Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Prophet

I was interested in this book the instant I saw the cover, and I’m very pleased to say that the contents lived up to the intrigue. If you like the game Disco Elysium, this is the book for you. It’s surreal, feels a bit dreamy in some areas, but the characters are well-grounded and will reel you back in when you begin to feel like the plot is getting a little too weird. (I reached out to the authors on Twitter and as it turns out, Sin Blaché has played and loves Disco Elysium LOL.)
I listened to the audiobook, and the narrators were fantastic. It actually took me a few chapters to realize the narrators were different people switching from POVs, because the voices they used for the characters sounded so similar. So it wasn’t jarring in the least. The plot was great, but there were a few parts that seemed a bit too convenient (or that made me want to shake the character’s shoulders to demand what the hell they were thinking). Overall, this was an extremely solid read and I think I’ll be buying a physical copy.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of the audiobook to review.

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cko's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

You know how some books feel like they are destined to be a movie? Or perhaps even should have been a movie, instead of a book? I kept craving to see this play out on screen rather than the page.

Some things I liked:

Gay slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance!!!
Bisexual representation!!!
The descriptions of how Rao experiences truth as a physical sensation
The horror aspects and metaphors about nostalgia
The page-turning pacing in the first and last thirds of the book

Some things I didn't like:

There were often long sequences of dialogue with no attributions. Not sure if it's because I read an ARC (thank you, S&S!) but I often had to reread the dialogue to figure out who was saying what because the back-and-forth didn't make sense; it often seemed like one person would speak twice in a row.
There was also a slow part in the middle that dragged on a bit, and later I saw the reasoning for it, but I almost didn't pick the book back up again because of that slowness.
A few of the characters did not feel real (like Rhodes, but maybe psychopaths just have that quality?)

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