Fantasy and science fiction novels often use an ongoing war as the central driving narrative force. In Premee Mohamed’s new book, The Siege of Burning Grass, two rival powers have been at war for years – the Varkal and the Med’ariz. Both forces are hungry for new territory and seem to have absorbed smaller countries into their domains and both claim that the other is the aggressor. But the people the Varkal seem to hate more than the enemy are the pacifists who have signed a pact committing them to non-agression.
One of these is a man called Alefret. Alefret is freakishly large and strong and so could be an effective fighter. But he has committed himself to the pacifist cause and when The Siege of Burning Grass opens has lost his leg in a bombing and is being held prisoner. Alefret is offered a deal in an attempt to end the war. He is to accompany un undercover soldier, Qhudur, infiltrate one of the floating cities of the enemy and connect with their own anti-war movement. He agrees even when he knows this will not be a peaceful mission.
Through the fraught relationship of Alefret and Qhudur and the encouters that they have both on the way to the city and after, Mohamed explores ideas of war, of resistance and of humanity. She does this in a strange world of biological tools (for example lizard cigarette lighters and wasps that deliver medicines through their stingers) and mismatched forces. There is an unnecessary throwaway explanation of the history of this world towards the end of the book which follows what can only be described as a very well worn trope.
The Siege of Burning Grass is more about the journey as it is about its ultimate destination. Mohamed uses her scenario to throw a light on the constant (and ongoing) warfare in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. In particular, the entrenching of ideas and ideologies to both justify conflict and then keep it on foot. Mohamed asks a lot of relevant and difficult questions and does not provide any easy answers.

Release March 12 2024

THE SIEGE OF BURNING GRASS is GRIMDARK Fantasy straight out of the starting gate. Let me repeat this: GRIMDARK. One needs a strong stomach, a still-beating heart, a wide-open ear to catch the subtle politicized references [I speak in broad terms of the undertones applying to Contemporary culture, not addressing specifics], a devotion to Fantasy, an appreciation of Pacifism, and an eye to recognizing finely-tuned characterizations. That said, we are immediately in the control of a supremely accomplished author with an incomparable imagination: Premee Mohammed.

The Siege of Burning Grass is a science fiction novel from fascinating and incredibly prolific author Premee Mohamed. Mohamed's works tend to be weird in setting/concept even as they deal with serious themes and rarely go the way you expect: her lovecraftian Beneath the Rising trilogy for example was incredibly propulsive and twisty in some of the best and most infuriating ways. And the Siege of Burning Grass is similar in some ways: the story is incredibly weird in setting - featuring two warring Empires, one of which uses extremely weird biotechnology (wasps that sting you and administer drugs to you on a regular basis!) and one that uses regular tech from their floating cities - and twisty in plot and deals with some serious themes all at the same time as it follows pacifist Alefret as he's forced by one Empire to give his support to an infiltration mission to end the war.

The result is a pretty interesting piece of work, as it poses questions such as what is the value of pacifism in the middle of war and how much is that worth, at what price can one stick to one's values when the circumstances are always bad, and what is the cost of nationalism and what it drives people to do. There's also themes of class and how that affects who gets to protest, and well probably a bunch of other themes I'm forgetting or may have missed. It's a pretty deep novel but not one that ever drags or feels like some philosophy tract: like Mohamed's other works, it captivates you and doesn't let go until it hits its ending and is well worth your time.

Trigger Warnings: Thoughts of Suicidal Ideation and discussions of how soldiers are taught to commit suicide, as well as disability euthanasia are parts of this novel. None of it is gratuitous and all serves a purpose, but fair warning.

Plot Summary:
For years, Varkal has fought all of its neighbors and has sought to absorb them into its Empire. Now it wages a long conflict with its neighboring Empire of Med'ariz and its Meddon people, who use strange tech and have their own incredibly strong flying cities. It's a conflict that has been devastating to the Empire , with its peoples suffering and the battles seemingly going poorly, even as most of the Med'ariz cities have suffered as well.

Alefret looks like a man who would be the ideal soldier - huge in stature and very strong, he looks like a brutish monster on first appearance. But Alefret is in fact the leader of the Pact, Varkal's small nascent pacifist resistance, and for that pacifism Alefret found himself bombed and maimed by his own people and imprisoned and tortured in a military facility.

But after months of torture, a Varkal general comes to him with a proposal: Alefret will be allowed to "escape" with a brutal zealot soldier named Qhudur, with whom he will work to infiltrate Med'ariz's last floating city, the one containing its rulers. There, Alefret will make contact with the Med'Ariz pacifist movement, who has somehow heard about him and think of him as a hero, and he and Qhudur will use that movement as a weapon to end the war.

It's a plan that supposedly could end this horrifying conflict that has been going on for years and all it would cost is all of Alefret's principles. Can he or would he actually do it? And what will be the cost if he tried?

The Siege of Burning Grass is a novel that has a very weird science fiction setting, but at the same time has a very familiar-ish setup. Your background setting features the Varkal Empire relying on biological technology - their technology is frequently living creatures they've created; for example, Alefret is being healed (partially unwillingly) by a genetically engineered suite of wasps that regenerates his leg, provides him with painkillers, and other substances, and he has to keep the wasps alive in order to keep the treatment going. And then there's the Meddon people who may use conventionally non-living tech...but also have things like floating cities. And yet, when it all comes down to it, this is still the story of a conflict between two Empires that was incited for a reason no one really remembers anymore (and the two Empires explain the inciting incident very differently) and where at least one such Empire has always been making war or forcibly expanding its reach over the years, without regards to the wants of the people they conquer. It's a setup that has obvious meaning in our present world and in history.

Into this setting comes Alefret. Alefret is a man who looks monstrous and strong but instead wants peace and for the fighting to stop. He's a pacifist in the truest sense of the word, who doesn't approve of even learning self defense techniques (because one's instinct will then become to use those techniques) and whose methods for trying to incite peace feature protests and leaflets. Alefret and his group, the Pact, notably come from lower classes in Varkal, as they bear the brunt of Varkal's warmongering, but they have little impact seemingly on actually stopping the war before they are brutally repressed by the Varkal corrupt military government. And well, it's no surprise: Varkal is a country that dehumanizes its enemies as non-human (literally), includes a school that they imprison Alefret in that he can tell was once used to essentially torture children, and cares more for its military and biotech than they do its people. So of course they would hunt down and torture pacifists.

So when they come to Alefret with the task of infiltrating Meddon's last city and trying to use his stature as a pacifist to get a brutal essentially brainwashed assassin (although he's more of a true believer than anything else) into the city's stronghold with the help of the Meddon pacifists, his first inclination is to do nothing to help these people. How can he help them with violence when this is who they are, when all it does in his own mind is cause the cycle of violence to continue? And yet, how can he not help if it can end the war with such tremendous suffering! This becomes even more apparent as he sees the tolls the war is causing and then he sees how the Meddon people have blood on their own hands - the people in the City seem largely to be living peacefully and happily, the pacifists are largely rich kids who are ignored as completely pointless and harmless, and the Meddon people are hinted to euthanize babies who show signs of disabilities or abnormalities, an obviously monstrous practice that would never have allowed Alefret to be born!

And so we have a really strong story here as Alefret is confronted with tough choices and questions about the validity and practical use of his values. The book doesn't have easy answers - it arguably ends in a way that sort of gives Alefret a happy ending through circumstances that have nothing to do with him (itself an interesting idea) which might be a little too easy, but it doesn't pretend that makes his internal conflict easy. And while you may hell at Alefret for not revealing certain information earlier, you understand all of his actions. The result is a real strong short novel from Mohamed that is well worth your time and your thoughts.

I didn't know what to expect from this book, but it was completely unexpected. Two countries are at war, and it is slowly consuming both countries. Alefret, our protagonist, is a devoted pacifist from one of the countries, being hounded by his leaders and countrymen as a traitor for not joining the war and fighting with everyone else. When Alefret is presented with a devil's bargain, one that might force him to compromise on his values but could end the terrible war, he embarks on a journey that will change him and the world around him. Qhudur, a fanatic soldier, is accompanying Alefret on his journey, further highlighting the contrast between pacifism and military dogma.

The book is incredibly well written. The pacing is committed and never lets go - the book is truly hard to put down, and the reader just wants to find out what happens around the corner. I also founder the characters very well articulated. Especially Alefret and Qhudur are realistic and deeply emotive. I loved how they developed and evolved over time, especially Alefret. Their internal dilemmas are thing that perhaps makes this book most brilliant. The tortured soul that is Alefret is the driving force behind the entire narrative, helping bring to life the main themes in the book.

All else being said, this book is a criticism of war (represented, essentially, by Qhudur). It is also, in my view, a criticism of pacifism (ie - Alefret). It's hard to read this book and not think of contemporary conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestinians). The inevitability of violence as a driving force behind human conflict is devestatingly real in this book, and it's hard to ignore the fact the even in this narrative violence (and the threat of it), eventually, has a role to play in resolving the conflict. I came out of reading this book rather saddened - confronted by how chaotic and senseless conflict is, and what it does to participants' psyche.

I also loved the setting of this book - the worldbuilding is rich and innovative, making it easier to focus on the critique itself rather than being emotive about the context, which one inevitably does when reading about things that are more contemporary. It's a fantasy novel, with a bit of sci fi, and even that level of the book is super exciting.

I wasn't clear about Alefret's struggle and inability to decide what to do about Qhudur, leading to the inevitable crescendo of events at the end. I realise that this inability to decide is what is at the core of the character (and that's why I think this book also criticises pacifism and inaction). Perhaps it's my own bias and struggle to understand these types of mindsets - but it feels almost unreal to me. Maybe it's also the intrinsic desperation in the situation.

Finally, what I can't understand is the physical deformity of Alefret - it's such a strong theme in the book and in various events, but not sure how it really contributes to the narrative. It's not uninteresting - it's just not clear what it does to the broader war topic.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in war literature. Also folks who liked Abercrombie, in my view, would like this.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I’ve been hearing a whole lot about Premee Mohamed for a few years now, and while I’ve tried a handful of her short stories—including one that finished among my favorites of the year in 2022—I had yet to read any of her longer work. The release of The Siege of the Burning Grass gave me an opportunity to change that. 

The Siege of the Burning Grass takes place on a world in which a society struggling to leverage bioengineering for technological breakthroughs is locked in a seemingly endless war with a technologically superior foe. The lead is an avowed pacifist, imprisoned for his refusal to lift a finger for the war effort. But when the military offers him freedom in exchange for a mission to join a pacifist movement in the enemy capital and agitate for surrender, his desire for freedom and the chance to spread his ideals war in his mind against his distrust of the military and commitment to stand apart from them. 

It’s a fascinating premise, and it’s supported by a descriptive prose style that doesn’t push the pace but rewards the reader with some gorgeous turns of phrase. Those two things alone are enough to make The Siege of the Burning Grass an interesting and rewarding read. But as the story develops, it becomes clear that very little time will be spent on the main phase of the mission—the actual coordination with pacifists across enemy lines. Instead, the core of the book is the relationship between the pacifist lead and his reflexively violent military handler. Nearly half the book is travel, and even when they reach their destination, the constant conflict between the two is just as much the focus as any external plot progression. 

And that relationship offers as much conflict as anybody could want, though it tends to fall along a few well-worn paths. There’s interpersonal conflict, as both figures detest the principles around which the other organizes his life. There’s internal conflict, as the lead constantly wonders whether he’s betraying his own cause by undergoing a mission that will surely be hijacked to some violent end. And there’s external conflict, with plenty of obstacles to overcome to even reach the enemy capital. 

But for all that’s happening, both inside and outside the lead’s mind, the plot tends to feel stagnant for long stretches, simply because both characters stubbornly cling to their preferred philosophies, and their bickering accomplishes little. For readers who enjoy that oil and water dynamic, The Siege of the Burning Grass is bound to be a winner. But for other readers, it’s just as likely to cause frustration, as the same conversations recur over and over, leading nowhere. Realistic? Absolutely. Fun? Perhaps not. 

And this philosophical clash is the true emotional core of the book. There are hints about a technological secret that keeps the enemy ahead, and the infiltration plot similarly promises big events to come. And those seeds come good as the story reaches its climax—make no mistake, things happen. But they happen quickly, just as the story comes to a close, and they never fully feel like they take center stage. There’s a plot here, but it takes a backseat to the interpersonal conflict. 

And while I wasn’t as compelled by that interpersonal conflict as I might’ve hoped, there were plenty of little flourishes that I especially enjoyed here. I already highlighted the prose, but the lyricism at times flows well into the dreamlike, which works beautifully to highlight a main character who isn’t always entirely lucid following a debilitating injury. And while the contrast between the two sides can make one feel like the obvious villain, the shocked responses to the lead’s appearance in the foreign capital indicate a pretty thorough eugenics program hiding beneath their technological superiority. Details like these add a strong note of realism and helps the novel resist simplistic interpretation. 

Overall, this is a book that is only going to wow a reader willing to buckle up for a slow-burn ideological conflict that goes around quite a few circles before finding any modicum of resolution. But even if the main plot takes a backseat to the interpersonal conflict, the lush prose and little details of worldbuilding and characterization gives Siege of the Burning Grass more than a few selling points. 

Recommended if you like: lyrical prose, slow-burn ideological conflict. 

Overall rating: 14 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.

I have to say that reading a book about war - even imaginary war - in this day and age hits different, and the tone of the book, realistic as it is, doesn’t help. At the very beginning Alefret, the main character, sounded entirely hopeless, later transitioning into resigned and trapped and occasionally angry to the point of violence (testing his pacifist beliefs time and time again), and sad and doubtful and determined, with a little bit of hope and human connection at the end.
It was all a little hard to get into at first, but then it was hard to put down.

It was the end that brought the overall score down for me. I did not expect a neat or happy ending, but the plot twist about the two nations seemed obvious and failed to come across as an earth-shattering revelation, while the overall political implications for the future remained unclear. Which, I suppose, tracks in a way: a single individual has no way of knowing how and why things will turn out for something as big as the nation. There are some deeply philosophical and thought-provoking issues raised throughout the story, about the value of human life and the role and possible benefits of violence, big ideas and what they mean through the prism of mundanities (if anything), and these I don’t mind being left unanswered.

3,5 rounded up to 4 stars, with many thanks to Solaris/Rebellion and Netgalley for proof.

A sort philosophical fantasy comte that I enjoyed but it's also thought provoking. Well plotted and the right read in this time.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I was given an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Siege of Burning Glass by Premee Mohamed is a grounded secondary world critique of war and propaganda. When Alefret’s home country is at war, he helps create the Pact, a group of pacifists who oppose the war. But when he’s captured and loses his leg, he’s forced to join zealot Qhudur in heading to the floating cities and, hopefully, find a way to end the war without compromising everything he stands for.

From the first page, the anger and frustration of war and conflict are clear as day on the page. Mohamed doesn’t hold any punches and explores the nuances of choosing non-violence and the power of propaganda, particularly in how two sides of a conflict utilize it. It applies to a lot of how modern warfare operates and you’re seeing things from the POV of someone who is forced into a conflict they vehemently oppose.

What I liked the most was the Voice, as I do with everything I’ve read by Premee Mohamed. I’m probably a broken record at this point, but I find her writing to be so engaging and a big part of that is how she utilizes Voice to create characters you want to stay with but are also flawed and make mistakes.

I would recommend this to readers looking for grounded secondary worlds that are low on the fantastical elements, fans of grounded military sci-fi and fantasy, and readers looking for novels exploring war, conflict, and propaganda that isn’t historical or contemporary fiction.

During the recent Coode Street podcast interview with Premee Mohamed, she came up with an interesting phrase that seemed to capture what happens in her latest novel, The Siege of Burning Grass. She said that while juggling all the demands on her time, she often felt like one of her characters being “seduced into usefulness.” That’s exactly what happens to Alefret, the protagonist of the novel, when he, a giant of a man who is also a leader of a rigorously pacifist group and imprisoned during wartime, agrees to a strange assignment. He is to go behind enemy lines and find a way to end the war, and he is to be accompanied by his cut-throat torturer, Corporal Qhudur, who sees him as a monster.

The Siege of Burning Grass is a secondary world fantasy about the war between the Varkal and the Meddon. It’s a war fought mostly with bombs, pteranodons trained as bomber planes, guns and knives, and the Meddon have managed to turn their capitol city into a flying fortress. It’s a type of anti-war near-fable that kept reminding me of Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe, but it has its own mesmerizing and disquieting beauty.

In Alefret, Mohamed has created an amazing figure, a man who, we find out eventually, is over seven feet tall with a massive build that could enable him to kill his captor with his bare hands. Yet he is also a key signer of a document called the Pact, which commits him and its many followers to absolute non-violence. He is “seduced” into accepting this plan of infiltrating Meddon in the company of his torturer, even though he has little idea what it might entail or require him to do. He is focused entirely on the remote chance that it could bring an end to the war and save millions of lives, though quite likely, he thinks, at the cost of his own.

The story has a straightforward structure in five parts. There is a brilliant first section at the prison where Alefret is kept and tortured. Then there are sections on the painful march across open country by Alefret and Qhudur to get to the main military camp of Varkal; their arrival at that camp and preparation for carrying out the plan; their landing in the flying Meddon city and meeting the Meddon resistance; and the exciting implementation of the plan to end the war. The writing is precise and evocative throughout, as each setting and character Alefret meets comes to life.
......
The Siege of Burning Grass is a penetrating look at war, its victims and perpetrators, and the moral complexity of a physically powerful man whose principles compel him to contain the force he could so readily use to destroy his tormentors. This is not an easy book to read but one that is beautifully written and impossible to forget.

DNF @ 16%

Sadly I think this book just wasn't for me. I struggled to connect with the main character and the writing style. There was some inconsistency early on too. Alefret says he won't assist the war in any way. Then he does. He says he won't refer to his 'minder' by his name, even in his head. Then he does. Neither of these really get a satisfying explanation either. It seemed like he was just changing his mind out of convenience to the author rather than for any story reason.

All of that said, I think the themes are very relevant and the style will appeal to lots of people. Especially people who enjoy literary fiction. This was simply a case of this book just not being what I was looking for.

A dedicated pacifist imprisoned and tortured, a sadistic single-minded guard, going on a journey and mission to try and turn the tide of a seemingly lost war... A quite brutal first phase where we learn of the characters, the peoples and mentality, and the doomed war and all that goes with it gradually turns to something else as the story unfolds. A very good and worthwhile read, though I hesitate to give five stars as there were elements of the latter part of the story which felt a little disjointed compared to what had gone before. Difficult to say why without spoilers!

Worth a read - I got this having read and been impressed by some short stories and have more to read.

This book kept me on edge and had really interesting worldbuilding. I think fans of John Scalzi and Jeff VanderMeer would enjoy this story!

DNF @ 11%. This is beautifully written, with gorgeous prose that has some very sharp questions that will really make you think. The characters and the background are interesting. I think people who want something heavily philosophical, that really makes them think, will appreciate this book. I certainly appreciate this book, and hope to return to it at some point. But because of the world right now, this book is just making me feel anxious and sick, and that's not an experience that I'm seeking at the moment. From the bit of this book that I read, I think it will work for so many people - but I'm not one of them at this moment.

The Siege of Burning Grass is an exemplary literary work that is perfectly placed in and relevant in respect of current events. It is reflective, deep and in the blossoming genre of speculative fiction, this work is a powerful representation of the strength of the works in this burgeoning category in contemporary literature

Alefret is everything a stereotypical hero is not, but is a powerful protagonist with a huge heart and tenacious soul, a pacifist in his being to the point of writing a manifesto for peace, for which he is violently imprisoned. Thus we are introduced to our heroic antihero. In exchange for his freedom from the warmongers who maimed him, Alefret is commissioned to infiltrate the anti-war faction and force them into an uprising, essentially making them either successful, or cannon fodder.

In a sense, it reminds me of the Milgram experiments in the exploration of ethics and conditioning and takes the exploration further, examining through the tale, the strength of national pride,self-ppreservation and morals

This book is absolutely mindblowing. An absolute must if you enjoy Orwell and certainly destined to be a literary great

Thank you to Netgalley, Rebellion, Solaris and the author Premee Mohamed for this incredible ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

I received a copy of this ebook from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The best thing about this book was the worldbuilding. From the very start I found myself intrigued about the science in this. The medicinal wasps were both original and really cool. They had healing ability, and right at the beginning, we learn that they are literally regrowing the main characters leg.

I really enjoyed reading about the world and the characters within it, but I do wish that more time was spent on each location. Instead, there seemed to be flitting action sequences between rather drawn out sections. This may be due to the organization of this book. Rather than the usual chapters, there were five different parts. It made the reading experience feel a bit tedious because there was nothing to break up parts within each section.

Overall the book did tackle very relevant topics, but due to the way it was written, I have to say my enjoyment wasn't as high as I would have liked.

I hadn't read that type of pacifist novel in an extremely long time. It manages to feel, and express, the same sentiments as works infused with war horror from WWI and WWII, I mean those autobiographies where people swore "never again". And yet this is fantasy, and yet this comes out from the modern tech-heavy world where we are supposed to know better...
With Kurt Vonnegut forever reminding us of the madness of war, we would think we should have learned.
But obviously leaders can't help repeat the same patterns over and over, and scratch arbitrary lines in the dirt and dividing the world between "Us" and "them". Propaganda and fear mongering is still very much rampant, and people still lap it up, forgetting that there is no real "Us" and "them" only one earth, one people.
The Siege of Burning Grass is an extremely powerful fantasy novel that talks about the ugliness of war by following the journey of a pacifist and a militant extremist. It is bitter, gritty, and hard, and painful and utterly necessary in the current atmosphere. This novel offers no respite, no wiggle room and faces head on the tragedies of humanity with extreme focus. Brilliant fantasy.

This book reads like the best of the Cold War spy thrillers meets a breath-stopping fantasy adventure. I loved the dark humour, the intense dialogue, and the gorgeous world-building. And the anti-war message is timely, to say the least. Brilliant read.

Two warring countries, one pacifist turned into reluctant collaborator and one natural born killer trying to stop the war before it consumes everything.

This book is amazing. It's also challenging, and uncomfortable, and doesn't pull its punches, which makes it even better because of all that. For me as Eastern European some details in the book hit really close to home, and the books mentioned in acknowledgements explained so much about why some things mentioned seemed eerily familiar. It's not a happy story by all means, but it's the one we might all need more than happy ones.

This timely meditation on war, violence, and identity is a shimmering oasis, spied from a distance through unrelenting heat. There is beauty in the vision alone, but there is doubt about if it is real or if your desperate mind has combed with the landscape to project what you hope to see. My previous experience with Premee Mohamed’s work is with her Beneath the Rising trilogy, and while the competence and expanse of the writing there is similarly on display here, those novels did not prepare me for this. That trilogy was fast-paced, ranging in scope from techno-thriller to cosmic, eldritch horror come to life. This story, in contrast, is slow and contemplative. We are constantly learning new details about our protagonist even up to the final part of the book, a slow unfurling, or revealing. This gentle exploration is perfectly aligned with the interiority of the protagonist, and it serves this story quite well. There are a handful of secondary characters that are distinct, and even though we don’t have a lot of depth into their personal stories they always feel like more than archetypes or place holders. The world-building is deliberate and slow, similar enough to our world that we don’t need our hands held, but different enough that as more small details emerge, slowly, organically, it is a treat.

The story itself is slippery. This is why I liken it to a shimmering oasis; it seems straight forward if you were to summarize it but feels like it is constructed only with curved lines when you experience it. There is not a lot of action, especially in the first 3/5 of the story. Events happen and there are bursts of excitement, but the real journey here is internal. This, again, is paralleled in the structure, being divided into 5 sections only, not a few dozen chapters, and while there are section breaks within each division they are not the hard and clear delineations that often pull readers forward in a story. I did struggle a little with this novel in the beginning, it felt like it was holding back in a way that didn’t always invite me in. I don’t think it needed to move faster or be more revealing, but even accepting this as a meditative journey it was hard to find a lot to hook me in, early, to really compel me along. That isn’t to say the story is rambling, it is remarkably well-focused, but it doesn’t have a narrative urgency. This contrasts with the constant urgency and sense of internal despair felt by the characters, which is an engaging stylistic technique, and definitely felt more effective the longer I spent with the characters. I felt implicated the whole time, constantly searching my mind for how I would respond to these situations, which all felt painfully realistic. The novel has an ending, but it doesn’t have answers. Beautifully written and tragically timely, this is a wonderful story that sits with you far beyond the last page.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Solaris, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I wanted to like this, but I just didn't.

I wasn't a fan of the writing style. It was too...erratic? I'm not sure. There wasn't enough depth to it, and it jumped around too much. I never felt like the pieces really fit together well enough to understand exactly what was going on. Because of this, it made it difficult to get into. I finished it, but I found it a real slog and reading it felt like a chore.