A review by livjhooper
Stillicide by Cynan Jones

3.0

I love Cynan Jones’ writing so I wanted to love this; but wanting didn’t make it so. I normally love me a disjointed, fragmented narrative, but something about this didn’t work for me. It felt like only some of the parts made a whole, and the other parts were just... there. The writing itself is beautiful as ever, unsurprisingly, but you can tell that it was written as separate pieces for Radio 4. I’d be intrigued to listen to it to see if it feels more cohesive when read out loud. The world building was almost there, but not fully realised - Stillicide feels like the first bricks of a great idea being built, and could make a wonderful full-length novel, but didn’t wholly work for me as a slim little thing.