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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Then the review parts like something wet. The score reveals itself to be a four., February 2, 2025
Related reviews: 2024 IFDB Awards

You are in an awful future, that much is plain. Words writhe and crawl along the screen at your touch, transforming from one language to another and back again as you try and divine their meaning. You are a conduit for something greater, something you do not understand, but which nevertheless has such a hold on you and the world you live in that reality, and your memories of it, are forever compromised.

This is Verses, and it is one hell of a trip.

I'm just going to come out and say it - I don't think I understood the story fully, or whether or not I am meant to understand it, which is why this is a four-star review and not a five. However, the impression I was able to get is that Verses is an incredibly atmospheric work that (ironically, as it turns out) needs time to digest.

The world it describes is full of decay, ruin and visceral imagery, and as a journeyman linguist I appreciate the little flourishes of translation present - at various points you're directed to translate something which appears in Romanian and then, as you click, it gradually transforms from that to a literal English translation and then a more thematically accurate (or more poetic) interpretation of that.

The religious symbolism laid throughout is thick and purposeful, and there are multiple ways this manifests in the environment and plot. It's a kind of writing that seems to live and breathe and die and rot just like the fleshy masses and biological protuberances it describes.

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable yet unsettling experience, and I hope to read more from this particular author. Four sebaceous glands out of five.

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