John over at SF Signal was kind enough to send me a galley of WHERE a little while ago, and I jumped at the opportunity to share some thoughts about it. WHERE is tightly-focussed, but it has an awful lot to say for such a succinct novel. But I won't spoil my spoiler-infested review here — get over to SF Signal to read my impressions of what is probably one of Reed's best works to date.
In fact, I'll admit that one of the problems I had in writing the review was that there's just so much to say about this book. In order to stay on track, I couldn't talk about the symbolism of the water journeys in the story (trips to the underworld, and/or baptisms maybe?), or the claustrophobic inversion of the wardrobe image and journey from CS Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe that comes near the end, or any of a dozen other interesting little side avenues that nag at the brain for hours or days after putting the book down. I'll leave that for someone else... or come back to it in a couple of years after a reread maybe. In any case, these are the frustrating pleasures of reading a really smart story that you just know you'll have to come back to eventually.
But beyond this review, you should be reading SF Signal anyway, because it's just such a cool site!
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