“The real reality is something we create every moment of every day, that realities spin off from our decisions in every second we’re alive.”

The book will not be for everyone.

Firstly we have Vandermeer’s poetic prose style. Let’s see I have selected a paragraph at random.
“Came the prying snarl. Came the toothsome growl, so thick and loud it permeated every surface, seemed to shake my bones our of alignment. Came the huffing after. “

Then we have we have a very strange and surreal world of a city’s ruins populated by biotech creatures and the few remaining humans. Here you get drunk by eating alcohol minnows, feral children have me been manipulated with biotech and a giant bear called Mord rules over the city.

Finally, for Science Fiction there is very little action. This book is instead a slow-paced characterisation of Rachel, her partner Wick and her foundling Mord.

The novel is complex but is essentially about what it means to be and what defines a person. Why we live and struggle to survive. The relationship between a parent and child. The secrets we keep from each other. What is good and what is wrong. And the search for happiness in a world that has been destroyed.

This book is disorientating, however, Vandermeer keeps the reader tethered by writing the book from Rachel’s first-person perspective. It’s written almost as her journal. At one stage she talks directly to the reader “ What would you have done, reader, who has been able to follow me like the Magician followed me, invisible and ever-watchful and without consequences?”.

This book is recommended for fans of weird fiction.