A surreal and almost psychedelic read. I think my favorite bits were in Bangkok, and I think the writer absolutely nailed that weird third culture kid going to private international school vibe, which is quite niche and makes me think he has personal experience of it. If not, he did his research. The descriptions of trauma were evocative and intriguing. I loved the queet rep.

But other aspects were a bit jarring for me. Structurally, the narrative felt disconnected or fragmented. I think a lot of that was intentional but that did leave me drifting and frustrated at times. I am a structure fiend when it comes to books so that matters to me a lot.

Some of psychology verged into cliche or inaccurate for me but that's perhaps subjective. The book also felt like an odd combination of high concept (Mnemosyne Project, weavers, stitchers) but had a literary pace. High concept can be hard to balance with literary and in this case it didn't quite gel for me.

I would still recommend this overall though. ( )

You could describe this as "What if X-Men but for reals?" and there's some truth to that. But the book is less interested in the social and cataclysmic implications of its characters' powers than that suggests, and more in the personal and interpersonal implications. Though marked as science-fiction, it often reads more like a teen-romance-mystery (if that's a genre). "Days of Future Wall Flowers Past", or something.

At its heart, it's a romantic book, not just in terms of the love story/stories it tells, but in its explorations of the philosophical role of memory in shaping our identities. For me, the greatest interest lay in the loose thought experiments the book conducts along the way, asking various what-if questions. What if you could pass the emotion of a memory from yourself to someone else? What if it was a good memory? What if it was a bad one? What if your memories were false or incomplete? What if your memories were the product of a lie?

A fascinating debut, fittingly multifaceted given the cover. There'll be something in there for you, I promise. ( )