somewhere nowhere

Asunder

4/5. For reasons, an isolated death speaker, who gained her powers through a deadly compact with an eldritch demon thing, gets bound at the soul to a man from another culture. Their attempts to separate take them on a long road trip across this strange fantasy world with a complicated recent political/religious history.

I liked this. It is about many kinds of joining and sundering – social, political, romantic, familial, religious. But the heart of it is the relationship that forms between two people unwillingly joined and forced to trust each other. Our protagonist is the sort who has a really hard time understanding when people are kind to her, because she’s had almost no experience of that. She doesn’t really figure it all out in this book, but she does come a long way.

I will say, there is supposed to be a sequel to this book, but my understanding is that the publisher didn’t buy it. Yet, hopefully? This got a surprise award nomination, so. But my point is, if the sequel happens, then great. If it doesn’t, then this ending is really not okay.

Content notes: Recollections of child abuse/domestic violence, a threat of . . . forced pregnancy by a demon is I guess what you’d call it.

Where the Axe Is Buried

4/5. A near future scifi thriller about the violently authoritarian surveillance state (it’s Russia) where the president is downloaded into successive bodies which the population steadfastly pretends not to notice, and the western european powers that have “rationalized,” i.e., installed AI prime ministers. A book about regime destabilization, and surveillance shadows, and thought control, and inception.

I was reading perfectly acceptable books, and then I picked this up and was like oh damn. Now this is good writing. This is tight (less than 100,000 words, probably) and intense and strange and bleak and hopeful. It stradles several genres and as such I suspect will not satisfy a lot of people: too literary and ambiguous for some, too much thriller for others. But this really landed for me.

Dense, chewy, controlled, beautifully written. Terribly sad on the costs of defying authoritarianism. Hopeful, in a complicated way.

Content notes: State violence Disappearances, camps, etc.