The All-Consuming World is aptly named. This is a book that you won’t want to put down. You have heists and so much sci-fi goodness that it begs to be finished pretty immediately. Give me queer space stories always! This has me all sorts of excited to read Nothing but Blackened Teeth immediately upon its release.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Erewhon Books, and Cassandra Khaw for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I should say for the record that I went into this with very high hopes, as Nothing but Blackened Teeth was phenomenal (seriously go read it now). So I feel like this book had to work a bit harder. Love the premise and think it’s a strong sci fi horror.

The All-Consuming World certainly stood up to its title, as the story kept me hooked and was all I could think about even after finishing it.. See what I did there? The world building was fantastic, it truly made this fictional place feel real and lived in. The characters were a bunch of cyberpunk scoundrels that decide to come together after 40 years, for one final heist. Though they are down a few members they make up for it with grit and force alone. I was surprised as I really have not enjoyed any of Cassandra Khaws other stories. Nothing but Blackened Teeth was not a story I enjoyed, really at all. Hopefully this book is a sign of good things to come. 5 out of 5!

The All-Consuming World is a page turner with lots of action and a fun team of characters. It had me reading until all hours of the night. I find it hard to resist space operas, and this queer delight had everything that I love in it. Can't wait to recommend it to my patrons!

The All-Consuming World is a science-fiction novel about a group of women mercenaries, who band together for one last heist in space.

The worldbuilding in the story was well done. The concept of regeneration/cloning was unique and raises the question of whether you’re the same person after being cloned/regenerated multiple times. The characters are complex and individualized. I was honestly surprised at how much was crammed into this short story!

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion

This book was received as an ARC from Netgalley.

In my lifetime, I only have a few books I label DNF. This is one of them. I read 4 chapters, and couldn't read any more. I am baffled at the amount of words that the author made up, or just flipped through a thesaurus to find. The vocabulary used was very unnecessary and ruined the story's momentum.

Jesus. This book is really something else. The tone of it (and the amount of times they say fuck) caught me pretty early on. And the writing is really very masterful, it's rare I come across a book these days with (so many) words I don't know! That said, I found it fairly confusing and dense at parts, also. It fell into the trap, I think, of being kind of artistic and pretty at the expense of specificity. I could tell the world was developed fully but unfortunately the worldbuilding wasn't explicit enough in the text for me to really be able to picture what was going on, particularly when it came to the AI/ageships/clonetech components. And those things were so integral to the main plot and conflict that I found those things really hard to track. I will say, though, that the characters and relationships were so incredibly compelling and well-written and complex. The quiet moments between characters were so prescient and beautiful, definitely my favorite parts.

A great premise featuring amazing rep, but the writing style distanced me from the action scenes due to its convoluted nature.

If Cassandra Khaw’s novel The All-Consuming World was a straightforward science fiction novel, that would be exciting enough. The plot—the ragtag, damaged remnants of a group or women mercenaries, once feared throughout the universe, reunite to save one of their members who may still be alive after their last, failed mission decades before—has all the hallmarks of a classic space opera, and is as satisfying as can be.

As it turns out, however, Khaw has so much more up her immensely talented sleeve, because this is one of the most challenging, exhilarating, and downright breathtaking works of science fiction I’ve read in a long time. She uses language like no one else. I’ve been trying to think of apt comparisons, and the closest I’ve come is Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb Trilogy, and maybe Felix C. Gotschalk, a science fiction writer from the 1970s, but Khaw is very much doing her own thing. She wields words like some kind of mad wizard—dense, spiralling across paragraphs, always surprising. Khaw writes violence and action set pieces with an anarchic, joyful abandon, and bruising emotional scenes with a devastating tenderness.

If Khaw’s language elevates The All-Consuming World, her ideas send it into the stratosphere. Immortality through cloning. Extreme, extravagant body modification, both hardware and software. Ruthless, highly evolved AI. Sentient spaceships, even a sentient planet. Human consciousness running roughshod through computer networks. Khaw takes ideas that other authors may build entire novels around, and sprays them across every page, like shot from a shotgun.

Khaw asks profound questions about what, exactly, is a human being, and when is one no longer truly human. She explores complex webs of gender and sexual orientation with a deft hand and an unflinching eye. And at the center of it all, woven into the fabric of memory, trauma, heroics and betrayal, The All-Consuming World is a love story. Actually, because love is complicated and painful, make that several love stories.


The All-Consuming World will be released on August 17, 2021. Pre-order it now, and prepare yourself for one hell of a ride.

This was very good. I'd only read Cassandra Khaw's book Hammers on Bone before, and this has some of the same feel to it, including the poetic descriptions of graceful gory violence, also there are some wildly diverse AI factions and we get a viewpoint character who is basically a human turned into malware. I hope it is setting up a sequel but it could stand alone, too.

This book had such potential and I had really high hopes for it. Unfortunately, it fell very short of my expectations.
As a reader I don't mind swearing in a story when it's called for but with this book I literally couldn't go a single paragraph where someone didn't say fuck. 1/2 the story was just the characters saying fuck. Also, the writing style was incredibly dense and hard to get through. I only finished this story because I had to.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw is an epic science fiction novel that features PoC and LGBT characters. The plot of the novel revolves around a team going on a rescue mission to save a former comrade. This book has kick-butt heroines, robots, and takes place on a planet in a distant galaxy. The description sounds amazing, and the cover is gorgeous! In addition, the author, Cassandra Khaw, is a Malaysian science fiction writer. As a person of Asian descent myself, I want to support authors of Asian descent whenever possible - especially during this time. I was so excited to have been approved to review this ARC ahead of its release date!

Unfortunately, I just didn't click with this book. This would have been a one-star read for me, but I added a star because I want to support authors of Asian descent. The main problem that I had with this book was that I kept getting distracted from the plot because of the excessive profanity. I've read books with profanity before, but nothing that comes close to this. Every other sentence is F this or F that. Personally, I don't associate with people with talk like this. When I'm reading and looking for an escape from the real world, I definitely would not choose to read dialogue or narration that is full of cursing. I actually had trouble finding an excerpt to include in this review, because I could not find a standalone section that didn't contain profanity.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 4, which is from Elise's point of view. I had to cut the excerpt off, because, literally, the next word is the F word:

".initiate(Elise:basic);
My name is Elise Nguyen.
I was twenty-two years old. When I was ten, I broke my scapula falling from a tree, my frock—it was pink, blue, purple, maybe; printed with soft little teddybears, printed with stars, a whole gilded flight of them foaming between the pleats—tearing as the branches clutched at the hems. The sky was blue that day. My father’s name was Phillip. I have been dead, not-dead for forty years.
Forty years."

Overall, I had such high hopes for The All-Consuming World, According to the description, this book should a high-romping adventure through space in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy. I was so excited to read this book and to support an author of Asian descent. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed. I was so distracted by the profanity that I'm actually not sure what was going on in the actual plot. However, if you're a reader who doesn't mind profanity, I think you could enjoy this book. If you are into science fiction, especially featuring PoC and LGBT characters, I recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in August!

A heist? In space? With near-indestructible people and regeneration vats? With a group of former merc teammates with long and difficult histories between them? AI? Yes! This is so many things: a space opera romp, a meditation on loyalty, a collection of amazing fight scenes, and a great story about doing right by your crew. It's full of inventive and evocative language and scene-making, and the characters are well-defined and clearly very individual. Being inside the collective thoughts of the AI and their hijackers is clever and fun, and the whole thing is a fast, twisty, joyride of a book.

A group of half clone and half machines go against the odd in this character driven sci-fi novel.

This is a genre I tend to not gravitate towards, but ended up really enjoying the characters and how they developed.

If you are on the fence with this one, just read a few pages... you won’t be disappointed.

The premise of this book intrigued me, but the reality let me down. For me, it read like a formula on how to write science fiction, with nothing fresh, new or even ambitious. The plot slowly revealed itself with few surprises, but for me the real disappointment was the characters, all evolved from every single cliché lumbering their way through the creaky plot.
I tried, but this just wasn't for me.

I honestly wanted to like this, and forced myself to read through the superfluous and pretentious writing, but unfortunately didn't enjoy any of it after a couple of chapters. What's happening? Something to do with Dimmuborgir, but it's all lost in the overly crass drivel.

I'm really hoping Shaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is nothing like this, because it's one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 (and mainly because of that cover!)

DNF.

Many thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Generally do not like to give a bad review, especially when the book is freely given to me. However I read several chapters and have no idea if the author can write or not. It was like reading a dictionary without a story. Chapter after chapter of random vocabulary words that told me nothing except the author loves the word fuck! My eyes glazed over after a couple more pages and it became one of the very few DNF books on my shelves. Very convoluted descriptions of everything, will not try this author again.

I requested this one because it might be a 2021 title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book is not my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one rather than push myself to finish it only to give it a poor review.

The All-Consuming World redefines the word page-turner - the plot races at a whirlwind pace, its permutable rabble of ragtag protagonists playing one reckless risk after another, running against the perils that plague them at a rate of knots. Introducing us to a compellingly eccentric cosmos of corrupt AIs, custom-made cyborgs and avenging clones, Cassandra Khaw artfully evades the catch of infodumping, crafting an eclectic cast of casualty-prone, expletive-loving characters. And how can I articulate how aweing the action-packed, allusion-heavy writing is?

The enduring associates of the Dirty Dozen left alive - centering on Maya, Rita, Ayane, Elise, Verdigris, and Constance - are an energetically animated company, a diverse cluster of cyberpunks that defy death - and the devouring designs of the advancing ageships - and crush expectations with each curveball. Every adventure-rich chapter and chancy endeavour clutches you with edge-of-your-seat anticipation, eager to clock how the audacious choices and electrifying incidents the cabal get ensnared in will end, but perhaps most astounding is the acute, pulls-no-punches and tolerates-no-stereotypes portrayal of truisms about trauma and abuse. Serving state-of-the-art sci-fi, an assortment of nimble-witted name-dropping and a snazzy array of narrative styles, this short-ish novel is absorbing all around, from its scintillating verbalizations to the sharp veneer of the vindications it shadows - add it to your shelves ASAP!

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for kindly passing on this ARC!

Having never read Cassandra Khaw’s work before, I was absolutely drawn immediately to their debut novel <i>The All-Consuming World;</i> beyond its gorgeous cover, a book promising a “band of dangerous women, half-clone and half-machine, [who] must battle their own traumas and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead, in order to settle their affairs once and for all” was <i>clearly</i> something I was going to read. I’m glad I did.
I like Khaw’s writing style, and I feel like the fact that they’re a video game writer really shows here (in a good way, in terms of the level of excitement and the ability to create an entire self-contained world). While in places it is, as far as I’m concerned, too wordy and verbose, overall, the immediate, visceral, descriptive writing very much suited the genre of the book. The universe Khaw has created is compelling and I would totally read another book set within it. The descriptions of the characters’ backstories were interesting and the characters themselves were complex; the ways that they <spoiler>could come back to life after having been killed initially really reminded me of cylons in the newer Battlestar Galactica, though it was ultimately quite a bit more complicated than this.</spoiler> I found the plot kept me interested, though ultimately I think that the plot is secondary to the writing and character development.
I will say that I’m completely baffled by the comparison to Le Guin in the book’s description – as another reviewer has mentioned, I do think a comparison to Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb trilogy makes much more sense to me and I would readily recommend this book to someone who enjoyed that series.
Thank you so much to Erewhon Books + NetGalley for providing an ARC.
<i>Content warning:</i> gore + body horror, violence, surgery without anaesthetic, abuse in relationships