This book has a lot of good things going for it. I heard about this book from my co-worker. She gushed about this one and how good it was. I had heard the name before. I have already read one of here previous books, Station Eleven and that book was really good! I also appreciate reading books by Canadian authors in Canadian settings. (Do all books and movies need to be set in New York city? Seriously!) This book has also gotten lots of buzz on the book lists, which I do take into account; who doesn’t want to read the best books? All these reasons caused me to search this one out.
The book follows a bunch of different characters across different countries, and times. They all turn out to be connected in this weird timeline of our universe. You really can’t say too much about this or you will risk ruining the adventure. I have many feelings about this book but they are hard to put down in words.
The author wrote this during the pandemic and you can sort of feel that vibe throughout but what exactly is the COVID-19. Maybe this quote will give you a feeling about what I mean.
“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”
As I said, I really enjoyed this book and it gave me all sorts of feels. I was glad to have picked this book to read as my first book of 2023. Let’s hope we have a bit more of a ’normal year’, if we can even define normal anymore.
“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. The arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”
Rating: ★★★★★
Book #1 in my 2023 Reading Challenge