Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback. This was an incredible blend of alternate history and noir. What a rich world that Pardo built. Reads like a standalone, but I would love to read a return to this world and these characters.

I quite liked The Shamshine Blind. It was smart, well-written, and had depth. It isn't a quick read as it takes its time creating a whole new future but well worth it.

I enjoy some good speculative fiction and Pardo has provided a great example. It is a complicated alternative world but it is fascinating. Let yourself be immersed in this 2009 and enjoy the ride!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria books for providing me with an ARC copy.

This is a dark novel with a unique approach and plot. Enter an alternate reality where Argentina rules the world and colored chemicals are the reason. It was an interesting premise but did take a lot of groundwork for us to get up to speed about the world we are living in. Some of this was interesting and some of it was tedious but it was all necessary to set the stage.

Our story line with Curtida was a peek into a dystopian underground world. And again parts of this were interesting but the character development fell short for me. I guarantee one thing. This book is unlike anything you have ever read.

I read this book last week & I cannot stop thinking about it. Imagine a world where emotions have been weaponized and a conspiracy to end American democracy has been uncovered. Set in an alternate reality circa 2009, the US has been a second-rate power since Argentina’s victory in the Falkland’s War due to “psychopigments”, colorful chemicals that can produce almost any human emotion upon contact. Embraced in the US by pharmaceutical companies & black market traders, psychopigments have become either cure-alls or recreational drugs.
When small-town Psychopigment Enforcement Agent Kate Curtida uncovers the conspiracy against American democracy she is sent on a spiraling chase through the constant permeation of psychopigment to uncover the plot, deal with past trauma, and determine her truth cause…
𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙮 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙗𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙤𝙬𝙣.

Part detective noir, sci-fi, and alternate history, this debut will leave you in a lavender haze. This whole idea of psychopigments causing emotional alteration is just so unique; like “Blackberry Purple” which causes terror and “Sunshine Yellow” the happiness booster, and the way Paz Pardo perfectly conceptualizes it within the grand scheme of world politics, economics, and community reminded me of The Power by Naomi Alderman. I loved her spunky brooding detective, Sam Spade, who is the perfect character to navigate this alternate universe for us, especially via audiobook. It’s one of those books that will having you thinking in technicolor.
Also be sure scope out that color-by-number cover! What a fantastic design choice!

If you enjoy dystopian books with alternate histories or detective mystery/thrillers then be sure to grab yourself a copy of The Shamshine Blind. Thank you to @atriabooks for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sorry to say I struggled with this one. Too many “alternate” concepts to wrap my brain around, and then deal with a mystery to boot. I’m giving three stars because I love the description and hope to return and try the book again when my mind is in a different place.

Thank you Atria for this gifted e-galley copy! I thought this book was just okay - I found the premise itself to be really intriguing, which is why I requested a copy in the first place, and while I did enjoy it, there are definitely some moments that I felt could have been explored further and/or, in general, some missed opportunities. I did go in blind, which is something I rarely do honestly, but I feel like in this case it made my reading experience a lot more enjoyable. I thought this was a solid mystery/thriller, despite my qualms, and would be interested in checking out more from this author in the future.

This was a clever plot and kept me engaged. I enjoyed the noir mystery and the wit.
Many thanks to Atria and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Paz Pardo's debut is a thought-provoking alternate history - the Argentinians took over the US via emotional bombs since the 1980s. Each emotion can be used as a weapon: faith, ennui, depression, etc and each has an associated pigment attached to it.

Kay Curtida is a Psychopigment Enforcement agent who is down on her luck in her job and her personal life when she's drawn into a case involving counterfeit pigment production.

From here it turns into a great noir mystery.
I'd love there to be a sequel, and a screen adaptation!

This was such a moving, thought-provoking book. Anything dealing with emotions cal alienate or bring people together and this book was so relatable to me. I was very involved in the story and appreciated the slow burn.

3.5 rounding down

Certainly an interesting concept to say the least. This definitely reads like a crime noir classic with a speculative fiction twist. This wasn't a home run for me, but I'd definitely pick up Pardo's next release out of curiosity.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into this one. The whole premise behind the book and the description was something I would love, but after the first few chapters, I had to put it down.

I made it 20% into the book before I decided to put it down. It's a mix of alternate reality set in 2009 and dystopian/science fiction noir. Psychopigment Enforcement Agent, Kay Curtida, is the main character who goes from working humdrum cases to something much more life threatening and steeped in conspiracy.

There is a large amount of characters, pigment speak and an almost clinical writing style that my mind wasn't grasping onto. I hate stopping less than a quarter of the way into a book but it just wasn't clicking the way I had hoped.

Even with my brief acquaintance, there were a few items I did enjoy in the narrative such as:

✔️ Latinx voice
✔️ Emotion altering drugs
✔️ Alternate reality

Though the novel didn't hit my high points, I still ended up grabbing the audiobook and more than likely I'll be listening down the road. I've found audio can bring out a lot in books when reading doesn't cut it. We shall see!

I want to thank Atria books for the digital copy in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Since I didn't make it to the end, I recommend checking out reviews from those who did finish and can give deeper insight into the novels intricacies.

Published by Atria Books on February 14, 2023

In this alternate history, Argentina won a war with the US by weaponizing pigments. Major cities were lost in the psychopigment blitzkrieg. Veterans are still depressed after being exposed to Deepest Blue. San Francisco suffers from the residue of a Magenta Obsession bomb (warning signs caution visitors that “your emotions might not be your own”). Cities like Boise and Iowa City are the new centers of urban importance in what is left of the United States.

Pigments can be inhaled, swallowed in gel caps, or absorbed through the skin. Some pigments have become popular recreational substances. Each pigment produces a different mental state: Cerulean Guilt, Apricot Awe, Scarlet Passion. Slate Gray produces ennui. Sunshine Yellow is prescribed as an antidepressant.

A clumsy attempt to explain psychopigments depends on psychobabble — an “invisible fog of feelings that humans emit with every sentiment” is distilled and synthesized before being unleashed in “an overwhelming concentration of that same miasma” that becomes “contagious, pushing the feelings of one village member into another, gaining strength from every carrier.” Okay, but what?

Within that postapocalyptic setting, The Shamshine Blind attempts to develop a police detective thriller. It is essentially an “exotic drug dealer” novel, the kind where cops work to stop new designer drugs before they create havoc, except that drugs have been rebranded as pigments. The concept has imaginative appeal but it doesn’t quite work.

Kay Curtida works for Pigment Enforcement, a law enforcement agency that tries to keep new pigments off the market while assuring that known pigments are not abused. Paz Pardo is so busy building her world of psychopigments that it takes some time before she gives Curtida anything to do. Curtida is supposedly working on a counterfeit Sunshine pigment that her agency calls Shamshine, but other detectives have that investigation under control. While Curtida waits to take on the challenge of a new pigment, she entertains herself with relationship drama, fretting about her mother (who wants her to get married) and the return of Doug Nambi to her life, with whom she had a thing when they were both cadets.

Curtida takes an interest in Winfred Pimsley, who is “a crook but my kind of crook.” When the plot eventually gets rolling, Curtida discovers what seems to be a new pigment in the pigment collection that Pimsley keeps in his antique store. Perhaps it was synthesized by Priscilla Kim, a notorious pigment bootlegger, but what might it be? Ananda Ashaji, leader of a cult called the Pinkos, has been ranting about Hope Depletion Events. Could the new pigment give people hope? Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing in a world where hope is a vanishing commodity. Perhaps it is something more nefarious than hope, a pigment that emulates the opiate of the masses.

A mundane plot is overshadowed by the underdeveloped background of Argentine rule (complete with hyper-inflation) over the US. The story imagines a faith-based paramilitary terrorist organization called Knights of Liberty that may be competing or cooperating with the Pinkos. I’m not sure whether other readers would be as confused by the story as I was. Perhaps I lost interest too early to make a serious effort to arrange the plot elements in my memory.

An unreasonable amount of relationship drama does nothing to make the story more interesting. Did Curtida want to forget that she had sex with Plato because he was a high school lothario who had sex with all the girls? Why is Curtida worried about what her mother will think about her fake marriage to Meekins? My answer to questions surrounding the novel’s relationship drama questions was: Who cares?

To her credit, Pardo works diligently to avoid making an inherently messy plot entirely incomprehensible. I’m sure a reader with a notepad and more focused attention might make sense of it. I didn’t find a reason to bother. While the story shows imagination and promise, neither the regrettably noirish plot nor the excessively fretful characters spoke to me.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

This was a very intriguing and unique premise, if a little overly ambitious. I thought the pacing was inconsistent as the first 1/3 took awhile to get going to set up the plot. I found the last bit a little too breakneck and weird, but I do appreciate that this stuck to the sci-fi genre and doubled down on a psychedelic theme.

The Shamsine Blind was a very unique speculative fiction novel. I have never read anything quite like it, and it brings up some really interesting thoughts and ideas.

I tend to stray away for sci-fi and speculative fiction, but I found myself really enjoying this novel nonetheless. I would definitely look to read more from this author!

This is a story about the weaponization of emotion.  It is 2009 in an alternate timeline.  In this timeline, the United States is a minor player in the world stage.  Over two decades before, Argentina defeated the UK in the Falklands War after they developed “psychopigments."  These chemicals, known by their color, can produce a wide range of human emotions on contact from Sunshine Yellow, which causes happiness, to Slate Gray, which causes ennui.  Argentina subsequently used Deepest Blue, a psychopigment that causes symptoms from amnesia to suffocation, to assert its dominance over other countries, including the U.S.  After a campaign that left major cities, including New York, as ghost towns, the power center of the United States is now in the midwest.  In 2009, psychopigments are now used as both pharmaceutical and recreational drugs and there is a robust black market selling both real and knockoff psychopigments, such as Shamshine which is a fake version of Sunshine Yellow.

Just outside San Francisco, now largely uninhabited, Kay Curtida works as an agent for the Psychopigment Enforcement Agency.  She mostly handles small-time cases, typical for an agent in a minor city, and is nearing forced retirement. But when Kay responds to what seems like a routine crime, she begins to suspect there is something more afoot -- and this may be a blockbuster case that makes her career.  As Kay dives deeper into the case, joined by her partner and her former classmate and old friend Doug who has been working in the major city of Boise, she comes to believe there may be a much greater conspiracy at play -- one that may put her, and those in her orbit, at great risk.

I really enjoyed this book, combining alternative history, a detective story, and an often profound examination of the role of emotions in people’s lives.  The author did a terrific job of creating a bold and original alternative history.  Like several alternative histories, the springboard is a war going in a different direction -- but the conflict and the reason for the different outcome were surprising and highly creative.  Centering the book around the development of an unexpected weapon that changes people's emotions created a rich world which was highly engaging on its own, providing a lens to explore interesting questions about emotions, the role they play in our lives, and the degree to which we control them or they control us.  I also enjoyed the regular surprises that came as the book revealed the ways that the United States of the book diverges from the one of the real world.  The mystery at the heart of the story heightened my enjoyment of the book -- like many noir stories, it kept me guessing about whether Kay was on the right track and whether many of the other characters were "good guys," as they presented themselves, or whether they were up to no good (or, as is often the case, were a mix of the two).  This is one of the most inventive books I've read in a long time.  

Strongly recommended!

I really enjoyed reading this! The plot was original and engaging and I really loved all the main characters. I loved how the story centered around a female agent and her male sidekick. That was a really fun dynamic. The idea of these pigments is very cool and unique and I enjoyed reading about these characters. At times though, because of how different the ideas were I had a hard time following and keeping up with who was who and what exactly everyone was doing. Overall, it was a very enjoyable reading experience.

The Shamshine Blind is one of my most recent reads, and it's fun! In a semi-alternate 2009, Argentina is the biggest powerhouse country thanks to their development of "psychopigments". The colorful chemicals can produce just about any human emotion upon contact, but naturally, things go awry.

There's a lot of world-building before we get into the meat of the story, but I enjoyed this unique sci-fi/detective debut novel.

Very original! "The Shamshine Blind" by Paz Pardo was a very different, unexpected story set around year 2009, about our world, influenced by emotions manipulated by color pills and gases, with Argentina as a superpower to this "weapon", and the US Midwest as a powerful imitator, mixing in dangerous counterfeits. A police officer fighting to battle this corrupt concept, with great detective work and helpful peers. An action filled book, with lots of original thinking. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the early reader copy. All opinions are my own.