512 pages
English language
Published April 15, 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom, Tor Books.
A time-traveling, futuristic saga of a family trying to outlast and remake a universe with a power unlike any we've seen before. When Raisa Hopeland, determined to win her race to become the next electromancer of London, bumps into Amon Brightbourne - tweed-suited, otherworldly, guided by the Grace - in the middle of a London riot, she sets in motion a series of events which will span decades, continents and a series of events which will change the world. From rioting London to geothermal Iceland to the climate-struck islands of Polynesia, from birth to life to death, from tranquillity to terror to joy, Raisa's journey will encompass the world. But one thing will always be true. Hopeland is family--and family is dangerous.
This novel really set a hook early in with crazy parkour electromancer battles, then sort of jumps sideways in a disconcerting series of lines of love stories, epic familial curses, climate emergency, corporate empires, heroic coups and and and and.
I am a huge fan of most of Ian McDonald's stuff, but unfortunately this one hit kind of flat and was a major struggle to finish.
I had a little trouble with the whole magical reality aspect of the book, for starters. It seemed incredibly present in the first section, and then largely disappeared into the background until near the end, so it felt rather jarring when it returned after so long.
Also, the whole Hopeland thing wasn't quite strongly enough envisioned for me to get a handle on it?
Honestly, this may largely be me. Like I said, I had a lot of trouble connecting to this book and the characters so I might have just drifted off and lost details that are actually obviously there.
But that's my 2¢ FWIW…
I loved everything about this book. It is inspiring and hopeful. The "found family" aspects are wonderful, without being so overwhelmingly positive as to render them completely unbelievable.
Now that I'm through gushing, I will say that many people will not like this book. It has many aspects that I typically despise in books, starting with the fact that not a whole lot actually happens despite the immense length of this tome. (Someone who recommended it to me described it as "a massive slab of a book.") At one third of the way into this I still had no real idea what it was about, and even by the end it is difficult to concisely describe. Is it possible to say I highly recommend this, while also warning that a great many folks will not be happy with it? Despite it ticking a lot of the boxes that usually make …
I loved everything about this book. It is inspiring and hopeful. The "found family" aspects are wonderful, without being so overwhelmingly positive as to render them completely unbelievable.
Now that I'm through gushing, I will say that many people will not like this book. It has many aspects that I typically despise in books, starting with the fact that not a whole lot actually happens despite the immense length of this tome. (Someone who recommended it to me described it as "a massive slab of a book.") At one third of the way into this I still had no real idea what it was about, and even by the end it is difficult to concisely describe. Is it possible to say I highly recommend this, while also warning that a great many folks will not be happy with it? Despite it ticking a lot of the boxes that usually make a book unlikeable for me, I felt good while reading this, which overrode all the analytics of what I generally like an dislike.
