None
4 stars
This book sure was an experience. It's once again not something I'd normally pick up on my own, but I'm currently in the mood to venture outside of my favorite genres comfort zone, and one of my friends has talked about this novel so much, and also, it's hard to resist a nonbinary/genderfluid protagonist.
I'm not sure how I feel about this story, or if there's even a story here; it's more, like I said, an experience. The protagonist doesn't so much go through a narrative as experiences things: himself, life, his ability to shapeshift his body into the opposite gender (Paul continues to use he/him pronouns for himself when he is Polly, so I'm doing the same in the review), people, cities, sex—there's definitely a lot of sex here, which may have kept me sort of... detached from the book most of the time. It's not that I …
I'm not sure how I feel about this story, or if there's even a story here; it's more, like I said, an experience. The protagonist doesn't so much go through a narrative as experiences things: himself, life, his ability to shapeshift his body into the opposite gender (Paul continues to use he/him pronouns for himself when he is Polly, so I'm doing the same in the review), people, cities, sex—there's definitely a lot of sex here, which may have kept me sort of... detached from the book most of the time. It's not that I have anything against sex; it's just that I'm hella ace, and so this side of life is something that perpetually confuses me. Characters experiencing sex as part of a romance storyline? Cool, I can focus on the romance part and enjoy the scene. Characters experiencing sex for the sake of sex? It's a bit like reading a novel that's all about a job or a hobby that I know nothing of and don't exactly understand the appeal. :D
Despite that, I found enough traits in Paul to find him relatable and interesting to follow. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about many of the other characters around him—a lot of them seemed pretty one-dimensional. I enjoyed some of the fairy-tailish intermissions that squeezed their way into the 1990s narrative occassionally, but I'm not sure I understood each of their points entirely. Everything about shapeshifters and why/what/who/how they are that way was, to tell the truth, pretty confusing, too. I think that made me enjoy the first part of the book, where Paul was just one of a kind, somewhat more.
In other words, this novel felt like a kaleidoscope of things: things I liked and things I didn't, things I found super relatable and things I was bored with, things that painted a vivid picture and things that left me confused. It's hard to form a uniform opinion about a reading experience like that, or rate it adequately. I did feel I liked more of those kaleidoscope colors than I didn't.