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I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for honest feedback. And in the name of honesty, I’ll start with a warning- this is a very, very weird book.
If you don’t like Weird fiction, this is probably not the book for you. The same is true if you aren’t comfortable with strong language and coarse humor. However, if you like Mervyn Peake or Jeff Vandermeer, **you’ll probably like this one.
That said, it is an excellent book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The basic premise is that the protagonist (Cady Meade) must get some passengers up the river to the capital in time for a coming-of-age ceremony.
The catch is that the river is inhabited by a dragon’s ghost and the ghost has fallen ill, causing the usual strange abnormalities of the ghost to grow worse and even more unpredictable. Nothing is quite as it seems and mystery and mystery are unveiled but never fully solved, nor are the mysteries ever understood. They flit at the edge of the awareness of both the reader and the characters resulting in a sense of surreal uncertainty as reality itself never seems particularly stable.
The characters are rich and complex, each with the secret traumas that they carry with them up the river, which brings all of them to the fore in intense, often frightening ways that push the characters to the limits of what they consider themselves capable of, and then beyond.
In many ways, this book is a post-covid, 2020s American pilgrimage. Haunted by past wars, everpresent disease, uncertainty, and the dark shadows of their heroes, they muddle through the world uncertain of what they are doing or why in a way that feels deeply relatable.