A review by bisexualbookshelf
The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.75

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be published in the US on April 1, 2025 by Liveright / WW Norton.

There’s so much to admire in The Ephemera Collector—its intricate worldbuilding, its incisive critique of corporate control over historical narratives, and its deeply felt exploration of disability and bodily autonomy. Stacy Nathaniel Jackson crafts a story that is both intensely personal and expansively political, weaving together the life of Xandria Brown, a 23rd-century archivist battling long COVID, with the fate of a separatist underwater city. Yet, despite the novel’s ambitious scope and compelling themes, its execution left me frustrated.

Xandria has spent her life working to preserve marginalized histories, most recently the Diwata Collection—ephemera from a climate separatist community in Monterey Canyon. But when the massive corporation WIKA acquires the Huntington Library, her work becomes threatened by profit-driven motives. As she spearheads the #BlackoutWIKA resistance campaign, an attack on the building leaves her trapped inside, shifting the novel’s focus to the efforts of her AI support bots to save her. This introduces a second narrative thread: a deep dive into Xandria’s fragmented memories, caused by Long COVID inflammation, leading to a mid-novel exploration of her family history and the systemic forces that shaped her lineage. Eventually, the book closes with a long section from the perspective of Diwatan citizens, reflecting on their revolutionary project and the artifacts Xandria has been archiving.

While the novel’s thematic richness is undeniable, its structure felt unwieldy. The perspective shifts—particularly those involving Xandria’s support bots—were often difficult to track, making it challenging to stay grounded in the narrative. The attack on WIKA and the exploration of Diwata’s history felt like two entirely separate books, with Xandria’s personal struggles acting as a bridge that wasn’t quite strong enough to hold them together. The most frustrating aspect was how major plot threads—Xandria’s health, memory distortions, and the corporate interference with her work—were introduced with weighty significance, only to be dropped, then abruptly revisited before being sidelined again.

I wanted to love this book. Its vision of resistance, its commitment to interrogating who controls history, and its nuanced depiction of disability all resonated deeply. But the scattered execution ultimately made it difficult to fully connect. With more structural tightening, The Ephemera Collector could have been a powerhouse. As it stands, it’s an ambitious novel that doesn’t quite cohere.

📖 Read this if you love: speculative fiction that interrogates corporate overreach, radical disability justice, and archival resistance; books by Octavia Butler or Rivers Solomon.

🔑 Key Themes: Memory and Autonomy, The Commodification of History, Environmental Collapse and Resistance, Technology and Surveillance, Disability and Care.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Death of a Parent (minor), Grief (minor), Sexual Harassment (minor), Medical Content (severe), Racism (minor), Bullying (minor), Sexual Content (minor), Animal Death (minor). 
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