A review by brownbetty
Banner of Souls by Liz Williams

4.0

You very rarely encounter, even in science fiction, technology sufficiently advanced as to seem magic. Most of us use tools daily without understanding how they work, so a rocket-ship or laser-pistol isn't really very different, if you know what it does. [Book:Banner of Souls] is a bit like what might have happened if the person who interrupted Samuel Taylor Coleridge mid-way through Xanadu had given him two tabs of acid and sent him straight back to his desk.

The science in this book manages to seem horrifying, alien, grotesque, and magical, and I think I spent the first third of the book simply boggling and trying to build some kind of construct that would enable me to find some footing in the narrative. The book has decent characters, but I think its strongest feature is its world-building.

Williams never stops to explain. In the first chapter, you follow a woman named Dreams-Of-War as she has her ability to empathize re-activated to make her a more zealous bodyguard. Then she gets into something like a space-shuttle with a kappa, who has an actual depression on top of her head, and leaves Mars for earth. The kappa is a lab-tech, and Dreams-Of-War wears armour made out of a ghost. Listen, this is me trying to make it clearer.

I enjoyed this book, but it was a lot like watching The Cell with a high fever. I don't know if it was actually good or just stunningly vivid and highly confusing.