I just.

What.

Why have I read so many not-straightforward books recently?

Why do I read books where I’m really not sure that I’m smart enough to understand them?

Well, in this case it’s because so many people talked about this book that I got incredible FOMO and decided to finally take the plunge, even though I knew – from all that talking – that it was going to make my head spin.

And it did. Mostly in a “I think this is enjoyable?” kind of way, but… yeh. Spinning.

I could try to outline the story, but that would be something of a fool’s errand. There’s versions of worlds, or perhaps dimensions? Some characters maybe keep recurring across centuries. There are things hidden from mortal ken, and probably none of the worlds are our world, and things happened in the past that echo through to the future. You should definitely read Ian Mond’s review of it in Locus, because he does a better job of summing it up than I could.

So why bother writing this review? Really I just wanted to note, out loud as it were, how impressed I was while also flailing a bit to understand what was going on. Even through that flailing, I was drawn on, because the writing is just that good. And I felt hope that, even if I didn’t completely understand everything by the end, I’d at least have some sense of… completion, or resolution, or something. And I did. Not entirely completion, but certainly as though events and characters made some sort of sense, even if there were still gaps.

It really is excellent. Hard, and excellent. I can’t quite imagine where Chandrasekera will go next – anywhere, I guess.