Maali of Sri Lanka finds himself in the in-between, having just died. Other spirits surround him. Importantly, there is a choice between trusting the institution in place to port souls back into the Buddhist reincarnation cycle—or to leave that behind, and believe a spirit who claims that people are being churned enough. They tell him he was murdered and if he wishes to know what happened to him, and most importantly, obtain some measure of retribution, then he must learn from those people who stay in the between place. Where they can whisper thoughts into ears and have the person think it is their own voice. Or turn into another kind of creature altogether, such a demon or ghoul. He has seven moons to decide to go to the light, or else lose his choice completely and dwell between.

While this does have some issues with middle book syndrome, and it does like to reiterate things really often, (one time it reiterated something only two pages back) overall I think the story is great and plotting serviceable. The world building, what is there of it, is really interesting, derived from beliefs in the culture. Where it lacks somewhat substantially is in, ironically, because Maali was a photographer, is painting a scene. It is primarily dialogue, with very sparse description that generally is not repeated or altered. For something taking place in ‘89 and in Sri Lanka, and how the protagonist would be processing the world, there’s really a lot left to the reader to project onto the fiction. That’s my number one gripe. Coupled with the slow pacing near the middle, especially when how Maali negotiates this between place as a ghost and what’s possible there, it does lag and could absolutely have been truncated. It is also told in 2nd person which raises some interesting questions immediately in the fiction, but might also put off some people. For me, it worked well and felt organic. No problem.

The mystery always kept me coming back, though. How did Maali die? Will he be able to communicate really important details to his lover, DD, and best friend and presentable girlfriend, Jacki. Maali being a queer man in a society completely intolerant of that, and not being a sad, self loathing queer was really great as well. But also dangerous, always adding to a subtext to interactions. Did it play a part in his death? Did his job, photographing atrocities for various factions, finally put him in the crosshairs of someone? Or perhaps his gambling debts? All of the characters were believable, interesting, and flawed. No more than Maali himself, who was very single serving it seems. Not exactly an anti-hero or dark horse. Just very human, in a way that worked and drove home the themes well.

While the structure of this was quite flighty on audio, the truth is the two narrators are just so fantastic, I quickly resolved to re-read the book on the page in the future, for now going along for the excellent ride. Otherwise, the preoccupation with pinning it down would have, I know, interrupted my concentration.

And what a ride it is. The voice in this is exquisite, and I think humanizes death in a way that really worked for me. The cancer as character managed to characterize the person diagnosed even further, imbuing certain qualities not always on display, but clearly present. I found it emotionally present and consistently excellent at interrogating a pretty difficult theme. Every range of emotion in found and annunciated with the interplay between plot beats and character interactions, contrasted with the voice and story of the cancer.

I think the ending of this particularly worked for me as well. Which is a hard thing to really nail, for something as existential as it becomes. But it was poignant, meaningful, and supplied a the rare, earned end. I knew 2 chapters in it would probably be a 5 star read, and that I’d want to re read it again on paper whenever it becomes affordable. In Canada it’s $27 CAD for the paperback, which just isn’t tenable for my budget, but there’s a March 2023 edition dropping that’s $13 via Blackwells, so my eye is on that.

The abbreviation of a name and the forging of a fiction that feels so much like truth really makes this occupy an emotionally effective liminal space. One which most stories like this don’t typically engender, at least for me. I’m used to be in a macro perspective, completely unable to imagine really, but nevertheless empathize. Here, it manages to be one step further. With the choice of diction and what is on the page, I think there is no question of any of this not happening, yet it has the benefits of fiction as well.

It is the most affecting book on war I’ve ever read. From the very start, only with S. In the hospital, giving birth to a child conceived by sexual assault, it is gripping and truly visceral. A word I do not use unless I mean it, because it’s become far too popularized, imo. It is the right word for this story. You really need to be prepared for all manner of degradation, but also the immense humanization. It doesn’t feel highly dramatized nor formulaic. And yet you do know what will happen next, I think. The amount of granularity and the choice of what to show “on camera” is perfect.

I can’t think of a thing it could have done better. Horrific, too, that every name is abbreviated, because it suggests that it could be absolutely anybody, removing the possible foreign language distance, and maintaining any kind of privacy that might have felt to be impinged upon.

Had this for years and haven’t dipped in. It’s surprising how interesting the evolution of the concept art is, especially for the beasts themselves. A mix of cgi composite and illustrations. The stuff around old New York I didn’t care about as much, but the majority was really compelling, and there’s a quadruple page spread of concept wands that is especially neat. Ah, back when I thought the series would be cool, and the second one wasn’t out yet, let alone the terrible third.

An ostensibly shy, bright, socially inept loner meets his queer, in every way, counterpart in college. When their relationship turns to toxic co-dependency their upbringing and social stratification create a toxic spiral that bring out the very best and very worst in them, culminating into acts one-upmanship into very dark places.

This sometimes get billed as Secret History meets Call Me By Your Name. I don’t think it’s that. The prose work is great but it’s not Tartt. Nor is the love story parallel to CMBYN. There’s two gay men and they’re both the same age and the power dynamics, I guess kind of could be likened to CMBYN, but it’s a reach. Just because they’re in school and they descend into darkness does not mean it’s evocative of Secret History. It’s much better to go into this knowing it’s unhinged, about two underage 17 year olds that are diametrically opposed in every characteristic, and it gets very dark. There’s themes around motivated thinking paired with Paul, the massively unreliable narrator, social constructs pressuring queer identities in various ways that relate to mental health and stability. It’s a rich experience that doesn’t need to be likened to other popular stuff to sell copies.

I wouldn’t say it particularly feels literary, but more upmarket. Better than commercial fiction in every respect, but attempting the kind of appeal that comes with paralleling and invoking genre fiction. I think the most fun aspect of it is the unreliable qualities Paul’s narration suggest even after a first reading. How much can be believed about what happened, the dialogue, how things play out, the courting, the ending. All of it being suspect makes it far more interesting than the actual trajectory of the plot, for me. The character work and themes are very convincing. The prose work is where I found it less engaging and did make it feel like things dragged, because Paul’s projection of himself onto the world make for very similar interactions and plot beats. And they just keep reoccurring. By the time things come to a head though, it dovetails nicely into a substantive and satisfying ending. It’s tense and feels right. Elevating it from a 3 star read to a 4.

The name says it all, really. The book is, ostensibly, a novelized history of a revolution that never was, and why violence became a necessity. It focuses on a specific cohort of students at a fictional, fantastical Oxford, told from Robin’s perspective. From the time he was taken by a guardian and made to imbibe language as a facility to make magic happen. On silver bars match-pairs of words in different languages are etched, then spoken. The translation, the dissonance between the two words creates an effect when this is done. What’s more is Britain runs on silver; a new silver revolution, rather than the evolution of technology, dominates and subsists and oppresses the colonies.

It works beautifully as an abstraction because it shows how dependent a colonizer is on labour, in this case specialized, and it manages to condense an abstraction of an industrial revolution, and the severe impact it had on the stratification of class. The cohort are the literal lifeblood of Britain going forward because they need language that is not in popular use, as it’s essentially watered down, and so people foreign born as translators are pivotal. To invoke the magical effects the translator/speaker must understand exactly the etymology thinking of the words. Which is why people who are not fluent and think and dream in the language can’t simply use any language at all.

Robin is Chinese born, Ramy Indian born, Victoire Haitian born (I believe?), and Letty, the only white person in the cohort is the only native and I think is a classist, if I recall. In much of the book it’s a dark academia campus novel, very political and forces the students to confront their immense privilege and their indoctrination of the colonial mindset, while also keeping them immensely busy at learning their trade. It’s demanding, punishing, and exploitive. As the plot proceeds the cohort uncovers more about Babel—the centralized, proprietary building from which all the silver is stored, maintained, researched, etcetera. With the knowledge of how the country and the institution perpetuates it’s western colonial, racist attitudes and strangle hold over foreign soil, we witness the slow galvanization of the cohort and others, which culminates into the aforementioned revolution. Shifting from campus novel, to more of a fantasy drama.

This isn’t action-packed, it’s fairly meticulous in it’s plotting. It’s overtly didactic, political, and concerned with building the relationships out between Robin and cohort, along with the course work. I found the world building and the granular lectured on translation and theory absolutely riveting. I bet that won’t be the case for everyone. The weakest part of the novel for me was how incessantly the exposition is. It does not trust the reader whatsoever. Every tiny detail has to be voiced because it wants the reader to come to the Correct answer. In fairness, that’s probably helpful to lots of readers after what we saw from the BLM protests. Most people do buy propaganda from the state and haven’t confronted their own nationalism and internalized socio-economic status—but it does make for annoying reading sometimes because it is so heavy handed that things are reiterated and the characters became ideologue caricatures, ironically, only ever speaking to voice their positions. It begins to subsume the work done at the beginning of humanizing them and showing them as unique individuals, because as it goes on, they do feel reduced to wind up toys on set paths that are extremely well foreshadowed, such that most everything is predictable. Certainly the ending, whom betrays whom, who is put in danger and dominated for death. Really, I think I was surprised once.

It is ironic, since black and brown and queer bodies don’t have the option of ever having identities that don’t revolve around the political, and that’s the thing that kept me from connecting to them fully. In relation to a plot, all their paths are set trajectories. Thinking back, I can remember very few personal details. And there are even interlude chapters that could be great, offering up internal machinations of characters who never really say much except how they feel about one another, yet always feel vapid and formless and abstracted. I didn’t believe them. And then they get set on their paths, so it was just fine, not great.

The prose gets out of the way is great at reducing things to the easily understood. The plot itself does a great job of communicating the message. But everything did not feel organic coming to that point. You can see the puppeteer, so it’s fun, but you’re never really taken in.

3.5 rounded up because I think with the title and synopsis it achieves its goals, but I am fairly disappointed. I had high hopes for this. One of the only pre orders of the year I had made.

While I really didn’t mind the art and liked the colour palette and paneling a lot, this never really coalesced for me. It’s a bit too silly but with tragic beats that felt unearned and weird. Once everyone came together it didn’t have any impact for me, unfortunately.

To say this is a quiet book would be an understatement, as there’s basically just a few lines of dialogue. It’s about a woman and a man missing each other, though living close, going about their days, noticing that both of them don’t conform to beauty standards and seemingly pining for a organic, romantic connection. I liked the artwork and it was sweet enough.

Loved Sabrina so I gave this a shot. Interesting concept but none of it ended up working for me. It even took longer to read because of the boring paneling and uninteresting compositions that give it a littered look, rather than intentional. Honestly, it kind of seems like some program that generates the panels and the characters are so bland, it all feels like it was phoned in on MS Paint or something. Which wouldn’t be a problem if it was actually interesting (see Sabrina), but it never really gets going or lands a significant plot beat. My faith was not remotely rewarded in proceeding with it despite qualms from the beginning.