaposition of an academic register, talking about hypotheses and empirical facts, with the religious notes (halos and numinosity) and then with slang like shank and Maya describing her emotional state as being "pissed". It's evocative stuff! But it's not a choice that's going to work for everyone, and to be honest, it's not a style that worked well for me. The All-Consuming World's expansive vocabulary it's not particularly accessible (I had to go and double check what "numinous" meant and that's nowhere near the most obscure word in this book), and it's also kind of relentless, even in pacy action scenes. It has the effect of either slowing the reader - and therefore the book - down, or making you feel like you've missed context by going along with it. At the end of reading, there are elements of the plot, especially the parts involving AIs, that I'm really unclear about, and I have no idea if it's because it was left mysterious or because my comprehension went on holiday at key moments, and while I fully accept that that's a me problem, it's a sign of this book and me not quite gelling.

All of that is quite a lot of negativity for a book that, actually, I liked reading a lot and think is objectively kind of amazing. Khaw's books have always almost worked for me, and after seeing their talents on such strong display, I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I enjoy the idea of them more than the execution. Still, The All-Consuming World is going to have lots of fans out there among those who really gel with Khaw's work and those who are looking for some grim, femme-led space opera - if that sounds like you, this is one to look out for.

This novel was a mess. There is nothing to like here in terms of story or characters, that I found myself dropping this one after about half the book. I just couldn't care any more.

It feels like the author set out to use the word fuck in a novel more times than it has ever been used in a novel before. Ever. I swear, every second word was the word fuck. It started out as a specific character trait, but then bled into every character where it was no longer a unique trait and just every few words of every character. I like the word fuck and definitely have no problems with it in the books I read, but in this case it was annoying as fuck. When the author wasn't using the word fuck, it seemed like she was just throwing in the most obscure word for what she was really trying to say. To the point where this book became a confusing mess full of flat one dimensional characters that I just couldn't bring myself to care about.

I honestly couldn't tell you what this story was supposed to be about. I just don't fucking care.

How to even begin to review this book.....

There were a lot of things I really liked, and probably an equal amount that left me scratching my head. I see in many reviews that Khaw's use of profanity was quite contentious, but that didn't bother me. Khaw is very precise with language, and if there's profanity it's there for a reason.

The first 50% (or more) of this book is........??exposition??, without every REALLY telling us what happened before the book started. We know something awful transpired and led to the breakup of the "Dirty Dozen"- but not exactly what. And for all the exposition we wade through, there isn't a ton of world-building. We are following the reassembly of the remaining members of this origin-storyless crew, but we aren't learning a ton about the environment. Eventually we get a sense of what "minds" and "ageships" are- but I couldn't tell you what they look like or on what scale they measure on. There's a "Merchant Mind" and a "Butcher of Eight"- but I couldn't tell you much about them other than that. If that paragraph confuses you- maybe don't read this book.

What DID work for me was the interesting futuristic science surrounding the clones- being able to modulate the hormones and chemicals coursing through your body to modulate pleasure/pain. Lots of AI and data and augmented reality. There was some very cool stuff there, and Khaw's use of words is always on point (if you care enough to look up the various definitions you will inevitably need- I did.) It's very dense writing with a lot of wonderful observations, but I wonder if this book was more style than substance- particularly when it comes to storytelling. This was less of a story to me, and more of a VERY florid and verbose but quick look into a pretty cool future universe of Khaw's imagining. I'm still a fan.

This one just did not work out at all. I felt confused most of the time and just bored the rest. This is definitely one of those books that you ask yourself what in the world did you just read after you finish. Other than that I don't even really know what to say for this one.

The summary of this book really enticed me. The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khan had some main points describing a group of women getting back together to have one more adventure in a sci fi setting. But I didn’t even finish one fourth of the book before giving up trying to decipher what the author wanted me to get out of this adjective explosion. I read the first chapter several times to try to grasp the style of the writing and situation in which the reader is lost. The characters are presented with almost a stream of consciousness using words that even a well read person would have to check for meaning. Normally cyborgs and bioengineered humans are an interesting subject that I enjoy reading, but the run on descriptions that the author used here made it difficult for me to imagine the people in my mind. There is no warning for severe profanity, of which there are three f words on the first page. The general feel of this book is nasty and darkly depressing, I had no desire to find out what was going to happen, and I did not finish it. However, I appreciate getting the chance to try it from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I was thinking of a way to describe The All-Consuming World, the closest thing I could think of was Terminator plus Blade Runner, except queer and non-binary folks in space. There's also a good chunk of cyborg feminism. Which, I mean, if that doesn't sell you, then we have pretty different tastes.

The story is set in the distant future, where it seems the only remaining members of the human race are clones, and they live in a galaxy controlled by artificial intelligence called the Minds. With Khaw's design of clones in this universe, they can explore ideas of life and living outside the body: clones die and can be "uploaded" into new bodies, or even enter their consciousnesses into other AI. So, potentially, clones can be immortal, which allows Khaw to explore the philosophies behind immortality through several of her characters.

The book has several points of view, and I really appreciated how Khaw gave each of them a different "voice." I think they may have solved one of the problems of most multiple narrator books I read: typically, all characters still sound the same. Here, you can tell the difference between Maya, Elise, and Pimento before their thoughts are attributed to a name. There's even some experimentation in second person narration, which was fun.

I really enjoyed the exploration of gender in the book, as well. I don't want to say too much and spoil it, but have you ever thought about why we think certain voice traits are male or female? Me either, until Pimento muses on it.

Overall, this book was really enjoyable and engaging. It was hard to put down. It's not at all obvious what the ending is going to be until you get there. If you like science fiction with a good dash of horror, you will like this book.

I was provided an ARC from Netgalley for a fair and honest review.

Maya and the rest of the former Bad Bitches have grown older, more comfortable, and more vulnerable since their last heist on the planet Dimmuborgir. Why Ruby pulls them back together for one last heist, one chance to rescue their lost comrade, the team gets back together. What follows is a trippy adventure with unreliable narrators and constantly shifting ground. Truth, lies, and censorship blur together into a novel that keeps the reader off-balance yet still wanting more. Want to follow a group of old women on a dangerous mission to fuck things up? This is the book for you.

I really liked the sound of this book but unfortunately the writing just didn't work - disjointed, confusing dialogue, and lack of story direction, almost like a first draft.

I was so excited to be approved for the e-ARC of this book because the synopsis sounded exciting and intriguing. Who wouldn't want to read a book about cyborg, lesbian mercenaries battling against sentient spaceships? Apparently me. I struggled with this book from the very beginning because of the writing style. It seemed like the author had a thesaurus handy when writing the book because the words and language used were incredibly complex. It honestly felt like the author took a list of SAT words and scattered them throughout the book. This made the writing incredibly dense and difficult to read. As the story progressed, I enjoyed it more, most likely because I became a little more accustomed to the writing, but I never felt truly engaged in the story.

It also didn't help that the plot was nebulous and seemingly nonexistent for most of the book. The first 2/3 of the book focused on collecting the cast together without any real explanation for why it was necessary. Having finished the book, I'm still not 100% sure why it devoted so much time to introducing the characters at the expense of moving the plot forward at a more rapid pace. The action in the last third of the book was interesting, but the ending of the story felt like it was lacking a real climax and instead was all build up with little payoff. I walked away from the book feeling unsatisfied with the end, which is what ultimately kept this book from reaching three stars for me.

The world of this story was fascinating, and I enjoyed the world-building that was done. Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough of it. There was very little information about the society or how the AI ships became so powerful. There was also very little information about the humans or how/why the cyborgs became what they were. I would have loved to know more about all of those things and enjoyed the information that was available. The author did a good job of bringing the AI to life, and I would have loved to see their vision of the broader society in which this story was set.

There were some great character moments throughout the story that allowed for the exploration of some really interesting themes. I didn't find the characters themselves to be very relatable, but their circumstances provided a good backdrop for analyzing thoughts related to gender, love, death, and what it means to be human. The tackling of transhumanism and its impacts on the characters was one of the most interesting things about this book.

Overall, this book was not a very good fit for me. If you like your science fiction filled with dense writing, lots of profanity, complete immersion with little explanation, and slower in pace, you may like this one more than I did. I couldn't really get past the writing style and thin plot. Therefore, I rate this 2 out of 5 stars.

There was something about this book that was so off-putting for me to read. The concept was super interesting, but the end result ended up being confusing and just difficult to get through overall. I didn't enjoy the writing style and none of the characters (except maybe Pimento) were likeable at all. I felt like we were thrown into a conflict that was never really explained in a significant way. I feel like the idea could've been done really well, but this story was just not it for me.

Every year I seem to read at least one book where after I finish I have to ask myself “what the hell did I just read?” well this was my WTH book for 2021. I was really excited to read this; morally grey, angry and dangerous, sapphic cyborgs out to find their missing friend while under their own death warrant… I mean that sounded pretty damn cool to me. This wasn’t on my most anticipate list of 21, but this book was high up there of books I was excited to read. Unfortunately, this was not what I was hoping for and I almost DNF’d it a few times. The reason I still gave this 3 stars is that I enjoyed the second half much more, but to be honest I do wonder if I’m rating this a little high since I had no idea what was going on a good chunk of the time.

This is my first time reading Khaw so I was not prepared for her writing style. I don’t know if she always writes like this, or if this was a special choice for this particular book. It was very purple prose like, yet it was mixed with odd word choices, and ways to use them, plus a lot of profanity. While I don’t use swear words in my reviews very often, I have no issue with reading them in books. The problem is if you are going around constantly saying ‘fuck this you fuckity fuck’ the word loses its meaning and most of its power so I have to wonder what really is the point? I’m going to quote the opening paragraph of the book so you can get a feel of the writing style:

“The fuck am I doing here, Rita?”
Her voice is the boreal wash of moonlight upon the bulwark of their ship-in-orbit: a reduction of the fantastic, tepid when it could have been of a devouring temperature. It is modulated, disinterested. But like fuck Maya is going to complain. Any contact with Rita is superior to the absence of such.

I found most of the first half to be pretty rough. I had trouble realizing what was going on and I was getting bored in certain parts. I’ve noticed some other reviewers have mentioned this and I think they are right on; I don’t think this story works well as a book. I think if this was an original movie for Amazon or Netflix, then it would have worked so much better. I think visuals were desperately missing in this story. I couldn’t tell when we were on a spaceship or even a planet. I also could not get a clear picture of what the characters looked like in my mind. These are women and nonbinary characters that are half machines, yet there were only certain modifications of body parts that I could really understand. Instead of saying something like “she had clear tubes connected to her back slowly dripping spinal fluid –which is something I could picture in my head- instead it was more like ‘tubes dripping bile hanging out of orifices’. Well what orifices and what were the tubes like? There were just too many times that I felt like I didn’t have the complete picture of what was going on.

The reason I gave this, and what I’m thinking is a generous three stars, was because of the second half. The book picked up and honestly the character of Maya saved it for me. Khaw did something that we don’t see a lot of authors do in that one character was in first and the rest were in third. I actually don’t mind this as I like the idea of having the main character in first and the secondary characters in third so we could still peak into other POV’s if needed. The problem here was that Khaw wrote the main character in third and a secondary character in first. I don’t get that choice and I think it was the main reason that it took me a long time to even just like Maya. Had her character been in first from the beginning, I think I might have connected with her a lot sooner so the first half of the book might have been better for me. The good news is she did eventually win me over. She’s completely messed up and a bit of a psycho killer, but her character actually had some depth. Her character thought she was in love with someone she never should have been, which put her in a toxic dependent relationship, while her heart was really in love with someone she didn’t believe she deserved. Her messed up love situation gave her character some substance we as readers could latch on to. Not only that but she was the only character that seemed to have real, meaningful, and hard conversations with other characters. While Maya was threatening to kill them half the time, her character actually had some growth which seemed mostly due to these convos. One of her convos was with the widowed wife of one of her comrades, and it ended up being one of the best scenes and dialogs in the whole book. Maya was absolutely the reason I finished this book and even enjoyed a few parts in the process.

Unfortunately, this is not a book that I can recommend. I’m just barely rating this 3 stars and I still might lower it as I’m struggling with this rating as much as I struggled with this book. I loved the mix of all the sapphic and nonbinary characters, and the actual premise was good, but damn if I didn’t know what was going on way too often. I believe we don’t get enough sapphic sci-fi, so I really wanted to love this but it’s out there. If you think you might be okay with this very different writing style and you love sci-fi, then maybe it will work better for you. I would suggest reading a sample when/if there is one on Amazon to get a better feel if this might be for you.

Wow. This was a huge miss for me. The language was strange and not in a "i needed a dictionary" for this but in a "these are criminals and you chose that language".

The All-Consuming World is about a group of ragtag femme/queer ex-cons who are trying to fight to save one of their own.

I think.

It was really hard to read and understand this book. The prose was mega purple, and all the medical/scientific jargon was not well placed. And if I saw one more “fuck” I was gonna lose it. The inclusiveness of the book felt forced and put in last minute.

It’s possible I had a very early draft of this book and some of these things will be more cohesive in the final copy, but for now I’m going with a 2 star rating. I was tempted to DNF, but I really wanted to see how it ended. The 2 stars comes mainly because I really liked the plot. It was just not well executed at all.

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the chance to read this advanced review copy, but it was not for me.

Having read some of Khaw's horror (mostly short stories, but I would argue that's the best way to really get a taste for the writing style: when no words can be wasted), I knew to expect highly detailed and evocative body horror. What I didn't expect was just how... Wordy this book was. It reminded me of trying to read Turn of the Screw before The Haunting of Bly Manor came out on Netflix: I thought to myself "oh, it's a novella; shouldn't take long." Instead (and Khaw does the exact same thing but with way more profanity) each paragraph is 4x longer than it needs to be. Almost every sentence (even dialogue, which is absolutely criminal to me) was peppered with jargon and lists and just word vomit to the point where all forward momentum or necessary information was totally obfuscated by the sheer number of different ways to say "fuck".

I was looking for a scifi horror, but instead I got totally incomprehensible insults.

I'm really sad that I didn't enjoy this one, it was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I feel like if you enjoy the writing of this book, you'll love it. Unfortunately, the writing really grated on me and overshadowed everything else I could have loved about the book. It felt like I was reading a thesaurus sprinkled with swear words. It felt like a struggle to sit down and read, to figure out who the characters were, or what they were doing. I didn't enjoy myself at all. It's such a shame because it seems to have everything I could have loved.

3.5 stars.
With every flesh-shredding bullet, Cassandra Khaw's main character Maya swaggers and shoots her way into and out of every situation she gets in in this wild, ultra-violent and spectacularly profane and fast-moving and sometimes impenetrable plot.
On the surface, this is a getting the band back together type stories, if your band is a group of women who happen to be clones, criminals, and have a serious case of "I hate you" for each other. It turns out there's a legit reason for the animosity as there's collective guilt and anger about the deaths of some of their group after their last job.
This time, there's a chance to recover one of their lost members, and we see how utterly dysfunctional and terrible the women's dynamic is. We also discover that there are vast artificial intelligences, whose intents are generally unknown and terrifying and inimical to, well, pretty much everything, and specifically to the group and their current job.

I love Cassandra Khaw's work. Her writing is beautiful and visceral, and often immersed in bodily fluids. However, I wish this book had been a little shorter, as I found the plot dragged in some parts. I was also a little mystified by some scenes (except for a wonderfully touching conversation Maya had with Rochelle's wife),
I love this author's writing--I see so many colours in her work--but, I also realize that Khaw's writing is not for everyone. Despite my slight difficulties with some of the action, I liked this.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Erewhon Books for this ARC in exchange for a review.

WOW. This was confusing. I liked the story. The dialogues doesn’t go with the characters.

It was a reading that I enjoyed a little.

I don’t think I’m quite the target audience for this author though I really enjoyed Food of the Gods quite a bit. They go for very bloody and spare no words in the descriptions of the consequences of violence. So if you like your science fiction grim and gory it might be a good choice for you. What I liked about Food of the Gods that I didn’t get here was there was an interesting main character to follow if not like. The characters in this book blurred together for me. The writing style was more about the action followed by the setting. For another reader that likes the action first and foremost this might be the right book.

An interesting premise hampered by confusing exposition, and a vocabulary in third person that does not match how the characters would speak.

What does it mean to be human ?

Casandra Khaw explores this in their new cyberpunk sci-fi novel following two people recruiting their old crew for a seemingly impossible heist. But of course literature has taught us that nothing is impossible. Nothing is smooth sailing, considering their final mission ended disastrously and their leader is much to blame. They must learn to work together again in order to save their old friend and pull off something that could possibly destroy them all.

I'm confident that my mind is just not developed enough to understand this book because WOW the potential of greatness that I can see, but can't seem to actually feel. Khaw has a very specific writing style that is a mix of high level vocabulary and vulgarity. In the end, these two elements are mixed together to create beautiful prose full of emotional highs and devastation. Still after finishing the book, I'm not sure where I stand with this writing style. I feel like I definitely have a more positive opinion on it and it makes me intrigued to read more from this author. There is an OVERWHELMING amount of quotes I tabbed.

Where my intelligence fails me is the confusion I faced reading the entirety of this book. I never knew where we were and most plot reveals didn't have much impact on me because I was still trying to figure out why it was so shocking in the first place. Especially that last reveal at the end. And when it came to Elise and Pimento's chapters... lets just say I was only reading words on a page and nothing else. I don't know if I can fault the author for this because this seems like a ME problem. I still liked the characters, especially Maya and Rita. I don't think I've ever read of a female manipulator character, so let's just say I understand why there are so many apologists now ahhh (and I do mean that lightly. Don't be an apologist). Rita is written so well that I felt fear myself when she entered the scene. Maya is a lovely character to get a perspective from because she's actually interesting and serves a greater purpose to the story vs. just walking through it.

I loved how queer it was. Verdigris is a genderfluid main/side character and I never knew this was something I wanted so badly to see on page. I also love seeing characters question humanity and whether they have it or not. Maya is battling this question the entire novel, often finding herself question her emotions. There is the ability to alter yourself with technology and it really pushes that idea if someone who is so altered can still be considered human. Honestly just a die hard of conversations like this.

I would definitely just check this one out yourself to see if it is for you.