jake_'s review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
Votu is a quite deliberately irrational fantasy world delivered in a deadpan and sardonic eloquence recalling Borges and at times Peake (compare also Valente’s Palimpsest, Calvino’s Invisible Cities). I probably missed a lot of the influences on the prose style itself, which frequently switches perspective, cuts itself off mid-thought, and blurs speech, thought and narration.
Celebrant is less focused than The Divinity Student, more challenging than The Narrator, but perhaps even more original, at least in its fantasies, than both.
Ultimately this book was too sprawling, postmodern, incoherent and meaningless to be enjoyable, and it did not compensate with the same degree of beauty and metaphysics-shattering fantasy of Borges, Calvino etc.
I would definitely consider a re-read in the future, especially if some heroic publishing house decides to republish the lost Chomu Press works of Michael Cisco.
I would definitely consider a re-read in the future, especially if some heroic publishing house decides to republish the lost Chomu Press works of Michael Cisco.
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