The Book of M – Peng Shepherd
About the Book
Set in a dangerous near future world, The
Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people
caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones
they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have
not only on the heart, but on the world itself.
One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a
man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the
first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a
strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their
memories.
Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting
so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels
almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.
Knowing that the more she forgets, the more
dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the
time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory
disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable
world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged
on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the
shadowless.
As they journey, each searches for answers: for
Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force
growing in the south that may hold the cure.
485 pages (hardcover)
Published on June 5, 2018
Author’s webpage
Buy the book
This book was a library loan.
Yay libraries!
—
The Book of M caught my attention because of the
gorgeous cover. I’ve seen it around, and I wanted to find out more. So, for
everyone who says “covers don’t sell books” – I beg to differ.
This
is a dystopian novel, but a different kind of dystopian than I’ve ever really
read before. Yeah, there has been a lot of death, more empty houses than full
houses, and an overwhelming ominous atmosphere, and a sense that life is hard.
That’s all pretty typical for dystopian novels. What isn’t typical is basically
everything else.
Shepherd
has a way with writing that I just absolutely fell in love with. Her prose was
lyrical and quite poetic at times, but pumped full of information as well. The
world really came to life, and so did the characters. They jumped off the page
until I felt their emotions almost as intensely as though they were my own.
This
really worked in the book’s favor. In very short order, The Book of M stopped being a book, and started being an experience
that I was living through. Events unfold at a nice clip, never too long of a
gap between this thing and the next, but just long enough for the reader to
really be able to absorb what had just happened, before what is about to happen,
happens.
That’s
terribly written. I hope it makes sense.
The
Forgetting is absolutely brilliant, and the entire idea of it, the loss of
shadows, the way it impacted people and societies, and the domino effect of it
all was just stunning. It was one of those hooks that was so ingenious I had to
just sit back and appreciate it for a while. And it wasn’t just something that
happened, but Shepherd took readers through it in intimate detail, from how it
impacted the single person, and how that ripple spread out and impacted
families, neighborhoods, towns, and then globally.
It
was just…wow.
However,
what really gripped me about this book was the relationships. Ory and Max were
fantastic characters to follow this saga through. Their relationship changes
almost as soon as the book starts, and most of the book is then spent with them
trying to find each other again. Max records her story, and the things she
undergoes, the reasons she does what she does. Ory leaves everything behind to
find her. The exploration of love, and family, bonds and memory were touching
and intimate, but also poignant.
Shepherd
does a wonderful job at bringing numerous voices to life, each one as
fleshed-out as the last. The world building was also incredibly well done, and
as Ory and Max travel across an America that is strange to me, it all somehow
makes sense. Some of the stories aren’t clearly entwined until the ending, but
what an ending that is.
There
is a logic to all of this, the precise execution, the incredibly almost surreal
world that readers are exposed to through the travels of the characters, and
the way it is revealed to readers. It’s not like anything I’ve ever really read
before, and must have taken incredible imagination to think of it all, and to
dream up the way shadows impact everything. Then overlaying all that with these
incredible personal relationships and memorable, individual voices, was just
the icing on the cake.
If
you can’t tell, I loved everything about this book. The ending left me reeling.
The journey to get there was unforgettable. Reading this book is not an
experience I will forget anytime soon.
What
an absolutely stunning debut.
5/5
stars
