Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC. I've read quite a few poetry books this year and this one really stood out! Poetry and horror mashup? Yes, the answer is yes. This is a quick read, literally took me about 20 minutes to get through. I may have enjoyed the formatting more than the poetry itself but I loved all the categories and the progression of the tone throughout. It didn't get horror-y until the last half. It was atmospheric with some creepy imagery and overall I enjoyed it. I will say there weren't any lines that just stuck with me but definitely a one of a kind read!

3.5 stars rounded up.

I'm a huge fan of poetry and I love getting to read new authors. This is my first time reading from Chistina Sng and I did like some of the poems. Unfortunately, there were many that I either did not get or that I just did not like. The concept was really interesting but I just did not understand a lot of the poems. Many of them were short, and while I do enjoy short poems, these ones just didn't make sense to me. I'm sure if I read this again in the future I might understand the poems more. There were a lot of poems that I didn't find meaningful and that could definitely just be me. There were a lot of interesting concepts but the poems didn't feel connected to the concepts, at least to me. I did enjoy the writing and that makes me want to try again with this author. Overall, I would give this 2 stars, it just wasn't for me.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and Interstellar Flight Press for an eARC of this poetry collection in exchange for my honest review. This is my first time reading anything from Christina Sng. I love poetry and I love reading poetry. However I have to admit I don't always get it. Unfortunately with this collection I just didn't get it. I am sure on a reread that I will come to understand it. I got the story/message the collection was trying to say, however I felt the stanzas on the poems were too short, they lacked meat on the bones. I don't believe I was the right reader for this collection of poetry. I am interested and will be seeking out collections by this poet.

This is a really great collection of poetry. There are horror, science fiction and fantasy poems included. It is divided into sections of various themes. Those themes include monsters, ghost stories, fairy tales, innovations in science, death and sickness, apocalyptic, and space travel. Each poem was very short, from a few lines to only a few going on to a second page.

I will say that the fairy tale section was my least favorite of the collection, and that may come done to personal preference. I loved every other section. These are the kinds of ideas and stories I love to read about the most. Some poems were heartfelt and touching, some were interesting thought experiments, and some were positively spooky. I really enjoyed the use of language and word choice included.

If you are a fan of poetry I would highly recommend this collection. But I would also recommend it to those that enjoy horror, science fiction, or fairy tales in bite size pieces.

This is underwhelming. It took approximately 20 minutes to read, and I was expecting more…terror? It wasn’t horror-poetry as I was expecting, and instead only left me missing my cat.

There are a few poems I liked. The Joy of Traveling, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Cats in Space were all good. And I really enjoyed all the poems in the Childhood Tales section.

As a whole, I did enjoy the book, but I wouldn’t buy a finished copy.

A really enjoyable collection of poetry that was so surreal and had such a magical feel to them, it is definitely a collection that I will read many times. I look forward to reading more by the author

I got an ARC of this book.

I don't get it. At all. It took all of 10-15 minutes to read, but I have no idea what I just read. Sometimes that is exciting, but this time, I just won't remember this book. The cover is amazingly cool, but inside is a mystery to me.

This was a fairly quick read with punchy little poems that felt more in line with fairy tales then chilling horror. I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but the collection was still an enjoyable afternoon read featuring classic monsters, fairytales and a bit of feminism.

ARC received from NetGalley

This collection delights in the misunderstood, putting a new spin on werewolves, basilisks, sirens, ghosts, aliens, pandemics, fairy tales and myths. Sng gives new voice to classic heroines and the result is terrifying, magical, and fantastic. Don't miss it!

Christina Sng warns you from her dedication about how brief she'll be - this writing style took me a couple poems to get into, but once I got it, I got it. It seems like a fun game to her to figure out how concise she can be and still get a point across, and she plays the game well. I often found myself stunned at how moved I was from so few words. I experienced so many emotions while reading this: melancholy from the poems on death and change and mourning, joy from the nods to childhood tales, and speculative (of course) from the pieces on life after aliens or life after sun-death (I say 'of course' because Interstellar Flight Press specializes in speculative literature). If you like space, cats, fairy tales, and creepy dead things, this is the book for you! I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who's new to and/or intimidated by poetry as well. I can't wait to pick up a physical copy when this comes out in a month!

Thank you NetGalley, Christina Sng, and Interstellar Flight Press for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I think this poetry collection would appeal to fans of amanda lovelace or sci fi fans who want to try poetry. My favorite poems were “Escape” and a “A Better World.”

The repeated separated pacing of the poems and the fairy tale references turned a little stale and gimmicky after a while. Both the formats and the fairy tale references worked well as literary devices in the beginning, but the repetition of them to this extent made them lose punch and meaning slightly.

Although some of the poems struggled to stick the landing for me, they make up a really interesting collection of poems that tell the stories of humanity's grief and hubris, from the beginning of life to the end of humanity somewhere out in the universe making it well worth a read.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no fan of poetry, in fact I more or less hate it.

I'm happy to report that I enjoyed reading this, a collection of short, sharp, dark and humorous poems.
That's not to say I liked every single poem but as a whole it's a great collection and different to boot.
Each chapter contains similarly themed poems, which is a nice touch. I also enjoyed that they included takes on famous writings and movies.
The only issue was that it was such a quick read.
A surprisingly entertaining collection of short, dark poetry.

This book was difficult for me because I think the author wanted to use brevity to be poignant but rather it just said nothing. The concept was interesting and important, but if really felt like Instagram poetry. I noticed that many of the poems in the collection have won awards, so I probably am not the best source for an opinion. I think where this collection suffered for me is because I recently read a collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry that deals a lot with grief and it was just done better.

Rating: 3,5/5
The Gravity of Existence by Christina Sng is a poetry collection centred around the supernatural and scary.
This was such a quick read, I literally flew through it in less than twenty minutes. I kind of wish that some of the poems had been longer, because I loved the ideas in them, but there just wasn’t enough of most of them to really make them stick in my opinion. This collection most definitely is unlike most other poetry collections I’ve read, but I found myself always wanting a little bit more than I was given by these poems. (I am aware that that was probably the intention, but it made the whole book feel a little unsatisfactory to me.) I do want to highlight my favourite part of this collection, which was the chapter ‘The Enlightenment of Science’.
I’d recommend this collection if you’re interested both in poetry and fantasy/sci-fi, because it’s such a quick read and still has some really interesting bits in it.

This was a quick and easy read. I was really curious to see how the themes of horror/supernatural would merge with poetry, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. The poems were not for me: I felt like most of them were way too short and felt flat because of their length, as they were often too concise to be meaningful. I am mainly drawn to the lyrical aspect of poetry, which I couldn’t really find in this collection. Overall, while I enjoyed some poems, this collection was not for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review

3.5*

This is my first Christina Sng, and I’m very excited to get to more of her work. However, I wasn’t a fan of the first half/third of this collection. The science fiction poetry at the end was glorious, and honestly, I’d love a full collection like that. I feel the poetry in the middle (the princess poems) didn’t show enough of the beauty of her words.

I still recommend this book, and I will be picking up more of Sng’s poetry collections!

Thanks to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for this advanced review copy!

I was offered this collection of poems as an ARC via NetGalley and read them all in one sitting. These tiny poems were intriguing and for the most part incredibly dark. Many are thought provoking and in very few words leave vivid imagery behind such as her "Mass Murders". This little collection could be dipped into whenever you want to spend a few minutes to give yourself a shiver as Sng creates whole eerie worlds in a few lines. I applaud the ability to create such nuance with such brevity!

This book is an incredible collection of poetry. One section retells fairy tales in haiku, and several lean on elements of horror. All around, this was extremely special and well-done.

I'll be putting a review for this up this coming Friday.

I am not a big poetry reader, but I was intrigued by the Sci-fi genre which is my favoured read. I loved this collection. I was amazed at how with so few words these poems allow meds whole Sci-fi stories to unfold in my imagination. They are all so thoughtfully put together, entertaining and thought provoking and many made me smile with their quiet humour. Thank you to Intersteller Press and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.