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sharkinaberet 's review for:
The Book of Elsewhere
by China Miéville, Keanu Reeves
For the last couple of weeks I've been consumed by different things - this book, and reviews of this book. Any glance at the goodreads response will instantly show you that the former is proving divisive to authors of the latter. 3.44 stars at the time of writing - not a dismal failure by any means. Technically above average. Lower scores than the average of the comic source material, certainly, and poor by the standard of Miéville's fiction catalogue - firmly placed last-but-one.
The metatextual nature of critique leads to discussion of the actual novel by necessity, but somehow I am almost more fascinated by the ever-growing slew of deeply unfavourable goodreads reviews. I have had to conclude that we're dealing with a failure of marketing above anything else. I have seen innumerable reviews marking it as a one star, two stars, a DNF at 30%, or 20%, or 20 pages. It's fascinating how the attachment of the name Keanu Reeves has led to the novel being instantly met by a unfitting audience. The singular point of failure, the sole cause of these mismatched expectations, is that many people are reading this because they like Keanu Reeves and they don't know the other name on the cover. Yes, while the novel is based on the BRZRKR comics which were conceptualised by Keanu Reeves, the novel is written in it's entirety by China Miéville. By his own account, Reeves did not pen a single word of the book. And it shows, thank god. While I like Reeves as much as the next guy, Miéville is my favourite author and I have been feverishly awaiting new fiction from him since his last release in 2016. I consider his writing uniquely electrifying, the sheer energy he manages to imbue in every page is (in my opinion) unmatched by any other author I have ever read.
It's the content of the critiques that I'm finding so fascinating. Summarising the negative response feels like writing a list of contradictions. The style is plain, the style is pretentious, it reads like a boring script, it's overwritten with the intent of sounding intelligent, the prose is boring, the prose is difficult to read because it's so complicated, it won't make sense unless you've read the comics, it's nothing like the comics, the characters aren't sympathetic, why do we have to read random snippets in first person from other characters? One particular review, not to put them on blast, complained about having to look up Korean and Latin phrases without even being told they were Korean or Latin. God forbid. I don't even have much to say about these negative critiques other than to chronicle them, and I also don't intend to make myself sound intellectually or morally superior compared to people who didn't enjoy it. God knows I've got my books that I hate as well. I've just found it interesting that this novel is generating such incredibly strong reactions from readers, and that the common response differs so profoundly from my own.
As for my view of the book itself; it's not perfect, but I loved it. It's messy and dense and always makes decisions that are more interesting than satisfying. It's wonderfully, wonderfully written. I adore the mix of first, second, and third person perspectives - the use of second person to chronicle Unute's life of wandering is particularly inspired. It allows him interiority while still keeping him detached and alien - incredibly suitable for our 80,000 year old protagonist. The first person flashbacks to one-off characters also contribute to this - they all work in combination to paint a disjointed picture of a man that neither we nor them will ever fully know, they highlight different facets of him in as much detail as they can but they still all feel so very far removed. While I felt the book to be an exercise in tone rather than plot, I enjoyed the legitimate sense of narrative escalation when the flashbacks and present narrative work in tandem. While I certainly wouldn't describe it as an accessible read I did find it easy to enjoy. I've read the second half of the novel in one sitting this afternoon, and I'd say it was an afternoon very well spent.
The metatextual nature of critique leads to discussion of the actual novel by necessity, but somehow I am almost more fascinated by the ever-growing slew of deeply unfavourable goodreads reviews. I have had to conclude that we're dealing with a failure of marketing above anything else. I have seen innumerable reviews marking it as a one star, two stars, a DNF at 30%, or 20%, or 20 pages. It's fascinating how the attachment of the name Keanu Reeves has led to the novel being instantly met by a unfitting audience. The singular point of failure, the sole cause of these mismatched expectations, is that many people are reading this because they like Keanu Reeves and they don't know the other name on the cover. Yes, while the novel is based on the BRZRKR comics which were conceptualised by Keanu Reeves, the novel is written in it's entirety by China Miéville. By his own account, Reeves did not pen a single word of the book. And it shows, thank god. While I like Reeves as much as the next guy, Miéville is my favourite author and I have been feverishly awaiting new fiction from him since his last release in 2016. I consider his writing uniquely electrifying, the sheer energy he manages to imbue in every page is (in my opinion) unmatched by any other author I have ever read.
It's the content of the critiques that I'm finding so fascinating. Summarising the negative response feels like writing a list of contradictions. The style is plain, the style is pretentious, it reads like a boring script, it's overwritten with the intent of sounding intelligent, the prose is boring, the prose is difficult to read because it's so complicated, it won't make sense unless you've read the comics, it's nothing like the comics, the characters aren't sympathetic, why do we have to read random snippets in first person from other characters? One particular review, not to put them on blast, complained about having to look up Korean and Latin phrases without even being told they were Korean or Latin. God forbid. I don't even have much to say about these negative critiques other than to chronicle them, and I also don't intend to make myself sound intellectually or morally superior compared to people who didn't enjoy it. God knows I've got my books that I hate as well. I've just found it interesting that this novel is generating such incredibly strong reactions from readers, and that the common response differs so profoundly from my own.
As for my view of the book itself; it's not perfect, but I loved it. It's messy and dense and always makes decisions that are more interesting than satisfying. It's wonderfully, wonderfully written. I adore the mix of first, second, and third person perspectives - the use of second person to chronicle Unute's life of wandering is particularly inspired. It allows him interiority while still keeping him detached and alien - incredibly suitable for our 80,000 year old protagonist. The first person flashbacks to one-off characters also contribute to this - they all work in combination to paint a disjointed picture of a man that neither we nor them will ever fully know, they highlight different facets of him in as much detail as they can but they still all feel so very far removed. While I felt the book to be an exercise in tone rather than plot, I enjoyed the legitimate sense of narrative escalation when the flashbacks and present narrative work in tandem. While I certainly wouldn't describe it as an accessible read I did find it easy to enjoy. I've read the second half of the novel in one sitting this afternoon, and I'd say it was an afternoon very well spent.