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jimmylorunning's review
4.0
No, he shook his head and ran inside, ran inside, ran inside. Yes, to the Censor, always watching, always waiting to administer the strangled comfort of redaction.An atmospheric novel that sometimes hits a little too close to home for me during the time of the 'rona, though
Claustrophobic, surreal, mysterious, foreboding: a post-apocalyptic vision of climate-changed life, though something about it also feels kinda retro-apocalypse... like the bureaucratic nightmares of Kafka, maybe, mixed with a little Orwell (in that you never feel completely safe, even inside your own head/thoughts).
Certain motifs return again and again in a repetition that mirrors the protagonist's fractured memories that never fully congeal. The significance of a set of lines, a tree that brings one back to the earth, the connection of lines that can also connect those who are looking in a shared vision. Nate's drawings perfectly complement the writing here.
The reader is just as much in the dark as the protagonist, which makes for a dizzying experience. We never fully find out what's happening, but that doesn't really matter. We feel it in our bones that something is lost that can never be regained. We also never find out if certain characters are trying to help or not. And the character of the Censor, though never fully explained, is a vague, ever-present, threat.
The setting switches magically to an island where the protagonist lives a peaceful life in a cabin. But then he is mysteriously back in the underworld with his monotonous job again. There are several portals that lead through and back. It seems he is always on a rift at the border between these worlds, teetering between dream and reality, though we never know which is which.
I really enjoyed it. Great job
A slightly off-topic side note: I sketched this tree in my notebook about a month ago, and my mind kept returning to it when I was reading:
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