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I've kind of a complicated opinion of this book, and while part of me wants to recommend it to absolutely everyone, another part of me wants to preface that recommendation with a whole slew of caveats and content warnings. It is, unquestionably, a good book; but it is not a pleasant one.

The writing is fluid, the narrator easy to empathise with, and the framing device both really nifty and very immersive. It also performs another important function: it makes it clear from the start that whatever else happens in the book, the narrator is going to - somehow, somewhen, in some capacity - make it through. This is the sort of book in which that knowledge is critical, and for some readers might make the difference in being able to finish it.

The narrator - whose only given name and pronouns in fact belong to someone else, for which reason I'm uncomfortable with using them - spends nearly the entire book in a state of no or nearly no agency. Every aspect of their life is tightly controlled, down to their perception and their ability to move their own body. Their mind is their own, but there's so much gaslighting and disregard for their personhood that that, too, is under constant assault. Other characters range from dismissive to misguided to outright abusive. The threat of rape or sexual assault is a constant looming shadow, though - this is the other thing that keeps the book readable despite all of this - it doesn't ever actually happen.

In various ways, Mirror Project parallels medical abuse, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, and really just about every kind of abuse you can think of. The narrator's situation is deeply traumatising, and readers who are sensitive to any of these things should take every measure to brace and protect themselves before reading (if, indeed, they read it at all).

A good book, an important book, but also a deeply uncomfortable one.

Selling points: voidpunk; AI/robots; hopeful ending.

Warnings: all the content warnings; see above. There were also occasional typos in my edition, though not so many that they seriously disrupted the reading flow.

I do not have many words right now, but there were many things to like here: the deeper exploration of the AI Gods, an epic fight scene that worked better than that in "The Fallen", the way the conclusion went. I do feel a bit weird about the extant that Yasira (and Tiv, and the Seven) all blamed Ev for everything - I mean, they're not wrong to, exactly? She certainly fucked up Jai? But also, she didn't really torture or break Yasira, not intentionally anyway; I suspect that a certain amount of blame that really belonged to Akavi ended up pinned on Ev just because he appeared to be out of the picture. Which is a realistic way for blame to go, but it's... weird, in that I find her amoral, sympathetic, and almost reasonable, and yet people seem almost more upset with her than with the Gods and angels.

Anyway, this went nicely mythic, and although I can't words very well right now I liked it.

Das Buch hat durchaus ein paar rauhe Stellen - die viele Kampfszenen sind zum Teil recht langgezogen, besonders am Anfang, wo man noch nicht viel Kontext dafür hat, und manche Charaktere sind nicht ganz so dreidimensional wie andere (besonders die Sally ist meiner Meinung nach ein bisschen kurz gekommen) - aber seine Stärken gleichen die lässig aus. Nämlich: der amusante Schreibstil; die Welt, in der ich - obwohl das Buch keineswegs dünn war - auch gerne mehr Zeit verbringen würde; und besonders die Charaktere.

Ein paar Sachen die mir besonders gefielen: - Lichtmagie und Dunkelmagie sind einander entgegengesetzt, aber völlig ohne moralischen Wert; weder noch ist gut oder böse; - kein Romanceplot (und sogar eine Anspielung darauf, dass eine Person, von der es fast so aussah, als könnte sie in einem Romanceplot verwickelt werden, aro ist!!); - Monsterpositivität, ohne, dass ihnen die Zähne genommen werden.

Warnungen: - Golems in einem nichtjüdischen Kontext - ab und zu Harry-Potter-Referenzen - Folterung - ziemlich viel Gewalt

Wenn jemals ein neues Undertown Buch kommt, würde ich es gerne lesen.

Na... immernoch interessant, spannend, und unterhaltsam geschrieben. Die Darstellung von Loki gefällt mir, und von Sigyn eigentlich auch; bei den anderen Göttern bin ich mir da weniger sicher.

Und... leider hat das Buch einen wirklich groben Denkfehler, praktisch als Grundstein der Handlung.

Die Götter kriegen nämlich Kraft daraus, das man sie verehrt, huldigt, anbetet usw. Auch durch Gebete die nicht wirklich gemeint werden (das Vers, das den Loge stärkt, wird fast ausschließlich aufgesagt von Leuten, die vom Loge eigentlich überhaupt nichts wissen), und in sehr geschwächtem Maße auch von dem Sagen von Wochentagsnamen und so.

Und dazu kommt, dass die nordisch-germanischen Götter kaum noch existieren, weil angeblich niemand mehr an sie denkt - mit zugegebener Ausnahme von gesagten Wochentagsnamen und ein paar andere Sachen, die sich bedeutungslos die Namen der Göttern ausleihen.

Dabei deutet sonst alles darauf hin, dass die Serie in unserer Welt spielt.

Es gibt in der Tat wenige Leute, die diese alten Götter noch (oder vielmehr: wieder) verehren - aber es gibt sie. Manche seriöser als andere, natürlich, aber erstens gibt's die seriöse auch, und zweitens zeigt die Serie ja, dass man's nicht wirklich ernst meinen muss. Wer sich genug mit dem Thema Esoterik-Kreis befasst um sich darüber lustig zu machen - jaja, solche wie Maras Mutters "Wiccas" gibt es natürlich auch (wobei ich nichts vom wirklichen Wicca darin gespiegelt gesehen hab; zugegebnerweise kenne ich mich da aber nicht besonders gut aus) - sollte eigentlich wissen, dass es auch Leute gibt, die es durchaus ernst meinen damit und auch willens sind, etwas zu recherchieren für ihren Glauben.

Es gibt auch eine leichte Andeutung daran, dass Heavy-Metal-Fans zwar eine Ahnung von der nordisch-germanischen Mythologie haben, aber im Großen und Ganzen eher eine falsche. Wegen Manowar. Naja, als deutsche*r nicht-Metalfan hat man vielleicht nur von Manowar gehört. Anscheinend hat Tommy Krappweis aber nicht genug recherchiert, um zu merken, dass es auch Bands wie Falkenbach oder Amon Amarth oder Heidevolk oder oder oder gibt. Ich mein, welche, die sich ernsthaft mit dem Thema befassen, ordentlich recherchieren und Lieder schreiben, die direkt bestimmte Götter huldigen. Welche nachher lautstark mitgesungen werden von tausenden von Fans im Konzert. Weltweit. Und wenn sie die CD hören natürlich auch.

Nicht zu sprechen davon, dass man an fast jedem Straßeneck eine Mjöllnir-Halskette kaufen kann...

Was meiner Meinung nach den Göttern deutlich mehr Kraft geben sollte, als was ein einzelner Mensch anstellen kann mit einer noch so langen Reihe von Seminaren, die von vielleicht zwanzig Leuten auf einmal besucht werden. Aber das passt ja nicht in die Geschichte.

Naja, davon mal abgesehen, hat es trotzdem Spaß gemacht, die Serie zu lesen.

All right, I hope I'm being fair here. I'm aware that part of the reason I didn't like this book much was that it just very much wasn't for me - it has a specific target demographic (young teens who are immersed in pop culture) which I neither am, nor ever was, part of, and like much teen fiction with a more-or-less contemporary setting I found it somewhat alienating. The writing style, also, fails in the specific way that is pretty common (but not universal, which is why I keep trying) to writing for young people. Plus the basic plot - super-fast whirlwind romance between a disenfranchised person and a member of an oppressive class who is constantly pushing her sexual and romantic boundaries, but apparently that's fine and romantic and the start of something beautiful that will last forever even though they're teens who barely knew each other for two weeks - is something that squicks me out. So those are my personal biases, which I'm trying to keep in mind are very much not objective.

I generally consider reviews something of a service to authors, for which reason I rarely bother if it's going to be negative anyway. The reason I think this is worth writing is that Janelle is described as aspec, which I think makes it cross the line from "just very much not for me" to "actively harmful".

Janelle is described as "demi-ace", which is not a specific label I've heard before, but sounds similar enough to "demisexual" that I'm inclined to conflate them. The description given is that she's attracted to people, but not inclined to date or kiss or have sex with them until she knows them well and has developed a friendship. For comparison, the usual definition of demisexuality is not being sexually attracted to people until one knows them well. I've also seen it directly contrasted with this idea of being-attracted-but-not-wanting-sex-straight-away, which I thought was - and have definitely seen described as - normal allosexual behaviour, although it's obviously not entirely universal (as evidenced by the very existence of prostitutes and one-night-stands).

Regardless of definition, it pretty much gets thrown out when she meets [the alien she knows as Morris], because again: within less than two weeks, she goes from "happy to die a virgin" to "maybe we should have sex while we have the chance".

The whole "you just haven't met the right person yet!! :)" narrative is never great, but it's worse when applied to someone who's nominally aspec. Combined with the deeply uneven power dynamic and the way [Morris] keeps pushing her boundaries, "asking for consent" without explaining what for (remember: uninformed consent is not consent), &c., the book leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Some of his pushing is explained away as being because he's alien and doesn't understand human social conventions, which is fine as far as it goes, but the fact that she basically never reacts with discomfort to it is, in context, not.

I'm sure there are people who will feel seen by this book. But I can't help but imagine a young aspec person, who maybe has done enough research to accept that label for themself but is still inundated with the message that they're broken, reading this book and thinking "here is someone like me" - and then seeing it modelled that there is a route to happiness/wholeness via romantic love after all, and all you need to do is find "the right person" and react to advances as though they're flattering rather than uncomfortable. Like if you just go along with everything they say, your boundaries will no longer matter to you, either.

Which, you know, not a good thing.

Again, I'm sure there are people who will feel seen by this, and I'm sure there are people to whom these things won't matter. It does reasonably well with gender, at least, and I guess young teens who are super into pop culture are going to like it more than I did. But if you're looking at this because of alleged aspec representation: really, probably don't.

I went into this book vaguely remembering that it was meant to be super gripping and immersive and tense and whatnot - which turned out to be true, in the end! - but was absolutely not true in the beginning. I had a hard time getting into it at first, and after turning it around in my head for a while I think I know the reason: failure to establish a clear baseline.

We're told from the start that Gyre loves caving and is very excited to get underground. We're also told that caving on Cassandra V is super dangerous - significantly more so than on Earth - and that a significant percentage of cavers die during the two or three trips they need to make to earn enough money to get offworld. Immediately afterwards, we're told that's why Gyre jumped at the chance to do it in only one. Triple the pay, presumably triple the danger, but only once. This feels like a discrepancy, and her motivations aren't totally clear - her primary reason for wanting to get offworld (which is thematically important, even!) doesn't come out until several days in, in dialogue.

So Gyre is on her first serious excursion and has no more experience than the reader, and we know already that caving has a high fatality rate even on normal excursions, and that presumably there's a reason why this one pays so much more. We also know that she (allegedly?) likes being underground, and should at least at the beginning feel pretty comfortable in her environment. Given all of that, her reactions to practically everything at the beginning feel completely overblown. She sees red flags everywhere (and yeah, there definitely are a few), she's utterly shocked when she finds out how many people have died down here before, and so on. Maybe it really is shocking! But with no hard numbers before, just a general "many people die before they earn enough to get offworld" - plus the extra financial bonus here - it absolutely didn't feel shocking to me as a reader. Gyre's overreactions are so all over the place that I couldn't get a solid grip on her character, her environment, anything. Her moral disgust at certain things also felt foreign to me - I guess she thinks it's worse when individuals do things than when corporations do those same things??? I guess a profit motivation is more palatable to her than a personal one???? Because capitalism?????

Gyre is the viewpoint character, and Em - who exists mainly as a voice in her helmet, and is the only other major character - is presented from the start as manipulative, untrustworthy, and dangerous. Which makes it awkward that I found her significantly more relatable than Gyre, at the start. "Relatable" isn't even the right word - "predictable" comes closer, but really it's something between those. "Reasonable", maybe. I didn't know her deeper motivations, but I could understand why she did the things she did, follow her logic, &c., in a way I couldn't with Gyre. Even when she lied, I felt she could be relied on to have Gyre's safety at heart: completely counter to the way Gyre thought of her.

This all sounds very much as though I didn't care for the book at all, which to be honest was kind of true for the beginning - which makes this book one of the biggest differences between how I felt about it at the beginning and the end that I've read yet.

I can pinpoint the exact moment it turned around, though I won't because spoilers. The point is, once things started changing, the beginning up to that point became the baseline - which meant that all at once Gyre's emotions and reactions felt much more grounded. Somewhat ironically, seeing as Gyre herself began to be considerably less grounded, but there it is.

As of that point: it was gripping, it was immersive, it was tense, and I enjoyed it. There are basically two components to it: survival and trauma bonding. There are high emotions all over the place, often - but not always - because of immediate physical danger. There's a lot of immediate physical danger! There are lot of very thin margins! There are a lot of things going wrong when the margins are already very slim! Which is all to say that it may be a cathartic read for some people, but it is certainly not a relaxing one.

Selling points: it's a survival story with trauma bonding and a [somewhat spooky?] cave in a sci-fi wrapper, plus also lesbian rep. Either you like that sort of thing or you don't!

Warnings: unreality, loss of autonomy, few calm moments between the tension; takes a bit to get going.