Reviews and Comments

Between the cover and the scene descriptions the author had trailed on Mastodon, I was expecting this book to be mostly gore. What I actually found on reading is that it's mostly a story of a very relatable character suffering in the isolation of having to be twice as good and still never fitting in due to everyone else's racism. With some very hard-to-read descriptions of just how brutal the competition of a top ballet school is, and frankly easier-to-read interludes of supernatural gore, all of which serve the human story.

It's also beautifully written, with the protagonist's internal conflict carrying through, and a lot of confusion about other characters' relationships and motives that feels like the confusion I would be experiencing in the protagonist/narrator's shoes rather than any flaw in the telling.

As straight storytelling, the climactic scene is preposterous, but as a continuation of the emotional rollercoaster up to that point it works perfectly.

I wasn't expecting this book to be my kind of thing, and now I can't wait for Shea's next one.

Oh, so that's where the antisemitism I saw another review mention is waiting. And it's not just the sort of casual BS I sadly expect from 19th Century goy authors, it's a character with no name other than "the [disgusting | ugly | insert other insult here] Jew", whose ugliness is mentioned every page for a while, and appears to "own" a young actress. Also, a Shakespeare impresario who the character can't imagine could possibly actually appreciate Shakespeare rather than just seeing money to be made, because that would be too human.

There's a lot to unpack here about whether it's Wilde telling us how he really feels or not, given that he puts a lot of obvious nonsense in the mouths of his characters. But I'm not sure I have the energy and I might just bounce. Partly because I think I need to not keep running into [epithet Jew] right now, and partly because I'm a bit frustrated with the book anyway.

I'm finding I don't care what happens to any of the characters. Not even enough to wish ill on them, I just don't care. Until this bit, the pleasure of reading each page was keeping me going, and a lot of it really does sparkle, but put a big caveat on that pleasure and why am I still reading?

So much to love about this book, how it weaves together unanswerable questions about consciousness and computation, together with a much more didactic message about humans' consumptive relationships with, well, everything including each other, and enough of a mystery story to keep the plot moving along. Also some great evocations of places (ahhh, multiple key scenes on Istanbul ferries), and of the ways peoples' reputations misrepresent their selves.

It's not a strongly character driven book - every character that is fleshed out seems to be a variant of "loner who wishes for connection" and largely a vehicle for the author's ideas - but there's enough depth to the characters to keep me reading. My one real criticism is that the ending felt a bit rushed. Not in the sort of too convenient, story-undermining way, but not quite satisfying either. It doesn't feel like a set up for a sequel, but I kind of want Nayler to write a few short stories filling out the characters a bit more and picking up some of the loose ends - perhaps something like Sofia Samatar did with The Winged Histories.