Hardcover, 453 pages
English language
Published Dec. 3, 2017 by Kathy Dawson Books.
If you could change your story, would you?
Jane has lived a mostly ordinary life, raised by her recently deceased aunt Magnolia, whom she counted on to turn life into an adventure. Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is directionless. Then an old acquaintance, the glamorous and capricious Karin Thrash, blows back into Jane's life and invites her to a gala at the Thrashes' extravagant island mansion called Tu Reviens. Jane remembers her aunt telling her: "If anyone ever invites you to go to Tu Reviens, promise me that you'll go."
What Jane doesn't know is that at Tu Reviens her story will change; the house will offer her five choices that could ultimately determine the course of her newly untethered life. But every choice comes with a price. She might fall in love, she might lose her life, she might come face-to-face with herself. At Tu Reviens, anything is possible.
Read …
If you could change your story, would you?
Jane has lived a mostly ordinary life, raised by her recently deceased aunt Magnolia, whom she counted on to turn life into an adventure. Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is directionless. Then an old acquaintance, the glamorous and capricious Karin Thrash, blows back into Jane's life and invites her to a gala at the Thrashes' extravagant island mansion called Tu Reviens. Jane remembers her aunt telling her: "If anyone ever invites you to go to Tu Reviens, promise me that you'll go."
What Jane doesn't know is that at Tu Reviens her story will change; the house will offer her five choices that could ultimately determine the course of her newly untethered life. But every choice comes with a price. She might fall in love, she might lose her life, she might come face-to-face with herself. At Tu Reviens, anything is possible.
Read Jane, Unlimited and see why The New York Times has raved, "Some authors can tell a good story; some can write well. Cashore is one of the rare novelists who do both."
This description comes from the publisher.
Read this at about the same time as 'Piranesi' and 'The Starless Sea' both of which turn around similar themes. Cashore's work is lighter and somewhat dogged in its playfulness, but reads quite well.
3.5/5*
This was an OK book. I think it would make an incredible RPG-style video game.
(I wrote this review elsewhere, but, having written it, it may as well also be here. Had I half-stars to work with I'd have given this four and a half.)
I think that if I’d read a summary of this before I read it, I would have assumed that I’d hate it, but in practise I was really impressed. The title character, newly bereaved, recently dropped out, and struggling to make ends meet, is unexpectedly invited to a gala at the creepy island manor of a rich university friend. After encountering evidence of various strange things going on at the house, she comes to a point where she could pursue one of several leads, and the rest of the novel takes us in turn through narratives of the alternate timeline in which she chooses her own adventure each way. Each of these sub-narratives acts like a different genre (mystery, spy …
(I wrote this review elsewhere, but, having written it, it may as well also be here. Had I half-stars to work with I'd have given this four and a half.)
I think that if I’d read a summary of this before I read it, I would have assumed that I’d hate it, but in practise I was really impressed. The title character, newly bereaved, recently dropped out, and struggling to make ends meet, is unexpectedly invited to a gala at the creepy island manor of a rich university friend. After encountering evidence of various strange things going on at the house, she comes to a point where she could pursue one of several leads, and the rest of the novel takes us in turn through narratives of the alternate timeline in which she chooses her own adventure each way. Each of these sub-narratives acts like a different genre (mystery, spy thriller, supernatural horror, and so on), but the SF variation and hints elsewhere tie them together with a science fictional multiverse conceit.
Jane’s voice is a lot of what makes this work; she’s vivid and likable, perceptive but heedless, thoughtful and shrewd but impatient with both tact and subterfuge. An artist, she thinks things through by making umbrellas about them. These same strengths and flaws hold true with different entailments in each of the different scenarios, and though the variations never quite intersect, they play with and thematically reflect on one another’s absences in ways that are often both sweet and melancholy. For me, not a regular reader of horror, the horror chapter was distressing in ways that carried what felt like a disproportionate emotional weight, but the rest of the book after that still managed to deposit me in a place of being more satisfied than I was hurt.
