Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this fantasy eARC from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

I love Marie Brennan and Tachyon Publications so I was excited to get this and it is awesome.

Have ye ever heard about the end of the world?  Well Driftwood is the purgatory where worlds hang out just before they end forever.  Yer world slowly starts disappearing before eventually being engulfed by the Crush.  Driftwood itself is a collection of the last pieces and parts of a variety of worlds slowly being consumed and the people who inhabit them.

As the author says on her website:

"Driftwood is inherently a place of fragments, the large, coherent structure of a novel felt like fundamentally the wrong approach to storytelling in that setting.  But there’s a way around that. Call it a fixup if you want — a book assembled out of pre-existing shorter material — or a mosaic novel, with the story being told through many voices and many sub-tales . . . It’s made up of the short stories I’ve written already, plus a novelette-length tale that’s new, and it’s all stitched together with a frame that gives context and greater meaning to the pieces within it.  Which makes the text kind of like Driftwood itself.'

The novel's interconnected short story format was a little confusing at first cause ye be tossed right in.  I quickly became fascinated by Driftwood.  There is a character, Last, who is the frame holding the stories together.  Last's world is long gone but somehow he didn't go with it.  He passes his time being a translator and guide.  His presence is felt all over Driftwood and he seems to be the only constant.  He is a mystery with no good answers but lots of speculation.

I loved the world building, the different people, how the economies worked, the magic elements, and the mixing of cultures.  The short story format was tantalizing and always left me wanting more.  More about every world, more about the characters ye merely glimpse, and just more stories altogether.

The only real dissatisfaction came from the book ending too soon even though it was fantastic and kinda perfect in how it ended.  I could certainly read more about Driftwood and while I loved the mosaic novel, I would also love more of Last's life and backstory.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Tachyon Publications!