Of all the books I read this year, this is one I’m most likely to reread before any of the others. There is so much violence and truly disturbing scenes and yet, it is also bizarre, funny and emotional, making me tear up at various scenes.
Carolyn and her siblings were all adopted by their father years ago, and each was placed in charge of one collection of the library or area of expertise. Reading outside your curriculum is strictly forbidden. Now, Father is missing and the siblings are trying to figure out what happened while also breaking into factions to figure out who the next leader will be.
Steve is just a random guy that somehow gets drawn into this along with a former military guy and a father daugher lion duo.
It’s one of those books that is both truly unique and original and yet seems to draw from and refer to so much from history and legend, whether it’s a specific kind of vessel that immediately made me think of the movie Immortals (back before Henry Cavill was quite so muscular), or other parallels to creation myths and more. This novel came out in 2016 and the author hasn’t released anything since (there seems to be a new novel slotted for September 2026), and I get it. I don’t know how you would follow something like this up. The way it weaves together all these different pieces of what makes up humanity, I don’t know how anyone could follow this up. It’s actually just as surprising that this was a debut novel
