I have had trouble reading this book. So it's a DNF for me at this moment.
Dunno whether it's the format or style of what I am reading, whatever, doesn't matter.
But I do know that the last time I struggled, I had a better time "listening" to it.
So I have downloaded the audiobook and will update my review in due course when I have finished it...

What a curious beast this is. Neither Keanu or China need the money really, so we must conclude that this is something they both wanted to do. I actually think that writing a comic is a very smart move from the dog-venging time-travelling Princesses-saving Mr Reeves, if he feels that there’s a literary bit of him unsatisfied by offing unending waves of bad guys with a pistol and kung-fu kicks. Brzrkr as we much call him - who ate all the vowels - has appeared in a series of comics written by Keanu and now the budding franchise extends into a proper novel - for which fantasy hall of famer and celeb Marxist Mr Mieville has been enlisted to write a proper novel about the undead warrior.

For the first fifty pages like many I struggled with this. You’re dropped straight in the middle of a military op gone very wrong in which a bunch of grunts you’ve never met are getting their insides re-arranged. By whom and why is totally unclear. I guess a cold opening is a lot harder to do without any visuals. After that, at least we are clear on the present day: there’s an eternal supersoldier called B or Unute who’s part of, and the subject of, an ultra-top secret part of the US government. People: some good, some bad, are trying to extract his secret sauce and bottle it. We alternate the working out of a new threat to the unit, which kills off some redshirts, changes everything we know without actually removing any crucial piece from the board, with scenes from the backstory of B.

There are some big asks this makes of the reader. It turns out his nemesis pursuing him through millenia is a big pig. When he dies he comes back by manifesting inside a giant egg. He goes into berserker frenzies that - and here I can only apologise if you’re too highbrow for 2000AD - can’t help to this poor reader but recall Slaine the eternal Celtic warrior and his warp spasms when he would leave many fighters in the long house and didn’t think it too many.

If this novel was a car it’d be an enormous Mercedes Benz Truck: incredibly slow to get off the start line, with the driver pressing their foot to the pedal for all their worth. Yet after 300 pages it’s finally picked up some real momentum: the last third is a pretty good stab at pulling off the novel/superhero comic/action thriller combo it’s been straining for. A true curio, a bit military thrillery, a bit Mielvilley, a bit pulpy - if you stick around for the back nine the rewards are there.

I have not read the BRZKR comic book written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt. I have now read The Book of Elsewhere, a tie-in novel set in the BRZKR universe, although, as Wikipedia tells me, an alternate version of it, and I'm not sure whether not being familiar with the original work is a help or a hindrance.

The Book of Elsewhere is, ostensibly, an action thriller about B., a practically ageless immortal warrior - maybe it's better to call him a repeatedly reborn warrior - currently working as an operative of a black ops unit of the US military. That action thriller is often interrupted by vignettes from B.'s ridiculously long life, set anywhere from prehistoric ages past up to 1920's Poland and written mostly as testimonials from people who have known B. or witnessed his actions.

And those vignettes are great. Short, punchy, inventive. It's basically Highlander flashbacks, although in that movie the immortals were a secret society of sorts and the friendship between MacLeod and Ramirez was at the center of the retrospections. Here, B.'s uniqueness and the loneliness that goes with it is very much the point - of the vignettes and of the book as a whole.

The problem, for me, was the contemporary action thriller part of the book. Things happen. Characters talk about the things that happened. They don't know what action to take in response, since they don't understand why those things happened and neither do the readers. And then another thing happens, and so on.

Until the last fifth of the book the characters were baffled by the plot, and so was I. Baffled and bored. Only in the finale do we get the explanations necessary to understand, well, any of it. Except I felt that the authors weren't revealing where the final puzzle piece fits, they were laying the foundations when the house was already built.

But the truth, when it comes out, serves as a shocking revelation for B., and it almost makes the book work - if he learned any of it beforehand, the plot would have to be completely rewritten. It almost works, but not quite. I appreciate the idea, I get why it's written that way, but it doesn't change the fact that parts of the book were a slog to get through.

Also, Keanu Reeves and China Miéville own a thesaurus - probably more than one each - and make sure to remind us of that fact on every page. The Book of Elsewhere is virulently verbose, so enamored with its eloquence that it comes off as a bit... try-hard. Which is a trite comment to make, but I've read most of Miéville's books, I know his style, and I still think that this verges on self-parody.

On a final note, the translation of a Bolesław Leśmian poem by B. that is said to be very bad in the book is, I can attest, very bad indeed. So, good work.

I'd give The Book of Elsewhere 3,5 stars if I could, but I can't, so 3 out of 5 it is.

(2.5 stars.)
Did I request this because I saw Keanu Reeves name on the cover? Possibly. (Absolutely.)

In this book, we learn about Unute, a man who has been alive since the beginning of everything, an immortal warrior who has lived through everything and has seen everything. After being alive for so long, he has seen everything and nothing can surprise him anymore… Until it does. Something has changed, and we follow Unute through present times as they try to unravel the mystery, we get glimpses into his past which was interesting to see.

I’ve learned that this is based on a graphic novel, so I might check that out. I did struggle reading this, I didn’t really connect with the characters, it was mostly my curiosity that made me carry on reading. I wish I had connected with the characters more, I can barely remember their names. The story was interesting although it did seem to drag at certain points so I just think this type of storytelling isn’t for me.

Provided by NetGalley and Random House UK in exchange for an honest review.

What is there to say about a book that has the name of action movie star Keanu Reeves and award winning new weird fantasy writer China Miéville on the cover? No matter what the subject matter, The Book of Elsewhere is a book that almost demands to be read, just to see what this alchemy might have created. It does not come out of nowhere, The Book of Elsewhere is based on BZRKR, a graphic novel series written by Reeves and Matt Kindt and illustrated by Ron Garney. Those unfamiliar with the series may be unsurprised to know that the main characters as drawn looks a lot like the star of the John Wick movies, and for good reason.
The Book of Elsewhere centres around a character called B (also Untu, also Beserker). B is an immortal soldier. Born in the mists of time, B can be injured but heals quickly and can be killed, after which he re-emerges from an egg. B has lived for thousands and thousands of years and retains all of his memories, some of which are featured in side stories throughout the book. B now works with a secret unit of the US Army (not for, and only while their goals align) who are studying his condition. They hope to weaponise it, he hopes they will find a way to make him mortal.
The book opens with a mystery. B and his US Army handler return to the scene of an attempted suicide attempt only to find one of the people who had been killed has somehow returned to life, for a very short period. The question of how this can happen and who could have caused it, sends B on a mission to hunt down an animal nemesis and reflect on who might be out to get him. Part of this reflection leads to a number of historical sections, chronicling B’s lives and companions at various points in history.
Unfortunately, while some parts are interesting the whole of The Book of Elsewhere does not hang together. Given this is a collaboration, it is hard to know where to point the finger, except to say maybe that the collaboration itself does not wholly work. The authors give readers no reason to care about any of the characters or their situations, particularly B. And while it does kind of build to come overall philosophy, when it comes it is too little too late.
The Book of Elsewhere will have a ready audience – existing fans of the graphic novel (also being tuned into a movie and follow up manga series by Netflix), those curious about what Keanu Reeves might produce, and fans of multi award winning fantasy novelist China Miéville. There are a few interesting ideas they are few and far between, there is plenty of violence and a cast of largely uninteresting characters. So while there are elements to enjoy, it is likely only to be the existing BZRKR fans who will come out completely satisfied.

The Book of Elsewhere is a fascinating and challenging read that’ll take me some time to unpack everything that was going on! This was an author pairing that absolutely drew me in, and as expected it was a truly weird reading experience - I don’t think it’ll end up as one of my favourites of the year, but I was really glad I picked this one up.

Mieville’s influence in the writing style is strong, and could be a shock to those not familiar with his works. For those who are new to his books, he’s like a cat toying with his prey, dropping you hints of what is happening, but keeping you in the dark. To add an extra layer to this, no character in the story seems to fully understand the whole situation either! It creates a challenging read, and while it’s not exactly my favourite style of storytelling, fans of Mieville’s other books will probably love this a lot more than me!

I think the characterization of Unute was the book’s biggest challenge, and ultimately it’s biggest success. How do you write a book where the MC has been everywhere and seen it all before, and yet is engaged in the main plot? The flashbacks to bygone ages and people who knew Unute were a great way of adding a bit of depth to his character, whilst driving home just how long he’s been around, and going some way to explain his outlook on life in the modern day. Plus, the reveals that happen over the course of the book show us what Unute understands about his unique experience with Death, and what he’s still trying to figure out.

I give up. It took me 11 days to get to 48%. The book is supposed to have 352pp, but I'm certain I've read more than 600pp already. I liked the GN, but I'm no fan of the novel with all the tangents, different POVs and endless dialogue.

This might be a good novel, but I don't have the patience.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this book wasn't for me. IPad trouble working out what was happening and the writing was often disjointed and did make sense.

Unfortunately this book was a NRN, this may because of the format, I will try this again with a physical copy once it is published.

In this mind-blowing epic, Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books, deliver a unique and innovative narrative. The story follows "B," a warrior who cannot die and has witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations. Desiring mortality, B is promised by a U.S. black-ops group that they can help him achieve death—if he helps them in return.

However, when a mortal soldier inexplicably returns to life, it hints at a mysterious force as powerful as B, with its own agenda. Combining Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting narrative, The Book of Elsewhere is a genre-bending masterpiece that intertwines sci-fi, fantasy, parascience, history, and action. This philosophical, violent thriller explores identity, existence, and the meaning of mortality with elegance and introspection.

I won't lie, I picked up this title based on my curiousity of Keanu Reeves as an author, and also having read and enjoyed China Mieville's writing before. This was a weird but fun story with some highlights. It was definitely an interesting read.

This was weird but also quite fun. I find Mieville's writing hard at times and this was no exception. I enjoyed it for what it was but it's not a favourite.

I was so intrigued by this book, being a big fan of Keanu Reeves. Buuuut, unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. The prose felt a little clunky and messy, and there were so many characters introduced without time to instill them in my mind so it became very confusing to differentiate between characters. Perhaps you need to read the comic book it's based on go get into it, but I hadn't so unfortunately dnf'd before finishing.

As a longtime mega fan of China Miéville's work, this pains me to say, but I really don't think this came together well. That is not to say that there aren't still many examples of the trademark Miéville magic, with beautiful, winding description and unique and compelling concepts stretching over millennia, charting the life of 'B', Keanu Reeve's self-insert action protagonist. Unfortunately, it is through this character that the manuscript struggles most. Even Keanu's biggest supporters would have to admit that his characters can be bland and repetitious, and that is very much the case here. Combine that with a narrative that meanders from place to place, time period to time period without constraint, and the overarching emotion after completing The Book of Elsewhere is exhaustion. Some great highs, but a slog nonetheless.

Whilst many readers are likely to opt to read this co-written novel because of the actor Keanu Reeves, I did so for China Mieville, but in all honesty, I struggled with this, finding it chaotic, strange, and bizarre, and hard to make sense of. I understand it draws on the world of Reeves BRZRKR comics with which I am unfamiliar. It is thought provoking, non-linear, sometimes engaging, and philosophical, featuring the legendery and immortal B, Unute, living for thousands of years, tired of never being able to die. A US black ops group offers to help him with this, if he helps them. But then a human soldier does what cannot be forseen, coming back to life. The super hero aspects of this brutal and violent narrative appealed less to me, but what I did appreciate was the wonderful writing. I have no doubt there will be other readers who will love this more than me, so please read other reviews when making a decision to read this. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

China Mieville gets parachuted in to juice up Keanu Reeve’s self-insert immortal berserker mega-franchise and how is that even a sentence you can write, never mind a book you can review? Unsurprisingly the resulting Book of Elsewhere is a (fascinating) train wreck, the literary equivalent of Marvel poaching Gaspar Noe, careening between dour superhero tropes, wry self-mockery, and digressive, inventive asides that often feel more lived-in than the main story. I’d rather have an actual Mieville novel, or at least one not contractually obligated to hit pre-approved plot beats, but there’s just enough of the Weird here to elevate it above more rote IP exercises.

Even if it’s not (yet) a movie, it’s very hard not to read The Book of Elsewhere without visualising Keanu in it, as it’s so very obviously written to his on-screen persona: the modern day version of our protagonist, Unute, is still, contemplative, capable of sudden and unstoppable violence, and exactly as blank-yet-capable as every Reeves action character from Thomas Anderson to John Wick. Mieville doesn’t stray too far from the limited range of this Ur-Keanu, but he fits in some intriguing asides in the space he has to work with. Most interesting is the Nietzchean idea that given enough time, a person would eventually become all things: past versions of Unute have been lovers, abusers, dilettantes, kings, conquerors, and genocidaires, making his present Keanu-blankness less a default state and more the inevitable consequence of having literally done it all before at some point in the last 80,000 years. Of course, modern history suggests that most of what Unute would have been doing for those trackless ages is hunting and gathering. But having introduced an immortal demigod already, the story isn’t too fussed about tossing out physics, anthropology, and geography as the plot demands. It’s a refreshingly unapologetic approach, but having told us to forget what we know, Mieville could have swapped in a little more worldbuilding than the allusive but vague grab-bag we get of Mu and Atlantis and magic and dragons and…killer, Unute-hating pigs?

In fact, the killer pig is a brilliant touch, a comically violent way of refracting Unute’s own immortal predicament back at him, but it does point to the essential silliness of franchise plotting. I mean, one of the book’s central mysteries has a final-pages answer that’s so amazingly bathetic that I had to stop and check twice I wasn’t missing something. And of course, coming mere pages after the puddle-deep revelation that the colour of your magic powers tells you whose side you’re really on, there’s nothing to be missed. I don’t necessarily blame Mieville for this — it’s hard not to read the emptiness of the book’s mysteries as deliberate, especially put alongside other self-mocking moments like Unute’s reduction of a tacticool pile of arms to “gun, stick, knife, gun”. But intentional or not, the narrative choices are still unsatisfying, and too often seem to be just setup for the inevitable sequel. No wonder poor Unute is such a burnt-out shell: 80,000 years of Hollywood superhero antics would tire even the most inexhaustible immortal.

I was not planning on enjoying this book and to be honest the first chapter nearly dissuaded me. It felt confusing and the language didn't seem to flow.
Still hold on in there.
It was good. It has the usual complex ideas, but that is the joy of Mieville, you have to just wait in a mess of the muddy waters until the story clears.
I am still puzzled as to deeper meanings but it works and I would definitely read a follow on.

Readers be warned, this book takes no prisoners.

Keanu Reeves and China Miéville have created a world with histories, characters, plots and futures that, at times, I really struggled to understand. It's a narrative that enjoys keeping you at arm's length - never fully explaining itself, never working too hard to connect the dots for you, never letting the ground solidify beneath you. There were sections where I had no idea what was happening and in places the chapters read more like short stories, adjacent to the main plot.

Having read other reviews, I can see how naive I was going into this book, thinking it would be a Keanu Reeves action film in prose. That is not what The Book of Elsewhere is.

Taking root in a science fiction foundation, the novel meanders through several thousands of years as the main character, Unute, expounds pages of carefully considered thoughts on religion, humanity and what it means to be alive. If you enjoy a complex narrative and are willing to surrender to it, then this might be the book for you. It just wasn't for me at this time.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I found the prologue a bit muddling. But then I found the book like this on a whole. This is NOT to say this is badly written, the exact opposite the book is written in this way for a reason. This is not an easy beach read and to truly apricate it it should not be treated as such. This is a deep dive into science fiction read, with multiple timelines, with different storylines emerging in several different patterns but then it will all click. I understand some people may struggle with this but on the plus side B is basically Keanu and if he hasn't written it you would see him in your head. I felt for B and his character, he doesn't know who he is or why he is, but then out of the blue there is someone like him and everything changes... keep going to the end it will be worth it.

Description:
Unute is an ancient, deathless super-soldier, desperately lonely and trying to figure out how to attain mortality.

Liked:
An interesting concept, with history which plays out nicely. I enjoyed following one age-old character through lots of different epochs, in fragments and vignettes. There are also some beautiful little descriptive turns of phrase which are truly a joy to encounter.

Disliked:
Oh man, this book is hard work. I've read a lot, and fairly widely, and I had to make a fairly substantial list of words to look up (sastrugi, stochastic, solecism, riastrid, telos, tendentious, nidus, vorago and quiddity, for the interested!). If this had been it, fine, I'll consider myself educated I guess, but the novel resists the reader in so many ways. Chapters are split three ways between present day (itself following a multitude of characters, and not always clear up front which one we're with now), following Unute's past adventures (using second-person), and in interviews with folks who've known him over the years (written as if a conversation with an unknown interviewer). The present-day is by far the least interesting, with a standard military wrapper, complex little web of deceptions and experiments, and characters it’s profoundly difficult to feel anything at all for. Ultimately, the resolution did not feel worth the work. Which is a shame, because I've really loved some of Mieville's other novels.

Read this if you’re prepared to suffer a bit for some gorgeous bits of language and a very Matrix-y main character.

Anything Else:
VERY curious to learn about how the work was split, for this. Hoping they’ll talk a bit about their process when it comes to promotion!