Reviews

I am really struggling with rating and reviewing this book. I simultaneously loved and hated it. But my hate is not very objective, so I tried to keep it from reflecting in the rating.

The Book of M is story of a fantastical contemporary apocalypse hinged on one global event: humans mysteriously loosing their shadows. But what if our shadows tethers us to everything: our memories, identity and the rules of reality itself. This book was filled with awe-inspiring and society ending magic. The premise is both refreshing and unique. I was throughly impressed with the plot premise. But the book fell short.

The story follows three narrators:

Ory: Apocalypse survivor, enduring on a hill-top resort with his wife and love of his wife Max until she looses her shadow and Ory must go on a journey to find her.

Max: Ory’s wife who has recently lost her shadow. Max leaves Ory for his safety, but records her journey on a tap recorder for Max and to prevent her from loosing everything she is.

Mahnaz: Archer, training for the Olympics who’s story converges with Ory on his journey to find Max.

The Nameless Man: a man who has also lost his memories in an automobile accident before the showlessness stole memories. He suffers retrograde amnesia and has no recollection of anything that happened before waking up in a treatment facility.

The narrative is filled with danger and mystery. Those who lost their shadow subsequently loose their memory, but gain the ability to manipulate reality and break all the natural laws of physics, mostly out of fear and in ways often terrifying to human-kind. There are cults. Crazy people. Survivors with shadows, weapons and no empathy. The narrative is interesting and well paced and for this I would recommend the book. Some of the plot developments were painfully predictable, parts of the story seemingly unnecessary or given too much page time, other developments underwhelming and I felt the story didn’t quite reach amazing. But the thing that kills it for me is that the science part of the story or magic behind the vanishing shadows and the shadowless ability to manipulate reality is painfully incomplete.

As much as I loved the world building and the plot, the character development cut a sista deep and made the book painful in the end. I liked the book and didn't love it, but still consider it a book worth reading.

What I hated is a spoiler and should only be read if you read the book.

Spoiler

Spoiler

This book centers on Ory so deeply that it is at the detriment of the other two narrators Max and Mahnaz. In the end I hated him.

At the start, Ory is manipulative and controlling. Max is neutered and helpless in a world where she should have been equipped and powerful because Ory chooses for her. Preventing her from leaving the mountain and almost locking her up. Even when Max leaves, it is not for herself but for him. To protect HIM because she loves him so much. She risks it all for a man that is sexing another woman in less than 6 months after her (not death, but) disappearance, even after finding that there may be a cure.

Max should have made it to the end, she did not loose her memory for a previously considered insurmountable amount of time because of her love for Ory (even though that doesn’t make sense because that should have erased him or something). Her will was strong even though Ory in someways diminished her with his fear and controlling nature.

I loved Max as a character, her voice and journey was the most engaging of all the narration. I lived in her story and she was discarded for Ory to end up with Mahnaz, which was not a plot twist but a painfully obvious outcome.

Mahnaz is essentially in love with Ory before she meets him because of the stories, Paul (Ory’s best friend), tells her before she meets him!? She is also problematic because her hot temper and recklessness essentially killed her sister. Even with this problematic nature, I like her. Problem is, her character becomes vastly inconsistent for the sake of being coupled with Ory.

I feel like the narrative around the shadows and the apocalypse itself is incomplete and leaves there reader wanting and dimimishes the story in some ways.

Post Scriptum
Where's MAX?