Lucky Day

So campy and bizarre as usual, with a game/sci-fi slant to the horror. I liked the statistics focus (nerd), and found the probability cause behind the horror very fun. I feel like I could tease out some deep meanings here regarding homophobia and statistics, but this was just a fun wild ride.

This was my first Tingler, though I don't think it technically qualifies because nobody gets pounded in the butt.I loved Vera's specific flavor of depression. Not because it was refreshing, exactly, but because it felt painfully real in a way I don't think I've encountered before.I also couldn't have guessed the ending in a million years, which is always a delight.Oddly, despite the absolutely bonkers premise, this book remained incredibly grounded. Every character felt like a real person rather than a hero, villain, or archetype. That's one of the book's greatest strengths, but I think it also kept me at arm's length emotionally. There was nobody to love, nobody to hate, just a catastrophe unfolding and the seemingly impossible task of show more resolving it.Thankfully, the book absolutely nailed the landing. show less

I have been consistently pleased with Tingle's horror work. Lucky Day was gruesome and pulls no punches when it comes to describing the physical and emotional turmoil its characters experience. As a whole, the book champions optimistic nihilism - if nothing matters, we might as well do something good and live life to the fullest, since we beat the odds by existing at all.

absurdist queer horror. strange but interesting, quick read and fast-paced :)

very interesting premise. wouldnt say the horror was rlly that scary, more existential than anything. a bit gory, made me cringe several times 👍

Well that was certainly something. One thing I can always count on with a book by Chuck Tingle is it will be quirky, it will be gross and it will be a lot of fun. I really liked the characters, Vera especially; her reaction to the first LPE made sense to me. When nothing else makes sense, how is it possible to go on like nothing happened? It was raining fish for crying out loud! I liked this one, it was different and really brought to light the concept of is luck just lucky, or is it manufactured, or is it something else entirely?

I really wish I liked Tingle’s writing more because I love the cut of his jib. But this book—focusing on a professor of probability whose life is destroyed by the “Low Probability Event,” which kills seven million people in gruesome and unlikely ways, and who is several years later recruited by the organization set up to investigate the event—is both clunkily written and suffers plot-wise from the walrus/fairy problem. I don’t know how fairies work, but I know how professors work, as well as how consultants to government organizations work. A professor of probability would not refuse to believe that a low-probability event could happen because it’s so unlikely, and the concepts she explains to her recruiter would not show more surprise him years into the investigation. These were super fixable problems that could be addressed with a few edits! But they occurred so early in the introduction of the respective characters that they soured me. A better editor to fix word choice/repetition would also have helped. Jason Pargin is doing similar cosmic horror mixed with banal absurdity, but works much better for me. show less

Compared to [b:Camp Damascus|61884782|Camp Damascus|Chuck Tingle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1664285565l/61884782._SY75_.jpg|97258162] and [b:Bury Your Gays|195790870|Bury Your Gays|Chuck Tingle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697739086l/195790870._SY75_.jpg|197724654], Chuck Tingle's third horror novel was a huge disappointment. Lucky Day suffers from an underdeveloped plot and characters, plus buckets of bloody body horror. YMMV if you don't mind reading about the gruesome murder of a secondary character by a typewriter-wielding angry chimpanzee within the first 30 pages of the book - because it's the first gory death of many.