The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
Blackstone Publishing
Fiction, Horror/Literary Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Dorian Gray is the very vision of innocent, aristocratic youth, the perfect muse to the London artist Basil Hallward - and the perfect potential protégé of the decadent Lord Henry, who visits Basil's studio during one of Dorian's sessions. When the lord's offhand comments about the fleeting nature of youth and beauty strike a chord with young Dorian, the man impulsively vows that he'd sell his very soul to remain forever as young and handsome and untouched by sin and time as his painted image. Little do any of them suspect that Dorian's wish has been granted. As Dorian falls further under Henry's corrupting influence, pushing himself to experience fully every impulse, every sensation, every desire and whim and darkness a human can aspire to, he retains the visage of purity and innocence... but the painting begins to change...
REVIEW: Once more, I attempt to experience a work of classic literature, and once more I encounter mixed results. The iconic tale of a young man who finds a way to (temporarily) cheat damnation and avoid consequences for his actions remains interesting and compelling, but once again Wilde drifts and meanders and circles around the story as often as he tells it.
From the start, there is something special about the titular portrait, as the artist Basil laments to his friend Lord Henry that Dorian Gray has become a muse, an ideal, and that consequently Basil has put "too much" of himself into the work. Almost from the moment Henry sets eyes on the young Dorian, though, the lord is determined to corrupt the innocence and beauty he sees there, not out of any particular malice or master plan but more as an experiment by a man bored of his own idle richness (and perhaps a touch of unacknowledged jealousy and resentment, his own days of youth and innocence having long since passed by). Dorian, having been sheltered much of his young life, is too easy a prey to resist, taking Henry's cynical, hedonistic, and often self-contradictory orations as gospel truth and inspiration to live his own life as fully and sensually and extremely as he can manage. He does not set out immediately to taste-test the seven deadly sins, but finds his way there soon enough, galvanized by an ill-advised crush on a low-end actress that takes a tragic turn. It is after this incident that he first notices the change in the painting, first realizes that his impulsive vow of long ago has somehow come true... and first comprehends that the painting might serve as either a guide to keep him on the moral path or a "get out of jail free" card that will allow him to indulge every impulse without consequence. The artist Basil and Lord Henry are the angel and demon on his shoulders respectively, though it's clear from that first day in Basil's studio which voice will ultimately win out over Dorian's conscience. There are a few moments where Dorian is presented with options and a chance to turn around, but he remains too convinced that he'll never have to pay the ever-mounting bill of his ever-more-depraved lifestyle, until a final and fateful reckoning.
As in other Wilde works I've read, the tale is heavily embroidered and padded with long side-trips and scenes that ultimately go nowhere but are full of rich sensory details and/or clever high-brow banter. Much of Dorian's descent is less explicitly stated and more implied and hinted at, with dark rumors and reputations gathering like storm clouds over him despite his eternal good looks and charm, the increasing toll of broken lives in his wake. I am glad I finally got around to this one, and I did enjoy the memorable imagery at several points, though once more I found myself wishing it had encountered a somewhat less timid editor at some point.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - My Review
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) - My Review
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (Oscar Wilde) - My Review
Friday, March 7, 2025
Counterweight (Djuna)
Counterweight
Djuna, translated by Anton Hur
Pantheon
Fiction, Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For centuries, humanity dreamed of a future in space, but it wasn't until the construction of the world's first and only space elevator by Korean conglomerate LK that the dream became a reality. The recent death of LK's president can't help but send tremors through the company and many individuals within it. Mac in particular, a man with a shady (and manufactured) history, feels his position as head of External Affairs grow more precarious with the man's passing; he only got the job because he saved the late president's life many years ago, and the new leadership is quite likely to see him as a loose end to tidy up once they secure their positions. Fortunately, he's still needed for the time being, when an investigation into anti-LK terrorist activity turns up the name Choi Gangwu. The man is the very definition of a nobody, but a look at his activities raises some red flags, leading Mac into a labyrinthine plot that might bring down LK and, with it, the starfaring future its technology is creating.
REVIEW: The cover and description promised a surreal, noir sci-fi novella. It does, in its favor, deliver on the surreality, the noir aesthetic, and the sci-fi. Unfortunately, what it does not deliver along with those elements is a coherent plot or a single character worth caring at all about.
From the start, the reader is immersed in a techno-dystopian future where humans are often augmented with brain implant "Worms" that feed them information and can even control actions, and where AI is mere decades (if that) away from rendering our species effectively obsolete. Investigating a terrorist plot by the Patusan Liberation Front - a group that deeply resents how the residents of the Indonesian island of Patusa have been displaced and reduced to little more than rubbish at the feet of LK's great elevator and associated city - Mac stumbles across the connection to Choi Gangwu, an unassuming man from an unassuming background whose chief interests appear to be butterflies and the space elevator... himself an unwitting pawn of a greater scheme linked to the late company president, a scheme that has just been set into motion. This is a world where history, facts, and reality itself seem malleable, liable to be overlaid and overwritten as easily as computer code, where everything takes on a certain fever-dream aspect and logic often follows inscrutable rules. Characters are just names thrown at the reader as often as not, the key players too remote and larger than life, tied up in a plot where nothing really seems to matter because the big stuff is all moving at a level so far beyond narrator Mac's level of experience and control that they might as well be the dance of the galaxies through the universe. The blurb promised an exciting race up the space elevator to a secret hidden in the counterweight at the other end of the tether, but that doesn't even happen until the final third or fourth of the novel, and isn't nearly as much a part of the plot as it was hyped to be. By the end, I still was wondering why any of it happened, whether Mac's involvement really was necessary (and why the author chose him as the character to view the tale through), and why exactly I was supposed to care about anything that went on. I give it marks for originality and aesthetic, but this one was just too far out of my wheelhouse for me to begin to appreciate.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Titanium Noir (Nick Harkaway) - My Review
The Darwin Elevator (Jason M. Hough) - My Review
Altered Carbon (Richard K. Morgan) - My Review
Djuna, translated by Anton Hur
Pantheon
Fiction, Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: For centuries, humanity dreamed of a future in space, but it wasn't until the construction of the world's first and only space elevator by Korean conglomerate LK that the dream became a reality. The recent death of LK's president can't help but send tremors through the company and many individuals within it. Mac in particular, a man with a shady (and manufactured) history, feels his position as head of External Affairs grow more precarious with the man's passing; he only got the job because he saved the late president's life many years ago, and the new leadership is quite likely to see him as a loose end to tidy up once they secure their positions. Fortunately, he's still needed for the time being, when an investigation into anti-LK terrorist activity turns up the name Choi Gangwu. The man is the very definition of a nobody, but a look at his activities raises some red flags, leading Mac into a labyrinthine plot that might bring down LK and, with it, the starfaring future its technology is creating.
REVIEW: The cover and description promised a surreal, noir sci-fi novella. It does, in its favor, deliver on the surreality, the noir aesthetic, and the sci-fi. Unfortunately, what it does not deliver along with those elements is a coherent plot or a single character worth caring at all about.
From the start, the reader is immersed in a techno-dystopian future where humans are often augmented with brain implant "Worms" that feed them information and can even control actions, and where AI is mere decades (if that) away from rendering our species effectively obsolete. Investigating a terrorist plot by the Patusan Liberation Front - a group that deeply resents how the residents of the Indonesian island of Patusa have been displaced and reduced to little more than rubbish at the feet of LK's great elevator and associated city - Mac stumbles across the connection to Choi Gangwu, an unassuming man from an unassuming background whose chief interests appear to be butterflies and the space elevator... himself an unwitting pawn of a greater scheme linked to the late company president, a scheme that has just been set into motion. This is a world where history, facts, and reality itself seem malleable, liable to be overlaid and overwritten as easily as computer code, where everything takes on a certain fever-dream aspect and logic often follows inscrutable rules. Characters are just names thrown at the reader as often as not, the key players too remote and larger than life, tied up in a plot where nothing really seems to matter because the big stuff is all moving at a level so far beyond narrator Mac's level of experience and control that they might as well be the dance of the galaxies through the universe. The blurb promised an exciting race up the space elevator to a secret hidden in the counterweight at the other end of the tether, but that doesn't even happen until the final third or fourth of the novel, and isn't nearly as much a part of the plot as it was hyped to be. By the end, I still was wondering why any of it happened, whether Mac's involvement really was necessary (and why the author chose him as the character to view the tale through), and why exactly I was supposed to care about anything that went on. I give it marks for originality and aesthetic, but this one was just too far out of my wheelhouse for me to begin to appreciate.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Titanium Noir (Nick Harkaway) - My Review
The Darwin Elevator (Jason M. Hough) - My Review
Altered Carbon (Richard K. Morgan) - My Review
Thursday, March 6, 2025
A Breath of Mischief (MarcyKate Connolly)
A Breath of Mischief
MarcyKate Connolly
Sourcebooks
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: A windling child, the blue-haired girl Aria was raised in a floating castle by the Wind itself. She loves watching the world drift by beneath her, listening to the visiting birds and dragons and other flying beasts, playing with her best friend Gwyn the gryphling, reading books in the castle's great library (for the Wind loves to snatch up books and scrolls and other odds and ends in their travels to bring back to their daughter), and being lulled to sleep every night by the Wind's special, secret lullaby they sing just for her.
One morning, she wakes up to find the castle has drifted to earth, and the Wind is nowhere to be found. Worse, she seems to have lost her magical gifts from the Wind that let her float and drift like a dandelion puff, and the air all around them is still and heavy, without so much as a breath of breeze. Aria and Gwyn search, and discover that an alchemist named Worton has the Wind trapped in a great and strange magical machine; he refuses to let her parent go unless the windling brings her three magical artifacts from across the land. She isn't sure she trusts him, but she misses the Wind terribly, and the longer the Wind is away, the more the land itself suffers. Can she solve the riddle and find the items... and, if she does, is she helping free the Wind or enabling something far more terrible?
REVIEW: The cover image looked fun, and the title promised mischief and light adventure. But something about that promise never quite came through, even though A Breath of Mischief has some fun images and ideas.
Aria is an "otherling" chosen by the Wind, an embodiment of the element of moving air. Just what is an "otherling"? The story seems vague on what they are and where they come from, save that they aren't human and don't particularly trust people. I guessed them to be some sort of faerie-like being, but the reader only ever meets a handful, each the adopted "child" of an elemental force who, like her, have been given particular gifts and responsibilities. This thin worldbuilding persists throughout, the sense that ideas, while nice and shiny to look at in the moment, don't always make sense and weren't always thought through and don't necessarily connect in a meaningful or consistent fashion. While many in the target age might not notice, I've read enough middle-grade (and even children's, which this skews toward) fantasy where the worlds felt far more solid to notice that thinness here. In any event, the tale drifts a bit like a seed puff on the breeze before getting to the grounding of the castle and the disappearance of the Wind. Along the way, Aria has her first encounter with another otherling, the waterling boy Bay - the first time she's even considered that other elements might have their own children like herself, and her first real notion that the Wind isn't the only elemental master that's particularly important in the world. She eventually finds her way to a dilapidated keep/mad scientist lair and the alchemist Worton, who tricks her and Gwyn into agreeing to a quest for three suspiciously elemental-based objects. Even for a young and somewhat sheltered protagonist, Aria's choice here is rather hard to swallow, as is her blindness about what Worton is really asking of her - especially when she starts seeing more signs that something's terribly amiss as she and her gryphling best friend pursue the objects. The quest itself is only part of the tale that follows, as Aria and Gwyn deal with several obstacles and a few setbacks, and later a mistake that costs everyone dearly... but this being a tale written for the younger end of the target audience, it's hardly a spoiler that things do work out by the end.
As a read-aloud or read-along with a youngster, A Breath of Mischief might be a decent enough tale. Just don't expect too much from it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Granted (John David Anderson) - My Review
Endling #1: The Last (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
The Stone Girl's Story (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
MarcyKate Connolly
Sourcebooks
Fiction, MG? Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: A windling child, the blue-haired girl Aria was raised in a floating castle by the Wind itself. She loves watching the world drift by beneath her, listening to the visiting birds and dragons and other flying beasts, playing with her best friend Gwyn the gryphling, reading books in the castle's great library (for the Wind loves to snatch up books and scrolls and other odds and ends in their travels to bring back to their daughter), and being lulled to sleep every night by the Wind's special, secret lullaby they sing just for her.
One morning, she wakes up to find the castle has drifted to earth, and the Wind is nowhere to be found. Worse, she seems to have lost her magical gifts from the Wind that let her float and drift like a dandelion puff, and the air all around them is still and heavy, without so much as a breath of breeze. Aria and Gwyn search, and discover that an alchemist named Worton has the Wind trapped in a great and strange magical machine; he refuses to let her parent go unless the windling brings her three magical artifacts from across the land. She isn't sure she trusts him, but she misses the Wind terribly, and the longer the Wind is away, the more the land itself suffers. Can she solve the riddle and find the items... and, if she does, is she helping free the Wind or enabling something far more terrible?
REVIEW: The cover image looked fun, and the title promised mischief and light adventure. But something about that promise never quite came through, even though A Breath of Mischief has some fun images and ideas.
Aria is an "otherling" chosen by the Wind, an embodiment of the element of moving air. Just what is an "otherling"? The story seems vague on what they are and where they come from, save that they aren't human and don't particularly trust people. I guessed them to be some sort of faerie-like being, but the reader only ever meets a handful, each the adopted "child" of an elemental force who, like her, have been given particular gifts and responsibilities. This thin worldbuilding persists throughout, the sense that ideas, while nice and shiny to look at in the moment, don't always make sense and weren't always thought through and don't necessarily connect in a meaningful or consistent fashion. While many in the target age might not notice, I've read enough middle-grade (and even children's, which this skews toward) fantasy where the worlds felt far more solid to notice that thinness here. In any event, the tale drifts a bit like a seed puff on the breeze before getting to the grounding of the castle and the disappearance of the Wind. Along the way, Aria has her first encounter with another otherling, the waterling boy Bay - the first time she's even considered that other elements might have their own children like herself, and her first real notion that the Wind isn't the only elemental master that's particularly important in the world. She eventually finds her way to a dilapidated keep/mad scientist lair and the alchemist Worton, who tricks her and Gwyn into agreeing to a quest for three suspiciously elemental-based objects. Even for a young and somewhat sheltered protagonist, Aria's choice here is rather hard to swallow, as is her blindness about what Worton is really asking of her - especially when she starts seeing more signs that something's terribly amiss as she and her gryphling best friend pursue the objects. The quest itself is only part of the tale that follows, as Aria and Gwyn deal with several obstacles and a few setbacks, and later a mistake that costs everyone dearly... but this being a tale written for the younger end of the target audience, it's hardly a spoiler that things do work out by the end.
As a read-aloud or read-along with a youngster, A Breath of Mischief might be a decent enough tale. Just don't expect too much from it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Granted (John David Anderson) - My Review
Endling #1: The Last (Katherine Applegate) - My Review
The Stone Girl's Story (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
The Husbands (Holly Gramazio)
The Husbands
Holly Gramazio
Doubleday
Fiction, General Fiction/Humor
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: It was late, and Lauren was more than a little tipsy, when she returned home from her friend Elena's bachelorette party to find her husband Michael waiting for her... only Lauren doesn't have a husband, and she's never seen Michael before in her life. But, then, the colors and decor of her London home appear to have changed, and there are pictures on the wall and texts on her phone she doesn't remember, all of which confirm that she is indeed married to this stranger, and has been for some time. She even apparently has a different job, working at some hardware and garden store instead of the local council, with no memory of what exactly she does there. The next day, Michael goes up into the attic to change a light bulb - and a different man comes down, also claiming to be her husband, with yet more changes all around her to accommodate this new, impossible relationship. Lauren never really thought about long-term relationships, or much about her future at all, but now, thanks to some mysterious power in her attic, finds herself living a succession of could-have-been lives with could-have-been spouses, some better matches than others, only lacking the memories of what led the could-have-been hers to make their choices. Can she ever get back to her old, single life, the one she alone remembers? If she can't, can she ever decide which of these men, which of these lives, are her destiny?
REVIEW: Part alternate-reality jaunt, part exploration of relationships and the societal myth/expectation of "soul mates", part the story of a woman forced to examine a life lived too long in neutral, The Husbands has an interesting concept, but doesn't always seem certain what its main character is doing with it.
Lauren starts out not particularly wanting much of anything from life, coasting along in a so-so job with a decent circle of friends, watching from the sidelines as they pursue goals and experience life changes while she hasn't substantially moved ahead in anything but years. She's never wanted a family (a conviction that does not change) and never really felt interested in finding a spouse, so she's as confused as she is frightened to find a stranger in her home who claims to be a husband... and an attic that seems insistent on supplying her with new spouses, along with new lives in which she chose them - some of which are poor choices, including a few potential emotional abusers, at least one clearly picked for the money, and more than one run with an ex which never ends well no matter how many alternate-Laurens apparently thought differently. What triggered this? There's no explanation, but the fact that it all began after her best friend's bachelorette party may hint at some metaphysical manifestation of a subconscious desire for a life partner, or at least some definitive direction or change. In any event, once she figures out what's going on, and that her world shifts with each new husband (time itself does not reset), she starts treating the succession of men almost as disposable home decor or rental cars, trying out lives with them for a few days or weeks before sending them back to the attic from whence they came. She's no more serious about choosing a mate or a future than she was before the strangeness started, dabbling in this or that alternate life without really learning or growing, let alone considering how the circle of people around her are also shifting (albeit unknowingly) into new configurations, not always for the better. When she finally finds one she thinks she might stay with, the American-born Carter, she's heartbroken when he ventures up into the attic himself and disappears... only to discover that Carter still exists in her new life, though he's back in America and they never met. Eventually, she finds an Australian-born man named Bohai coming down the attic stairs... a man who also seems to be skipping through alternate worlds, finding different mates waiting for him. The two quickly realize they're not romantically compatible, but are both relieved to have someone to share notes with, someone they can count on to remember each other even when both skip through new lives. Meeting him makes her start taking the matter a little more seriously, but she still has trouble figuring out what she wants to do, what future she wants to grab before it slips through her fingers via fate or her own indecision. Is there ever a true soul mate waiting to be found, a perfect life that's about to drop out of the sky (or attic) to land at her feet, or does Lauren finally have to take the reins and some responsibility, make some decisions and set some goals, and stop letting her life just happen to her? Is there even some great life lesson to be learned, or is this just a weird glitch in the multiverse that just happens to some people? By the end, there's still a lot of ambiguity, and Lauren may or may not have learned much from her experience.
There's some humor in the story, and some exploration of what it means to make choices and live one's life with intention rather than simply waiting for it to happen. The men often being interchangeable objects is a nice twist on the way women are too often seen as window dressing or commodities in marriages, something to acquire to bolster status or serve a purpose rather than being a human being. There is also some needed deconstruction of the idea of "soul mates" and "the one and only forever", and even the idea of marriage itself as a necessary milestone in life; many of the men who come down from the attic could be perfectly suitable partners for life, and at some point some Lauren obviously considered them all a potential "one and only forever", only no life offers perfect bliss without drawbacks, no relationship immune from trouble either before or after the attic switchover. (She is dismayed to find that she's cheating in more than one alternate life, and also that she apparently did not see or chose to ignore serious moral or even legal failings with her picks.) Lauren, unfortunately, just isn't always an interesting or even necessarily likable character to follow through the multiverse, often frustratingly resistant to seeing the obvious, and long stretches of the tale don't seem to go anywhere. That, plus an ending that felt less punchy or decisive than it should have been, ended up holding the story down in the ratings.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
Oona Out of Order (Margarita Montimore) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
Holly Gramazio
Doubleday
Fiction, General Fiction/Humor
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: It was late, and Lauren was more than a little tipsy, when she returned home from her friend Elena's bachelorette party to find her husband Michael waiting for her... only Lauren doesn't have a husband, and she's never seen Michael before in her life. But, then, the colors and decor of her London home appear to have changed, and there are pictures on the wall and texts on her phone she doesn't remember, all of which confirm that she is indeed married to this stranger, and has been for some time. She even apparently has a different job, working at some hardware and garden store instead of the local council, with no memory of what exactly she does there. The next day, Michael goes up into the attic to change a light bulb - and a different man comes down, also claiming to be her husband, with yet more changes all around her to accommodate this new, impossible relationship. Lauren never really thought about long-term relationships, or much about her future at all, but now, thanks to some mysterious power in her attic, finds herself living a succession of could-have-been lives with could-have-been spouses, some better matches than others, only lacking the memories of what led the could-have-been hers to make their choices. Can she ever get back to her old, single life, the one she alone remembers? If she can't, can she ever decide which of these men, which of these lives, are her destiny?
REVIEW: Part alternate-reality jaunt, part exploration of relationships and the societal myth/expectation of "soul mates", part the story of a woman forced to examine a life lived too long in neutral, The Husbands has an interesting concept, but doesn't always seem certain what its main character is doing with it.
Lauren starts out not particularly wanting much of anything from life, coasting along in a so-so job with a decent circle of friends, watching from the sidelines as they pursue goals and experience life changes while she hasn't substantially moved ahead in anything but years. She's never wanted a family (a conviction that does not change) and never really felt interested in finding a spouse, so she's as confused as she is frightened to find a stranger in her home who claims to be a husband... and an attic that seems insistent on supplying her with new spouses, along with new lives in which she chose them - some of which are poor choices, including a few potential emotional abusers, at least one clearly picked for the money, and more than one run with an ex which never ends well no matter how many alternate-Laurens apparently thought differently. What triggered this? There's no explanation, but the fact that it all began after her best friend's bachelorette party may hint at some metaphysical manifestation of a subconscious desire for a life partner, or at least some definitive direction or change. In any event, once she figures out what's going on, and that her world shifts with each new husband (time itself does not reset), she starts treating the succession of men almost as disposable home decor or rental cars, trying out lives with them for a few days or weeks before sending them back to the attic from whence they came. She's no more serious about choosing a mate or a future than she was before the strangeness started, dabbling in this or that alternate life without really learning or growing, let alone considering how the circle of people around her are also shifting (albeit unknowingly) into new configurations, not always for the better. When she finally finds one she thinks she might stay with, the American-born Carter, she's heartbroken when he ventures up into the attic himself and disappears... only to discover that Carter still exists in her new life, though he's back in America and they never met. Eventually, she finds an Australian-born man named Bohai coming down the attic stairs... a man who also seems to be skipping through alternate worlds, finding different mates waiting for him. The two quickly realize they're not romantically compatible, but are both relieved to have someone to share notes with, someone they can count on to remember each other even when both skip through new lives. Meeting him makes her start taking the matter a little more seriously, but she still has trouble figuring out what she wants to do, what future she wants to grab before it slips through her fingers via fate or her own indecision. Is there ever a true soul mate waiting to be found, a perfect life that's about to drop out of the sky (or attic) to land at her feet, or does Lauren finally have to take the reins and some responsibility, make some decisions and set some goals, and stop letting her life just happen to her? Is there even some great life lesson to be learned, or is this just a weird glitch in the multiverse that just happens to some people? By the end, there's still a lot of ambiguity, and Lauren may or may not have learned much from her experience.
There's some humor in the story, and some exploration of what it means to make choices and live one's life with intention rather than simply waiting for it to happen. The men often being interchangeable objects is a nice twist on the way women are too often seen as window dressing or commodities in marriages, something to acquire to bolster status or serve a purpose rather than being a human being. There is also some needed deconstruction of the idea of "soul mates" and "the one and only forever", and even the idea of marriage itself as a necessary milestone in life; many of the men who come down from the attic could be perfectly suitable partners for life, and at some point some Lauren obviously considered them all a potential "one and only forever", only no life offers perfect bliss without drawbacks, no relationship immune from trouble either before or after the attic switchover. (She is dismayed to find that she's cheating in more than one alternate life, and also that she apparently did not see or chose to ignore serious moral or even legal failings with her picks.) Lauren, unfortunately, just isn't always an interesting or even necessarily likable character to follow through the multiverse, often frustratingly resistant to seeing the obvious, and long stretches of the tale don't seem to go anywhere. That, plus an ending that felt less punchy or decisive than it should have been, ended up holding the story down in the ratings.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
Oona Out of Order (Margarita Montimore) - My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab) - My Review
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