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A review by katymm
Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett
4.0
I stumbled across this during a Google search for SFF written by WOC. It’s fresh and fascinating and I couldn’t put it down. Protagonists Adrian/Adrianne and Antoine/Antoinette cycle through genders, relationships to each other, and situations, as each story of their lives is cut off and rebooted by a computer program. Adrian/Adrianne loves Antoine/Antoinette in every iteration, but one thing throughout all the narratives is the same: one of them always loses the other.
Elysium tackles history, myths, identity, and soulmates, all amid an alien invasion, and it’s challenging to grasp what’s real and what isn’t throughout this novel. Once I got to the end, it made more sense. I was impressed with this debut, but my one complaint is with the problematic way the trans character Hector/Helen was portrayed. Apparently the author wrote a post addressing this, but the link is dead so I can’t read it.
Elysium tackles history, myths, identity, and soulmates, all amid an alien invasion, and it’s challenging to grasp what’s real and what isn’t throughout this novel. Once I got to the end, it made more sense. I was impressed with this debut, but my one complaint is with the problematic way the trans character Hector/Helen was portrayed. Apparently the author wrote a post addressing this, but the link is dead so I can’t read it.