Remember You Will Die

English language

Published 2024 by Sourcebooks, Incorporated.

ISBN:: 978-1-7282-5603-0

(1 review)

"Can the absence of words tell a story? Like a pattern in lace, the holes as important as the threads?"

A search. A puzzle. Sixty protagonists―all of whom are dead.

Told entirely through obituaries and ricocheting through time, Remember You Will Die is an innovative, genre-bending epic about the messy tapestry of human history and the threads that connect us, told through the eyes of Peregrine, an AI mother grappling with the unexpected death of her human daughter, Poppy.

And from the newspaper clippings of individual lives emerges something else unexpected: generations entwined through blood and art and the consequences of their actions, betrayals and redemptions that traverse our dying world and beyond.

Spanning continents, centuries, planets, and genres, and centering a diverse mix of human experiences, Remember You Will Die is a provocative exploration of who we are and what we could be.

1 edition

enne📚 reviewed Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins

Remember You Will Die

4 stars

This may be my own categorization, but there sure have been a lot of books recently that are written in an interconnected mosaic structure. When reading one of these, my brain goes into a similar mode as a good mystery novel, but instead of pinning suspicious plot elements to my cork board, I'm instead sifting out small fragments of imagery and theme. It's not unlike the feeling when you see a lot of online posts talking indirectly about the same current event, while you are uninformed and trying to feel out the shape of the subject from only its subtooted outline.

I start with this context because I have read a lot of these mosaic books lately, and it's tricky for me to distill my feelings about this book without making direct comparisons. Primarily, Remember You Will Die suffers from coming in the immediate shadow of the emotional punches of …

This may be my own categorization, but there sure have been a lot of books recently that are written in an interconnected mosaic structure. When reading one of these, my brain goes into a similar mode as a good mystery novel, but instead of pinning suspicious plot elements to my cork board, I'm instead sifting out small fragments of imagery and theme. It's not unlike the feeling when you see a lot of online posts talking indirectly about the same current event, while you are uninformed and trying to feel out the shape of the subject from only its subtooted outline.

I start with this context because I have read a lot of these mosaic books lately, and it's tricky for me to distill my feelings about this book without making direct comparisons. Primarily, Remember You Will Die suffers from coming in the immediate shadow of the emotional punches of Rakesfall and In Universes (both of which were winners of the 2024 Otherwise Award). How High We Go in the Dark from 2022 also sits in this mosaic space and casts its own long shadow, especially given that I think it is a stronger thematic treatment of adjacent ideas.

Remember You Will Die is a book told (largely) through obituaries ranging from a mildly speculative version of our past and into a very science fiction speculative future. However, it also has some additional texts from etymology and web searches. Broadly, it's about death, art, and meaning but it's also about AIs, invasive species, and parenthood.

Nerds of a Feather has a much better review that is an incomplete list of recurring motifs found in the novel. Its text is almost more of a compelling piece than the novel itself, and I highly recommend reading it instead of my own blabs.

What this book suffers the most from is its choice of form: the obituary format. To its credit, it is hard to imagine it doing better, and many bits are quite compelling little narratives. What doesn't work is that an obituary is largely detached observation of the legacy of a person's life. You get the shape of a person but at an emotional distance. It feels impersonal, and when the obituary quotes something the deceased has said, it often feels jarringly like the author trying to directly tell the reader something. This obituary structure thus becomes both too subtle and not subtle enough simultaneously.

There is an immediate story in the connective tissue of this novel about an overprotective parent and a child's escape from their smothering grasp. But, in the end I am left with only the outlines of these characters and very little of their heart; ultimately it makes the whole novel seem shallow and hollow when it feels like it should instead be the core.

The condition of living is eventually leaving.

Endings are an outline, a frame, a shape. An unfinished painting hangs nowhere.