"[3] Los Angeles Review of Books compared Shimoda's work to the visual art of Cory Feder in that they both concern "the unlikely physics of dreams, emanating a flummoxing, mythical quality."

"[4] The Poetry Foundation observed an airy quality about Shimoda's work, calling it "titanium-light" but still sensing "the gathered emotion" which "vibrates beneath each line".

[5] The Brooklyn Rail called the book a transformative experience to read, stating that it moves through different realms: life, death, and the interstitial, haunted spaces in between, "around you, below you, through you, behind."

"[8] Heavy Feather Review began with an observation of the prose elements in the book: "The essays of Hydra Medusa do what Shimoda always does well: write clearly and cogently, but with turns that take us somewhere we recognize but didn’t anticipate."

"[10] Similarly, Alta Journal wrote that "In Hydra Medusa, then, reality is its own sort of dreamscape, in which time and space are less important than our connection and responsibility to one another, even across the great divide of death.