Read December 2022 Recommended for fans unreliable narrators ★ ★
Sadly, a miss.
A first person, unnamed and quite likely unreliable narrator has to finesse a situation with demon and a traveler from a possibly mythical land. Our narrator is both arrogant and mockingly self-depreciating, airily dismissive of things he doesn't want to consider or share.
"And what you should really be asking yourself (but you haven't, because I've deliberately distracted you with my meretricious narrative tricks) was someone like me doing in Sabades Amar in the first place?"
World-building is curious. There is sanctioned magic and unsanctioned/demonic magic, and the language used for the sanctioned type sounds similar to Western churches. The voice is so breezy, it's hard to tell what is needful and what is extraneous. There are a few bits where I enjoyed the writing:
"He was going through his host's memories, absorbing them as coherent narrative and excreting them as a dream"
I don't particularly like deliberately tricky narratives, where the speaker is going out of their way to conceal information from the reader or obscure details. It violates the contract between the author and reader, so I think it needs to be done for a reason. Is it done with a reason here, is the question, and I think it is, but perhaps with malicious intention. I prefer an Oceans Eleven kind of sleight-of-hand.
"I felt as though he'd pulled off a mask, and his own face underneath was indistinguishable from it."
Then there's the structure, careening back and forth in time with nary a page break or transition, and sometimes, using visual transitions where none are needed. Here's my attempt to reproduce, with breaks, a typical section:
"Ah well," I said. "It wouldn't do if we all thought the same. You're Idalian."
⊇⊆
(Which was, of course, impossible. Except—
Idalia, if it exists, which is not universally accepted, is eight thousand miles away. Liutprand of Gallen claimed to have reached it five hundred years ago, on his way to the Moon."
It was a triple trifecta of meh for me: unreliable and unlikable narrator, sloppy narrative style and an ultimately problematic theme. The ending was only mildly redemptive for me, and was so focused that it belied the slow and interruptive nature of the prior pages. This is one where your mileage will definitely vary.
Jennifer and Nataliya loved it, while Stephen was more measured; see their reviews for a discussion of the positives.
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