Anyway, this book is 11/10, must read, go buy it. This is probably the best thing I've read since Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Also, it's short, so a nice Christmas present for your loved ones who like poetry and or sci-fi.

It might be sappy to include such emotional language in the narration continually, but coming from a character, addressed in a letter to their forbidden love? It works over and over again.

Another piece that allows for super luscious prose is that most of the book is epistolary, in the form of literal love letters between the two protagonists.

I write to you in stings, Red, but this is me, the truth of me, as I do so: broken open by the act, in the palm of your hand, dying.

And by allowing exquisite super powers, without rules, you enable exquisite prose. Minor spoiler, but at one point, a love letter is written by the in the sting of a bee, which allows the character the gorgeous line:

On those details, the logic is always internally consistent and never broken. This allows a poetic, time skipping and sometime hallucinogenic adventure that cares a lot about language.

The plot hinges on two very basic things.

1. These characters are deeply in love and will sacrifice greatly for one another.

2. They are being followed by a mysterious entity.

Characters can change into spiders, they can have embedded virus weapons, they can mold ash into iridescent ink. We have literally no idea how anything works and it doesn't matter. The plot doesn't hinge on these elements.

Don't get me wrong, there are gorgeous, inventive worlds involved in the narrative, but Amal + Max aren't tying themselves in knots trying to explain a cohesive logic behind how all of the threads of the multiversal time braid are connected. They keep it loose, and that's fine!

How does this book achieve such incredible, poetic language? For one thing, it's not particularly interested in rules or "world building" in the traditional sense.

I say this all the time, but there are many aspects of pleasure to be had from reading. You don't need to do everything for everyone, you just have to do one or two things very well, and this book does language. The prose in this, my god 👨‍🍳💋

Oh, dang! I think you're right! I totally fell for it!