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A review by shanaqui
Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Received to review via Netgalley
I needed to sit with Seth Haddon's Volatile Memory after I'd finished it, because it left me feeling surprisingly unsettled by its violence and vengeance, the dysphoria of the characters, the intensity of the situations they go through -- the book never stops, lurching from one crisis to another, so that the shock of one event never fully catches up to the characters before the next hits them.
The characters are both queer and both messy and, I guess, "problematic". Wylla isn't the perfect transwoman, Sable's not the perfect... well, let's not get into spoilers. The point is that they turn to violence, they roil in fear and indecision, they rush into things, and you root for them anyway while knowing they are making some awful choices. (Knowing, too, that there aren't any better choices, because that's what their society does, the hands they've been dealt.)
I found the narration really well done: it begins as second person POV, addressed to Wylla, but the speaker also resolves into a character who starts talking about themself in the first person as well. Still, the tone is intimate -- this story is being told to Wylla, in a sense. It makes it all feel very immediate. The story doesn't try to explain itself too much: you have to get on board yourself and figure things out -- and I found that it all fell into place beautifully, without too much of a pause for exposition.
I needed to sit with Seth Haddon's Volatile Memory after I'd finished it, because it left me feeling surprisingly unsettled by its violence and vengeance, the dysphoria of the characters, the intensity of the situations they go through -- the book never stops, lurching from one crisis to another, so that the shock of one event never fully catches up to the characters before the next hits them.
The characters are both queer and both messy and, I guess, "problematic". Wylla isn't the perfect transwoman, Sable's not the perfect... well, let's not get into spoilers. The point is that they turn to violence, they roil in fear and indecision, they rush into things, and you root for them anyway while knowing they are making some awful choices. (Knowing, too, that there aren't any better choices, because that's what their society does, the hands they've been dealt.)
I found the narration really well done: it begins as second person POV, addressed to Wylla, but the speaker also resolves into a character who starts talking about themself in the first person as well. Still, the tone is intimate -- this story is being told to Wylla, in a sense. It makes it all feel very immediate. The story doesn't try to explain itself too much: you have to get on board yourself and figure things out -- and I found that it all fell into place beautifully, without too much of a pause for exposition.