2020-06-15
It took a couple of chapters to get into, mostly because of a self-conscious omniscient narrator followed by a second-person point of view, both of which were difficult to engage with. However, most of the rest of the book is stylistically normal, and was both an easy and engaging read.
On the one hand, this is a very clever book. The use of second person, the way character-defaults are subverted, and the character reveals, are all very clever. But the latter over-steps the mark toward the end, and only works through the extensive and extreme withholding of information by the very character you’re closest to.
The result is that rather than an exceptional story, I was left feeling that I’d read an exceptional exercise in creative writing. A very well-done and clever one, but one that ultimately depended on being too contrived toward the end to make it really believable.
As a story, the ending was also disappointing: a brief suggestion out of nowhere to up the stakes causes the story to stop.
NK Jemisin is clearly a very gifted writer, and this was an enjoyable book for all sorts of different reasons – it is definitely worth reading. But it does over-reach itself, and ultimately didn’t completely fulfill its original promise
Rating: 4/5