A science-physics-philosophy discourse presented in reams of exhausting dialogue and presuming to hold up the skeleton of this pseudo-novel. Or not. It was super interesting. Or wholly boring. Or maybe both, or neither. Academic and heady, or practical and socially-minded, or possibly just a collection of words, and everything is paradoxical, nothing is as it seems, even when it’s not as it doesn’t seem… —and so goes the narrative in this largely uneventful piece. At least it’s true to its title. 

 

The plot is still scraping itself together, and the characters, while they’re meant to be the core of this body of work, struggle though this one as a single confused, self-absorbed, at times nihilistic entity, lacking diversity of imagination, though engorged with the jargon and minutiae of stuffy puffed up academics in varied two-dimensional shapes on a diversified canvas. 

 

It sounds smart, sure. And there are bits of discourse that are certainly worthy analogies to the current state of world affairs (Belen’s sole embittered chapter highlights this beautifully—it’s a stand-alone, though worth reading on its own), but the actual story has no meat, no spine, no point, other than to act as a stack of soapboxes. 

 

We get more of Reina here, less of Parisa (shame, as this girl is an entertaining emotional train wreck), but what’s in Reina’s head cannot be all that appealing to even the basest of readers. How did someone so antisocial and expressively dull catch anyone’s attention, let alone this so-called elite society? And yet, dang, she grows on you… 

 

It reads implausible. Well, the whole thing is based on magic, but there’s nary a glimmer in 400 pages… which would be tolerable if there was a solid plot to attach oneself to and be carried along—but that too is sparse, and even this would not be such a deterrent if the characters were compelling, but…well, you get the idea. Not much happens in this novel, though it’s much more than what happens in the first (still scratching my head at that one; and perhaps one wonders ‘why delve into the second?’—but of course, I always hold out hope…Yes; I’ll read the third also.) 

 

This is better than the first by a leap, though struggling to be a ‘novel’ in sense of having a plot and a core idea (certain people are painted as threats to humanity, but we’re never sure what these threats are; and there are disastrous capabilities that certain (all) characters possess, and for which they ‘need to die’ but we never get to know the extent of these magic talents—well, we’re given the hints that they might have to do with being earth-sized human atomic bombs, or the accidental mind-readers of 8 billions, hosts to a plethora of pending disasters, but their intent is quite obscure and the ideas are left as vague possibilities never materialising). There’s no real purpose to the novel, but to maybe save the world(?) or at least talk about saving /destroying the world (ad nauseam), but the setting has taken shape more concretely, at least, and is possibly the only concrete thing one might grasp within these pages…. 

 

It’s really difficult to say whether I liked this or not. Possibly. Maybe. Who knows…?