Review by Booklist Review
"[T]his is how she and I have spent our long and convoluted journey through time: joined at the hip, joined at the death, haunting each other, carrying each other." Chandrasekera follows two entwined souls through an endless cycle of reincarnation and destruction in this slipstream novel, a poetic saga about identity and memory, colonialism and revolution, connection and commitment. It begins with a hauntingly enigmatic analysis of a TV show starring teenagers Annelid and Levert and set during a "war which is now over but never over." Annelid is possessed by a demon in the jungle, and Leveret, a newly made revolutionary, is murdered. Though the show, watched by fans in the far future, ends with Leveret's death, their story continues in the many nonlinear lives and worlds into which they reincarnate. These worlds, from ancient legends to a ruined, abandoned Earth, are woven from South Asian culture and populated with corrupt politicians and kings, revolutionaries, demons, living corpses, old gods, posthumans, artificial intelligences, and more. Chandrasekera employs multiple narrative forms and storytelling styles in this often difficult to parse but impossible to forget surrealist experience.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Chandrasekera's beautiful yet murky sophomore outing (after The Saint of Bright Doors) takes a certain amount of work to unlock. Through gorgeously rendered fragments, it tells of two friends, Annelid and Leveret, growing up in the wake of the Sri Lankan civil war--and then reincarnating over multiple lifetimes. There are elements of fantasy, science fiction, and the surreal throughout. The first section, for instance, is told from the perspective of fans watching a television show about Annelid and Leveret years in the future. Demons also make frequent appearances. However, the nonlinear plot, ever-changing narrators, and mix of genre elements means there's very little for the reader to grasp onto. Though some will give up in the face of these challenges, others will sink into Chandrasekera's lyrical and evocative style: "I chew the leaf and spit out my red days. They splatter. You chew the leaf and spit out your hours of mad redder." Readers who put in the effort will be rewarded by this rich and sweeping epic. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
From the mythic past to the heat death of the universe, the various lives of Annelid and Leveret flow through time together in Chandrasekera's (The Saint of Bright Doors) layered slipstream story. Whether they meet as friends, as halves of the same self, as godlike enemies, or as hunter and hunted, their eternal return causes ripples through time and deeply affects the fate of the earth. Chandrasekera weaves the profane, the poetic, and the playful into a masterpiece. Audiences can let the precise yet dizzying prose wash over them until the narratively satisfying conclusion. Deeper attention, however, is infinitely rewarding. Close listening reveals profound thoughts on topics ranging from cycles of violence, selfhood, and historiography to body-hacking, digital afterlives, and uncloseable doors. Familiarity with Hindu cosmology offers even more throughlines, from the deep time scale of the narrative to interrogations of foundational mythology. Narrator Shiromi Arserio handles this complicated work with aplomb, keeping the rhythm and poetry of the text flowing smoothly with distinct yet understated voices. VERDICT Utterly disorienting yet still emotionally and thematically resonant, Chandrasekera delivers a narrative that will satisfy every fan of the weird.--Katherine Sleyko
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Transcendence doesn't come easy in this short but labyrinthine tale of reincarnation. What actually happens in these pages is difficult to describe or quantify. It's a hallucinatory, often nonlinear work, constantly and confusingly shifting perspective. It concerns a small group of people, or gods, bound by love and violence across many lives, each time grasping for some kind of satisfaction or resolution as the Earth withers. Various sections are set in a magic-infused, seemingly contemporary Sri Lanka, in which the dead exist, work, and make trouble alongside the living, and demons are always lurking nearby. Other sections are post- or even post-post-apocalyptic, blending science fiction with fantasy as a small group struggles to help a barren Earth to heal, even as others escape to the stars. The author is clearly content to let readers sink or swim in the flotsam-strewn river of story, as interesting scraps of plot begin but then peter out, flowing, not entirely seamlessly, into other pseudo-plots. What seem to be local legends, mythology, and history of the area are referenced but not fully explained. Apparently there's also some kind of age-old conflict between the kingdoms of the Rake and the Yoke, whatever those are? Meanwhile, there are clearly some points being made about the dark legacy of colonialism, the dangers of codependent relationships, and the way the living often can't shake free of the legacy of the dead. But if there's a throughline here, you're going to have to work to find and fully understand it. Poetic and unique, but possibly not worth the effort to plumb its depths. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
