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This book is something of a technical marvel: it does something really cool with the perspective, with several very different first-person narrators inside an (also first-person) framing narrative, with high immersion and hardly any narrative distance, and while it's really cool and works really well it's sort of difficult to explain why from the outside.

It's also sort of a sequel to Hoshi and the Red City Circuit (do HTML tags work here), though it's disconnected enough that either of them can easily be read on their own, and/or in any order. The world is the same, but the location is not, and no characters are shared. I'm not sure when the framing narrative takes place relative to Hoshi, and even less sure of the even-more-framing device that takes place outside of that, but the internal narrative in fact takes place before the events of Hoshi and the Red City Circuit: on a plot level, this is a book about what went down on Callisto with the élans vital, which Hoshi only vaguely alluded to. The plot level is not really the most relevant, though, also because it is about the élans vital. It is about feelings and resonance and hatred and hope, and it is very good.

Selling points: cool metaphysics; queer; largely neurodivergent cast (most protagonists have K-syndrome, a fictional genetic disorder distinct from, but very similar to, autism) whose neurodivergence expresses itself in very different ways, highlighted through the close first person perspectives; big high-stakes climax stuff happens through a non-violent artistic medium.

Warnings: deals with severe institutionalised ableism, self-hatred, addiction; in-world bigotry is very noticeably flattened onto this one channel, with no intersectionality.

A thing I really liked about the first book was the way every single character was sympathetic, and I was rooting for all of them, despite the way that several of them were operating at cross purposes. This is no longer the case here. There is clear villain (several, really; one is a repeated viewpoint character). This changes the vibe. I'm already invested, but if I weren't, this would feel a bit... I don't know, not bad as such, but nothing special, either.

I really don't have much to say about this book, and that's partly because I'm barely able to string enough words together for a book review anymore, and partly because I went straight on to the next one and am regarding this more as "middle section of a whole" than as a book in its own right, but it's also partly because the whole book honestly feels more like that middle section of a whole than anything. It's not remarkable in any way the first book wasn't, and the obvious villain(s) and rising political intrigue make it stand out less from the genre as a whole, but overall it's just a solid continuation and solid step towards the end, no more and no less.

There's a lot of complexity here. The worldbuilding is top-notch, without many shortcuts: social strata viewed from more than one side, foreigners from all over with culture and languages and everything that feel consistent and realistic even when they're only mentioned in passing. Honestly this feels like a technical masterpiece in so many ways: there are a lot of moving parts and they all meet up like some sort of complex knotwork; lots of characters, with proper arcs and everything, but introduced at a rate and in a manner that keeps them easy to keep track of; some of the best-done character voices I've seen; perspective-hopping showcasing things (characters, situations, social classes, privilege) from different sides in a way that feels easy and natural. It's just... really well done.

It's also just a fun read. Engrossing, left me wanting more.

Selling points: fun, fast-paced, great worldbuilding, casual bisexuality with no one making a big thing about it, technically excellent, high-class person realising their privilege without it feeling like proselytizing

Warnings: sacrificed friendship

Das Buch hätte wirklich Inhaltswarnungen brauchen können. Es gibt anscheinend auch welche auf der Website der Autorin, leider aber nicht im Buch selber. Daher erstmal ein paar Warnungen: Sex, explizit; sexuelle Übergriffe bis hin zur Vergewaltigung, auch von Kindern; grausamer, sexuell übertonter Mord; fehlende Autonomie; Misbrauch von Kindern; Krieg; Inzucht (unbewusst).

Ich hab das Buch trotzdem genossen, aber wahrscheinlich hätte ich nicht, wenn ich mich nicht besonders für Märchen interessieren würde. Es war auf jeden Fall interessant zu sehen, wie jedes Element von Rötkäppchen eingebaut wurde. Und es hat auch etwas zum nachdenken angeregt. Schwierig war es aber doch, und ich hatte auch ein bisschen das Gefühl, dass es Vergewaltigung etwas verkleinert - dadurch, dass sie fast wie Shock-Value aussah, anstatt ernsthaft thematisiert zu werden. Der eine Täter kann irgendwie nichts dafür, gegen den anderen kann man sich relativ leicht wehren, und die Häufigkeit, mit der sie vorzukommen scheint, lässt alles irgendwie verblassen. (Das fällt besonders auf, nachdem ich gerade The Bayou von Arden Powell gelesen hab, in dem die Vergewaltigung und Mord eines einzelnen Kindes solch weitreichende Nachwirkungen hat - nicht nur für das Kind selber, sondern für das ganze Dorf - dass das gleiche hier fast überflüssig scheint.)

Ein paar komische Ideen über Wolfsverhalten sind auch dabei, aber Märchenwölfe sind halt anders. Da kann man nichts sagen.

I have to say, Eugene might be the single most passive protagonist I've ever seen. Not a flaw in the writing: a deliberate character choice. There's depression and all-pervading anxiety, yes, but the level of passivity here - of learned helplessness - was deep enough to be engrossing, to have me wondering: what caused this? How did he get to be this way?

The question is answered. It is one of many questions raised and answered, or first answered and later raised: as short as this novella is, there's a many-layered depth to it that rises the more I think about it.

There's also a very consistent atmosphere to it - thick, oppressive, uneasy; dread so creeping that it feels more like depression than fear. Might be a hard read, if it were longer. Though, again: there's more to it than its length implies.

Selling points: gay, hella atmosphere, depth, for all the purported supernatural horror villains the true horror is what lies in humanity

Warnings: suicide (on page, moderately intense); child sexual abuse; sex (tasteful but explicit); sex used to shut someone up; sex used to secure binding promises from someone without their necessarily noticing; homophobia (especially internalised and religious homophobia, period-typical); gun violence; religion (Christianity (Catholic) as an authoritarian institution and a social force).

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.