When Keanu Reeves co-authors a book, you read it. That is the law. But yikes.

2.5*

At the time of reviewing this, <i>The Book of Elsewhere</i> has no blurb. So yes, I admit to having read it because of Keanu Reeves. Incidentally, I’m not into weird fiction and this is my first China Miéville, so maybe I was doomed from the beginning.

Unute, also known as B. He’s been called a demigod, a god, a weapon from the aliens, a brother, chaos, the Angel of Death, a ghost. He’s an enigma, mostly. And what a boring enigma he is.

This is the type of book for readers who don’t mind not understanding what is going on. I’m not this type of reader. The first 50 pages, I didn’t get anything. It was a very frustrating experience. Then I started seeing the book as a scavenger hunt: in every chapter there will be one sentence that would be the topic of the next chapter, and so on.

The thing is, the chapters itself were confusing because the writing danced around the topics and actions instead of saying things. For example, something happens to Diana. She meets B to talk about it. Around 15 pages are wasted with him being vague AF and then it all concludes with him not saying anything. Then we get an ‘interlude’ of 20 pages when, in the end, you get a hint of maybe perhaps what could be related to what happened to Diana (and again, a sentence in the interlude introduces something that will be brought up next).

You’d expect a scavenger hunt to have some sort of reward, and the only sweet reward I got from this book was that it ended. It was redundant, vague, and it honestly felt irrelevant. It’s actually sad because most of it was fascinating, but it was as fascinating and creative as it was pointless. I was very intrigued by most of it, but the slow and murky unravelling of it all was brutally underwhelming. I did like the ending but I couldn’t appreciate it because I was fed up with it all.

I’ll just conclude by saying that if I was an immortal being and my only boon were glowy eyes and a pig that followed me around, I’d pass.

Content warning: animal torture (pigs)

This is a curious, engaging and highly creative novel which at times seems familiar to the work of Gaiman and Mieville himself whilst also being very much its own beast. It's not immediately obvious what is happening and it's a book that initially makes you work to realise what is going on. The tale of the immortal Unute features the occasional incidences of body horror and inhumane scientific experimentation that were similarly integral to Justin Cronin's The Passage. The mythical features reminded me of elements of Gaiman's American Gods. The creativity and otherworldliness are very much in keeping with Mievilles' oeuvre and the links with Reeves' BRZRKR are front and central to the plot's progression.

I really enjoyed the novel and amongst its most impressive achievements is establishing this fantastical tale in a very well-realised world that is both similar to our own but also very much alien to us. Mieville and Reeves aren't a pairing that I originally would have put together but like cheese and Marmite they are a surprisingly complimentary blend.

The book follows the story of Unute, an immortal man who has lived for tens of thousands of years. The plot follows the "present", where Unute is working with a secret US military unit, and shows glimpses of his past and people who he encountered on this journey. It's hard to succinctly describe what the story is about, other than the psychology of being immortal, and the effect it has on people who know of it. While there is a lot of action (a la Keanu), there is a lot of philosophy, self reflection, and social criticism (a la Mieville).

I really liked reading it, and the story overall. While being an interesting mashup of Keanu's Graphic novels and Mieville's dominant style, the book also had, at least for me, strong echoes of Neil Gaiman's atmospheric books. The atmosphere and the disquiet it elicits was, from my perspective, the main attraction in the book. I also found the exploration of the myth of Unute and its reverbrations across generations and societies and interesting thought experiment, challenging and inverting the concept of God-ness.

The only thing I struggled with is the character development, which was a bit lacking, especially in contrast to other works by Mieville. While Unute was well explored, the other protagonists were more superficially depicted, without really thinking through or understanding their motivations, which I would have loved to learn more about.

I'm also of two minds about the pacing of the book. On the one hand, being plunged neck deep into the story from page 1, without any pre-amble, is confusing and irritating. It takes a long time to understand what really is going on - who's who, and the why of it all. On the other hand, there is an echo in it of Unute's own experience - this disorientation is telling and exemplifies what it must feel like at times for him. On balance, I liked it, but did find it tough.

Bottom line is that while it's not as good as Bas-Lag or King Rat, it's a great book by Mieville, and I highly recommend it to fans of the author, or the New Weird and Urban Fantasy genres more broadly.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.