Jeff Vandermeer meets Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars plus S.A. Barnes' Dead Silence mixed in for good measure. A wild read, in all the senses of the word. Loved it.

This wasn't quite for me. I was excited to get into a SciFi prose novel, but it was really tough to read some sections due to the formatting clashing with my dyslexia. The cadence was off and the meter non-existent, it read like a novel with excessive sentence breaks.

The story itself felt cold and the characters never really grabbed me. The main character was hard to relate to for me, and the big religious shift in the middle was off-putting and, I don't know... contrived? It felt weird to have the MC be a body purist, but then be fine and dandy with hundreds of years of cryo-sleep?

I did like the bit from Catherine's perspective; it drug on for a bit too long, but the wrap up at the end of the chapter was really beautiful. The artwork within is lichen or mold focused and fit the mood wonderfully. There were some big David Lynch vibes during the more horror oriented parts, and I just wanted the whole thing to hold that energy.

I would recommend this to readers who enjoy nature writing and poetry, that can also dig a little weirdness and horror, who don't shy away from big Christian questions and themes.

Thank you NetGalley for approving me for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was intrigued by the premise but I'm fully aware that weird horror fiction can be incredibly hit or miss. Right from the start this story had a unique prose style, reminiscent of poetry. At first I liked this creative style bit very quickly it become too much and I couldn't bare to read it for a full novel. I imagine some might love this, but I personally feel like style is best suited for short fiction.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

DNF at 12%. I saw another reviewer call this book experimental and beautiful, and I knew I had to try it for myself. I’m a fan of beautiful writing and of sci-fi. However, the verse style of writing was too difficult to follow in some chapters. Ultimately, I don’t think this is the book for me.

A dazzling feat of form and function.
The care in the structuring is evident.
The story itself is compelling and well told.

I loved this – don’t let the verse form scare you away, as it doesn’t take long to adjust to, and it adds to the atmosphere and tone of this mythic tale. Some may bemoan style over substance here, but I found the underlying story to be fascinating in its own right, and I was very invested in the outcome.

There is one particularly breathless and evocative section where a character remakes a planet in divine fashion. The lines of verse oscillate in length for pages and pages (see below). It’s a wondrous and arresting example of what you’re in for if you decide to step aboard Calypso.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book*

"Calypso" is a scifi in verse, wonderfully poetic and playful when it comes to form, it reminded me a bit of Harry Josephine Giles' "Deep Wheel Orcadia" as well as "Foundation". In "Calypso", a ship is sent to outer space to create a new colony for humanity, led by a visionary man (see "Foundation" again :D). When our protagonist Rochelle wakes, the other engineers are gone and she is alone on the ship, seemingly in quarantine. What has happened to the crew? She struggles with adjusting to her new life after been in stasis for decades, she mourns her family that she left behind and has grown old and died without her.

A fascinating read, memorable and with a not so surprising but also tragic ending. This is one of the books that does not really let you go, you keep thinking about it. While some world building was wobbly and the religious convictions of Rochelle were a bit weird in parts, I really enjoyed "Calpyso". 5 stars

Calypso is a piece of experimentally penned sci-fi that I somewhat struggled with, despite the fact that I appreciated many of the ideas behind it.

The story
Our story opens with Rochelle, a passenger on the colonyship Calypso traveling towards an exomoon coined Terra Nova, waking from cryo-sleep. Rather than the promised new world waiting for them to settle it, Rochelle finds the ship in turmoil. The majority of her fellow-passengers have perished, and the remaining few are scattered throughout the ship that has become overgrown by the tendrils of a complex, sentient forest-ecosystem. As Rochelle pieces together the events that took place during her statis, she uncovers a legacy of war and conflicting ideals and philosophies that brought the ship to its current state. As she grieves both the losses of her past and her imagined future, Rochelle must come to terms with her stance and beliefs on the matter…

What I loved:
When I say experimental sci-fi, I’m mostly referring to the very unique format, which reads more like an extended verse than a traditional novel. Throughout the story, we follow 4 distinct POV’s: our protagonists Rochelle, botanist/biologists Catherine, engineer Arthur and a man solely known as The Herald. Each of their POV’s is told in distinctly different formatting, playing with rhyme, meter and positioning of words on the page. All that is enhanced by beautiful illustrations at every POV-switch, which I enjoyed in the ARC-format, but I’m sure will be even more beautiful in the finished (printed) copy.
Part puzzle, part poem, part philosophical musing, the joy of Calypso is in the journey, so I won’t spell out the themes and discussions it engages with in too much detail here. In broad terms, think a lot of the classics of space-faring-sci-fi: nature-vs-technology, religion and ethics, the meaning of “being human”, and the contemplation of time and distance through memory. That last part provided some of my favourite moments in Calypso as Rochelle thinks back on her past on Earth and the family she left behind, who she knew would be dead for decades before she would even wake from cryosleep.

What I didn’t love:
Two points of critique stand out to me after finishing Calypso. First and foremost was how much I struggled with the non-traditional format. This isn’t an easy book to read, and it’s intentionally so. It’s very much on the literary- and experimental side of sci-fi and it requires you to indulge it a lot when it comes to just exploring ideas. In other words: this will alienate a lot of readers that would prefer a simpler and more straightforward narrative.
Which brings me to my second point. Although I’m personally okay with putting in the effort with a more experimental style, there does need to be an exceptional pay-off at the end. I was a bit let down on that end. In taking on all the Great Themes of Space-scifi, I felt like I didn’t gain any new ideas from this book itself. The discussions on hand all felt like I’ve read them before, and the format didn’t click with me personally in a way that added to that experience.

Your mileage may vary with this one. If you’re in the market for an ambitious, experimental novel with a focus on ideas rather than plot, this might be the perfect fit for you. Looking for a more traditional space-romp: look elsewhere.

Many thanks to Titan Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The cover of the book is beautiful. The book’s contents felt more like a narration then poetry. Even though this was the case, I loved that the author incorporated sci-fi and fantasy.

Oliver K. Langmead does a great job in writing this book, it had the elements of sci-fi that I was hoping for and enjoyed from the genre. I enjoyed getting to know Rochelle as a main character and how she interacted with the descendants of her crew. It was everything that I wanted and really glad I got to read this. I loved the war between nature and machine and how everything was different. I loved the use of eco-fiction and am excited for more.

Genre: SciFi

Review: Is it ok that I don't get it? A story line that is bereft of empathy, inter-change, emotion, and communication makes for inventive writing but leaves the reader empty. Emotionally wilted, our MC does not even question her surroundings and the circumstances in which she finds herself. Her motivations are purely self-centered as evidenced by her constant self-recrimination. Maybe that is natural but within this inner conflagration she will suddenly go to a moon or go to a planet and allow weird shjt to happen and then it is never given any thought again. It is like she is in a constant state of short-term memory loss.

The writer creates for themselves a menagerie of prose that is supposed to be creative/clever. In application this prose or poetical writing is perhaps intentionally vacant in hopes that it adds tension. What it really does is annoy this reader. Nothing connects. Not the dialogue, not the scenes, not the instances of exchange between people and definitely not the science part of fiction.

This is a novel of what could have been. Character exchanges were stilted and bland. Saying one word responses to serious questions does not make the scene pivotal. It is intentionally vague to mask the lack of effort it takes to weave some mystery into the work. In short, I just got angrier with every page turned.

I know I am the lone outcast not exhibiting gushing praise because I need to show everyone how connected and hip I am in understanding "eco-prose" and "lyrical" this and that while promoting drivel.

At any rate, I dug a hole for this book and buried a dead racoon on top of it.

Rating: 1.5/5

Oliver K. Langmead's "Calypso" presents a captivating narrative of Rochelle's awakening in a transformed spaceship, where she grapples with her newfound role and a complex history. The novel masterfully explores themes of humanity's legacy, technology versus nature, and the quest for a new Earth. Through Rochelle's journey with the enigmatic Sigmund and the bioengineered Catherine, Langmead weaves a thought-provoking tale that resonates deeply with the human condition.

This was fascinating, and the format was unlike anything I've read before. I loved how the author used the words but also the shapes that the words formed to tell the story. Inventive and dazzling.

Rather unique. Not easy to get into but once you get the rhythm, it's quite addictive. I don't see it as a bestseller, but I appreciate the courage of publishing such an original work of quality fiction.

Eco-dystopia meets sci-fi homily in this immersive, genre-crossing story about a generation ship arriving at its destination after centuries of travel.

If you liked the existential conversations in A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, the unhinged, slightly horror-filled world building of The Employees by Olga Ravn and inimitable prose of This is How you Lose the Time War by Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone, then this book will fit perfectly on your shelf.

The story follows Rochelle, one of only three engineers to wake up on a colony ship that has arrived at a new planet to terraform and awaken a new generation of humans. While the generation ship was cruising through space with this new generation of humans and engineers (asleep), the ship was filled with people tasked with guarding and guiding them to a new destination. Overtime these guardians have created new social structures, myths and language. Rochelle slowly begins to unravel what happened while she slept, and the story explores themes of the importance of memory, the power of grief, the cost of success, the ethics of power and the fragility of life. In the background, the relentless power of nature underlines the story.

I love the allusions to Homer, specifically when it comes to the importance of oral storytelling. There is a section of the book where a herald recounts the history of a 10-year war on the Calypso (I see you The Odyssey), and Oliver K. Langmead uses repetition and epithets to compose the poem.

Note, the author will not hold your hand and spoon-feed you this story. You are a part of this. You are walking the halls of a generation ship, you are imagining the conversations you don't see, you are as unsure of the outcome as everyone else in the story. I love when an author makes me work for it. The formatting of the story, the characters, the answers we do (and don't) get at the end are like impressionist art, only when we step back do we understand the full scope of what we're witnessing.

I am going to need to go through Oliver K. Langmead's back catalogue now!

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan for providing an advanced review copy of this book.

This book is best read deep in the ocean. So deep that you start to see bright, twinkling lights that remind you of stars and doubt whether you should ever return to the surface.

As per Titan's PR email, I won't be sharing this review on Goodreads, IG or my website until the month of launch.

My thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for a free ARC of "Calypso" by Oliver K. Langmead.
A SF story in verse.
Ship life while traveling the vast Space.
With the help of verse the story runs pleasantly smooth, but the fact that the present plot is interupted by the past one, much, much slower one made me feel stuck at a crawl pace.
I'll definetely try other works by the author as this tale in verse does not seem to be for me.

Calypso is packed full of vivid imagery and beautiful prose, but at times I found it tough going - in particular, there's a terraforming chapter narrated in the plural first person which completely took me out of the book. Although Calypso certainly elicited a reaction from me, it lacked the emotion and human connection I need from a book. I enjoy more in-depth character studies - and despite the reflective nature of the text, this is not that. This is one of those books where the talent and ambition of the writer are evident, but the work itself isn't quite for me I feel. That said, the verse was gorgeous, and as a reading experience, I was intrigued and wanted to see what happened - even if I wasn't emotionally invested. This will definitely be someone else's favourite read of the year.
3.5 rounded up to 4.

Engaging, immersive, and imaginative. A recommended purchase for collections where SF and clifi are popular.