Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby

 

This was the first of Cosby's novels I read, or even heard about it, and I figured I'd give it a reread to see how it holds up. It holds up fucking brilliantly, as it turns out. There are some glorious turns of phrase inside, and the story is ... pyrotechnic. The characters are all believable and well-individualized, and their actions are mostly tied to their motivations (Slice does a thing for reasons that aren't clear, but it's not wildly out of character, really); the mains are fricking saturated in pain and grief, everything they do carries that sting and that stink, even the relatively upbeat (redemptive, even!) ending doesn't wash either away. It's a starkly beautiful novel, probably the one where I discovered that preference in myself.