Once upon a time the world was round and you could go on it around and around * and then it became something different entirely. A universe all too contained and suddenly coming undone. And in it a young woman contracted as a maid, fleeing a double suicide of her employers tries to find her way to something like safety or maybe just solace.
Myrra is twenty five and she has been under a labor contact for most of her life, a fifty year contract that can be bought and sold, like so many of her social class. Because the world she lives in is extremely socially divided into approximately three strata, the megawealthy, the workers, and everyone inbetween. Myrra was born into the first stratum, her employers were very much of the second one and Tobias, the Security forces worker who is tasked with finding Myrra, was born into money, but eventually adopted and raised in the inbetween class, comfortable, but not obscenely so. Due to his divided upbringing, he has becoming a methodical precise ambitious man, someone who wants to excel and prove himself to the world and to his beloved adopted father who is also his boss as the chief of Security. But this is neither a crime novel nor a chase novel. In fact, once you learn the reasons for Myrra’s leaving and you will in the end of first chapter, you’ll know exactly what kind of story this is. Frustratingly enough, the description doesn’t give away too much, so I don’t think I can either, but suffice it to say, whatever kind of story you think it might be…it is magnificent. Every so often the book just hits you right, the words reach out from the pages, grab you and don’t let go. It’s a terrific rush, the sort of thing a reader always looks for and seldom finds and this book did just that. From the very first chapter, it transported, teleported, threw me into a distant, strange and tragic world. And I didn’t want to leave, though leaving is kind of one of the main themes here. You can tell, though, what’s coming. The title promises as much. The world goes round and around until it no longer can. And this novel is appropriately elegiac without reserving to being moribund. It’s more about the endings than beginnings, but it is a thing of beauty to behold for all its inherent sadness. It’s a debut that gets every single thing right from creating terrific, compelling, memorable characters to spectacular intricate worldbuilding to gorgeously engaging narrative. I absolutely loved it. Being a fan of dystopian fiction, I do have a pretty wide field of comparison, but this book is too good for all that, it is very much a thing of its own. So if you read thus far you already got the idea that this is a book worth checking out. Please do. And walk away now, because I want to say something things about the ending. OK? Ok then… So no happy ending here, not a conventional one. That’s a brave thing in this world of contrived performative collective cheer and I salute it. And sure, I’ve come to care so much about the characters and sure I wanted them to somehow find a magic way out, but at the same time I completely understand and appreciate the ending the author chose. This is, after all, a novel about the world giving way. Because this world itself a stunningly hubristic venture into the indifferent darkness of space, this world’s trajectory was that of an Icarus’ flight. Ambition or arrogance dwarfed by impossible circumstances, chance, brutally random twist of fate. Les like fiction, more like life. A cheaper, more commercially minded way to end this would have the three of them finding a shuttle, making to Telos, living happily ever after. In fact, there’d be at least one sequel too. It would have been fine, but it wouldn’t have been right. And it wouldn’t have poignant. And it wouldn’t have been memorable. This is the way that world ends…it’s the end of the world and they know it…and they are fine. In fact, approaching something like peace, something like grace. So that’s the novel and all my notions and thoughts about it. It’s an excellent read, I absolutely loved it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. * Gertrude Stein, from Myrra's favorite book
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2023
Categories |