Weird and wonderful describes this perfectly. I'll definitely be purchasing for my personal collection.

Thank you for the arc.

DreamRot {FORSAKEN} by Ami J. Sanghvi



A collection comprised entirely of images that left me feeling all kinds of ways; it is said to be, “a surreal dream experience with trauma & CPTSD at the forefront.”


Interesting.

Disturbing.

Unhinged.

Heartbreaking.



I really liked the dedication:
“for every person who experiences physical pain while attempting to establish sections and chapters, who craves order in chaos and almost equal amounts, who rots beneaths the hold of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants {despite being deeply psychotic and depressed as is the supposed criteria for that stuff}, who doubts the validity of feelings, as aspects of actuality, whose nights have turned to days & days to nights, who feel their absolute warmest & safest in the chilling blue light of capitalistic cyber world at bedtime, who looked to god for reassurance, but more often than not finds themselves grasping at the phantoms of lost hope in the darkness instead, who has given up hope of anyone ever reading their books {& almost prefers it that way}, & who mostly finds home & self in blood, blades, partygoer, nightmares, & asphyxiation”






5 / 5

Read 06.26.2024
Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy/early read opportunity!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Querencia Press for the ARC

I really liked this... whatever it was. It's hard to call it a poetry collection because while there are short writings, the text itself is manipulated, like the photos to create something else altogether. It's digital art born from past trauma and a 00's aesthetic, and the style feels pretty timely.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6670127349

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/b5a3daf7-1e54-4c40-b87a-e9200790cfb4

Check out this review of DreamRot {FORSAKEN} on Fable. https://fable.co/review/662baa4d-4a6f-4944-afd6-5222a4df6464/share

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked this up, but having read through it, I don't think I was the target audience. This really wasn't for me.

The repetition, overlapping of words, crossing out of words, and other stylistic choices were visually intriguing to look at, but actually trying to read it was a bit difficult. With the way some of the passages repeat, I felt like there was a mantra going on in my head. It definitely put me into a weird mood.

Some of the art pictures and edited photographs looked really nice, but others, I found to be a bit unnerving. I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of this reading/visual experience, but I hope the people who can relate to this more than me find it.

“
“ who looks to god for reassurance but more often than not finds themselves at the phantoms of lost hope in
darkness instead, who has given up hope of any the
one ever reading their books {& almost prefers it that way?”

DreamRot is a combination of visual imagery and syntactic formation brought together to create a collection of artistic poetry that expresses the lived experience of the author, the everyday horrors and lived experience of their fears and challenges they face as a writer, female and mental illnesses. The repetition of imagery, sentences, into more aggressive versions of the same subject by increasing their numbers into word blocks and eventually becoming intentional overlay of exact same text in different ways filling entire pages. Creates a sense of intensity of emotion and anxiety and or anger at the same task and their inability to focus or complete it, verse their inner psychological need to accomplish it, I.e. “I’m going to have to start writing again”.
The book is an assemblage of mixed media artwork with textual overlay that ranges from hand drawn artwork, photographs, print and social media content style formated graphics that express her own personal feelings and trauma in ways that evoke the dark, scary and nightmarish feelings and lasting impact trauma has in one’s everyday lived experience with PTSD.

I actually really liked the book because it really did create a sense of unease, anxiety, fear and anger across its pages. It evoked for the reader a sense of gradual claustrophobic environment and rapidly accelerating intensity in its intentional use of repetition.
I wouldn’t buy this for myself as I only truly liked a few images that I would consider revisiting but I think that it would be a great for people who like postmodern pastiche art and poetry.

I received this as an ebook arc copy from netgalley and really did think it was a great read!

Thank you to NetGalley, Querencia Press, Q, and Ami J. Sanghvi for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is mostly images, though some have word's on them. The images with words have a lot of repetition, and the overall feel is that of "madness," but with an interesting balance of "peace." It's like the worded images are the aspects of our minds that make us over think and go crazy about certain ideas, while some of the digital images, blends, and photography without words offer a moment of tranquility, to stop, think, and break away from all the thoughts of disarray for a moment.

It is a quick visual read that offers some awe-inspiring and thought-provoking artistic value. I would recommend for 18+

I’m always searching for something different, something stimulating to the darker sensibilities and thought-provoking, perhaps offering a unique twist. DreamRot {FORSAKEN} caught my eye with its cover, title, and description: “This collection is comprised entirely of images. The text on the images has been manipulated for aesthetic purposes, therefore, this collection may not be well-suited to people with visual impairments.”

DreamRot—the title is captivating, suggesting something sublimated, regurgitated from the subconscious. Forsaken—means left behind, a feeling of aloneness and alienation. These may sound like depressing thoughts but for me, they’re not. I believe everyone feels alienated now and then for different reasons. We all have things we don’t dwell on in everyday life, things we push down into our gut as we carry on with our daily existence. These are the thoughts the title conjures in my mind. This is all before opening the pages.

As stated in the description, DreamRot is a tale Sanghvi tells through images—not paragraphs of carefully curated information and grammatically perfected prose. This a journey into the subconscious, dreams on paper, a series of images meant to be experienced. Therefore, showing you Sanghvi's images would defeat the book's purpose (and be a violation of copyright!). Perusing the pages of DreamRot {FORSAKEN} isn’t merely an aesthetic escape but an emotional journey.

While I can't show you, I can attempt to describe Sanhvie's imagery. An array of media is used from surreal drawings to realistic photos. The color scheme goes from stark, stirring, and stimulating combinations of black, white, and red used in a tumultuous expressive swirl to cooler tones of blue and violet. Some images combine warm and cool tones juxtaposed.

DreamRot {FORSAKEN} evokes feelings of claustrophobic, suppressed emotion of a creative person in a world that refuses to understand them. Someone who sees what others don’t.  Sanghvi created tortured visual poetry that stayed with me after closing the book. These are images that will haunt your imagination.

A really unique book with images seen through the lens of someone working their way through their trauma.

Some of the images are repeated in the book. I'm not sure if that's because of the digital copy of the book I received or if that was on purpose but it made me think "I've already seen this one".

That aside, I thought it was a really unique book. I think the images would be interesting to see hung up and in a variety of sizes that the artist chose instead of in book form. Would she choose some of them to be larger?

I thought the typography ones were really striking and thought provoking and gave us insight into the artist's mind.

An astounding assault of color, just as the artist intends.

My favorite line, I think, was "How's the art going?"

Every artist I've ever known (and authors too) have heard this irritating question their whole life.

'Dystopian' is a good description for the overall feeling of this book. Well done.

I didn't connect with this collection, unfortunately. I found little substance in the images, many being repetitive of each other with little to no variation. I didn't get much of a story or theme throughout and it lacked much in the way of "poetry". It is images with a few lines of text repeated over and over again.

I'm honestly not sure what I just read and I had some trouble seeing it properly because I was trying to read it online, and my reader didn't like the colors. Once I did change to a reader that would let me see everything properly, I did enjoy it and think it was an interesting and intriguing experience. Not every book needs to be in a traditional format, and this was a unique experience. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

This was a visual mixed media collection. It 100% states if you have vision issues you might not be able to enjoy it and part of the reason I requested it is because I love collections like this but I also have a visual impairment.

If you are extremely low/no vision you won't be able to do it. If your up close vision is more in tact there's a chance you can enjoy this collection. Color issues might impact the ability to enjoy the collection but I think most of the more common types of color blindness would still be able to enjoy the majority of the book. The text was at times difficult for me but I still highly enjoyed the collection and I think there was only one piece I couldn't figure out with my vision issues.

Overall I loved the emotions it evoked and the feel of the collection and if art collections like this are something you enjoy would highly recommend.

I got this as an ARC from GoodReads so a special thanks to the author/artist and GoodReads for allowing me to access this book before publishing.

Onto the review..

This was certainly a weird book, which contained mostly just different kinds of images that seemed to portray some dark things. I would say that maybe it is supposed to evoke emotions and given that the description mentioned trauma, that’s what I was thinking about while flipping the pages. There was some really cool images in this book but I'm not going to explain them because it’s worth taking a look for yourself and seeing how they make you feel. I almost felt like I was trying to uncover some hidden message and that left me a bit confused. I found myself zooming in to really look at the words and staring for a long time at the pictures to see what might come to mind. Its definitely a book that will make you ponder. I would recommend this to people who are into dark art. This is meant to explore the scary nightmares we encounter in the world.. so with that being said you might keep in mind that this could be triggering for some people.

Vivid and bold, this collection of images deal with LGBTQAI+ and art. This is a surreal dream-like sequence-proof that art transcends words, images can say more than a million words. This is personal and confrontational and loved it.

An absolutely beautiful piece of art. I could feel the anger and vulnerability behind this piece and I've already preordered it.

literal and visual poetry eaten and then spit back out by the internet. it's all here: ccru-era text, post-internet affectations, but also retrica effects, glitchy and lo-fi textures, even ig filters make an appearance. the e-book format is especially apt as it morphs this strange collection into a slideshow of sorts, or something close to video art, which seems the most appropriate way to experience it given the repetitions and the callbacks. above all, this is really about psyche as network wasteland, each thought and feeling feels like it couldn't exist without mediation by an internet persona. the only beacon of light being alice glass and her ecstatic performance, here captured in all its glory and dynamism.

This was absolutely bonkers but in a fun way, the multimedia was super cool and the vibrant colours and images make the reader feel like they are in a trip in a nightclub.

I think the art would be better suited on gallery walls or as posters for people to take home opposed to being in a book but I think the originality is enjoyable.

Thank you NetGalley for access to this e-arc.

Thank you NetGalley and Querencia Press for the chance to read and review this book.

When they say the text in this book "may not be well-suited to people with visual impairments" they really really mean that. As interesting as some of the images were they literally did make my eyes hurt.

That being said, this is a conceptually interesting exploration of art and poetry blended together. However, while the art was fantastic, there wasn't a significant amount of poetry, more often than not the same 3 lines were repeated over and over again, sometimes on the same image in different ways.

This experimental photo book felt like wandering through a distorted, digital dreamworld, and I was personally all here for it.

I've had the misfortune of being the victim to multiple traumatic incidents in my own life. I found words incredibly difficult to fashion and string together in the days afterwards, so the choice to communicate through images really resonated with me. The included pieces evoked visceral, raw emotion and while they represented a range of mediums and artistic styles, I found them to mostly be cohesive with the overall narrative.

Some of the images were repeated several times, but I'm assuming that was an intentional creative choice. I can think of many parallels between the concept of repetition and the cycle of emotions that I personally experienced while processing my own traumas, so this choice made perfect sense to me, at least in regard to my individual interpretation of the piece.

DreamRot is a stunning, evocative feast for both the eyes and soul. I'll absolutely be seeking out other works by Ami!

Thanks to NetGalley & Querencia Press for the simply gorgeous digital review copy 💖

a unique multimedia experience, this book is more of a collection of images and emotions. the emotions stand out, fear, frustration. provocative, sensual words. I enjoyed the cyberpunk photography and the experimental typography. the world through the lens of a traumatised person.