Total Entropic Denial
Community Rating
Description
April Pearce's world feels like it just might be falling apart. Her restaurant job leaves a taste in her mouth almost as bad as the food they serve their customers, her kinda-sorta girlfriend is probably, almost-definitely mad at her, and despite her best efforts, she can't seem to stop her neuroses from leading her face-first into bad decisions and bloody accidents.
But as if that wasn't bad enough, now it seems that there might be a very real chance that she's losing her mind. As a series of inexplicable and increasingly horrific occurrences lead April to question the fundamental nature of her reality, staring an incomprehensible truth in the face will strip her down to the deepestmarrowof her soul, and leave her straddling a line between two twin terrors; that she's either going insane, or, even more terrifyingly, that the things she's been seeing are absolutely real.
Following those questions to theirconclusionwilllead her to new horizons, throw her into conflict with unexpected enemies, and make her even more unlikely friends. As the boundaries of reality start to crack wide enough open to catch glimpses of the horrors that lie outside of their confines, the scope of her struggle starts to tend towards a yawning infinity. Wherever this path may end, one thing's for sure; once we get there, nobody will be able to shut their eyesandignore the consequences.
Information
- Status
- Completed
- Year
- 2024
- Author
- BlackholeRR
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 4.7/ 5.0
- Followers
- 3
- Views
- 10,953
Chapters(29 total)
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!
Community Reviews(4)
- InyssaRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0It's very difficult to find such good queer literature on RR, especially a story so fantastical and real as this one, with good prose and originality dripping from every surface. So I'm very glad a mutual of mine made me aware of this gem.
There's an almost magical realism flare to the way April's life slowly unravels against all of this strangeness, not in the strangeness itself but in the way it so perfectly mixes with the more mundane, common horrors she faces on a daily basis, both the fantastical and the real working together to form a spiral that she falls down into. They're two sides of the same coin, very nicely shown throughout the style of the story itself, the way both 'worlds' are written.
As for the story, it has more than enough to sink one's fangs into, whether you like realistic queer drama or cosmic mysteries with horrifying truths and opportunities within them. I think the mystery part of the story is done very well, I wanted to read more at each chapter end, and the payoff was more than worth it IMO.
I couldn't find any grammar issues while reading, but it's the prose I wanna highlight too. It's not overtly fancy or purple, but it's used excellently nonetheless whether to explore April's inner thoughts and the way she sees the real world to describing things that would never be possible, things horrifying and fantastical, both told through the same prose as cold as the sharp side of a scalpel.
The characters, April especially, are all wonderful too. They feel real even when everything around them becomes fantastical, and at no point does it feel like they're living in two different stories, just one with two wildly different sides.
This is a gem of a story, and I'd recommend it to anyone who can stomach some dark topics and depictions, because it is absolutely worth it. - K25fFRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0I had an extremely fun time with TED, managing to blitz through it in about three days.
It's a very fun story, an unfolding cosmic scope that just gets bigger and more frenetic, even as the mundane issues dovetail with the Massive Cosmos-Level Problems. I love the xenofiction segments, the weird and wild worldbuilding and the extremely clever way that the chapters start off counting down.
Also, they say the name of the thing in the thing, which is always a bonus. - qxixRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0I really enjoyed reading this one. It's rare to see a work excel across so many disparate aspects, it makes it kind of difficult to cover properly in a review. Here's a few things that stood out to me:
- The sudden dark turn the story took in the first few chapters was an extremely bold move, I didn't see it coming and I don't think I've ever seen another story pull off anything quite like it. Impressively done, but I'm glad I didn't stumble across it during a less emotionally stable period in my life.
- I'm astounded at how quickly the author got me to like Kroakli, their abrasive personality and bizarre speech patterns really shouldn't have been that fun, but somehow the author made it work.
- I wish there had been more about the committee people's society. The simian/sapien concept was really clever and I had hoped to see more development there, but it felt like they just showed up to be a convenient obstacle or source of exposition.
- Lots of interesting sci-fi concepts here, I particularly liked how all the weird spatial anomalies were used. - theothinRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0April's mind-bending journey is not an easy read, but if you're prepared to take it on, it will be well worth your while. Expect to find yourself disturbed by horrors both fantastical and mundane, and amazed by the elaborate tapestry of the worlds around them. Acting as a beta reader for Total Entropic Denial was a delight, and I hope many others get the chance to enjoy it as well.