The Book of Elsewhere
Reviewed on 8th November 2025
As much as I wanted to read this, I really struggled to get into it.
The opening chapter does little to help, seeming to throw the reader into random narrative that makes no sense, with characters that aren't named, in a situation we don't understand, and high stakes we don't care about.
It does then pick up, and become slightly more compelling, with characters that are a little interesting, and a developing story and backstory.
But the chapters are slow, disconnected, and never really allowed me to get into a rhythm with my reading. It's written in a very stop/start style, and the text is small and dense, requiring high levels of attention to detail. This makes to effortful and stressful reading, and means I take the easy exit from reading as soon as I'm able.
After crawling through 150 pages over the course of nearly two weeks, I gave up and read something that flowed much more easily, getting just as far in a single day.
