A review by tasharobinson
The Great Night by Chris Adrian

4.0

A startlingly strange, rich novel that has repeatedly been described as a retelling of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but is something more interesting — an original story that borrows some of the characters and a couple of plot twists. This is top-flight literary fantasy, a Neil Gaiman-esque story about myths and magic and how they intersect with the real world. The prose is lyrical and beautiful, and the scenarios Adrian comes up with to background his mortal characters — a woman whose family formed a Christian rock band and expected complete idealogical obedience from the kids, a pediatric onocologist with severe OCD and a missing past, a tree doctor trying to save something magical he's never seen before — are compelling and detailed and heartbreaking. My only quibble with the book is that I felt like I got to know these characters extremely well, and then the story largely disposes of them. Their present isn't as well-realized as their past, and in the end, the ending seems rushed and full of loose threads. It's no insult to say my major problem with the book was that I wanted more of it by the end.