Beautifully written. Queer love story/coming of age story. It really breaks down the teachings of Jesus in the way they're meant to be told. Stunning. No notes.

Part of me wants to write this review with just a pile of adjectives: trippy, unique, weird, thought-provoking, bewildering, sacrilegious, mesmerizing.

This is another one of those situations where I requested the ARC not totally understanding what I was requesting and - surprise! Turns out this is a book without a category. It's completely non-linear, super queer, kind of romantic, poetic, religious-adjacent and completely unexpected.

I'm giving this four stars but honestly I don't really know what I am measuring it against - I've never read anything like it. I ended up listening to the audiobook and the narration was artful - a five-star production/performance with sound effects and multiple narrators.

What was surprising was how much I enjoyed this book without fully understanding it. Some of it was very familiar and relatable, I am pretty sure that the author, like me, grew up in a Portuguese-Canadian (Catholic) family in Toronto, and is probably just five years younger than me. And while it's been a long time since I read the bible or was taught those stories, some of it really came back to me as I was reading.

Meanwhile, there were lots of times when I wasn't sure what was fiction, autobiographical, historical or biblical. But that's okay, despite the chaos of that confusion and the related disjointedness of the story, something about those short, sometimes funny, sometimes crass, often tender, story components kept me wanting to keeping listening and I'm glad I did. Some of the highlights were the warmth and grief from the narrator, the intimacy of friendships depicted, the frustration and exasperation from Jesus - especially some of the very short interludes. It was an interesting way to be reminded that if "Christians" actually followed the "words of Jesus", the world would be a kinder, more inclusive and more charitable place.

It's been a long time since a book has made me ache the way Dayspring does. As someone who was forced to read the bible plenty of times just to be cast out by their church as a teenager, it turns the work and the mythos into something not just palatable, but transformative.

DNF at 54% – I was loving it but life got hectic (starting grad school) and my ARC link expired :[

Can't wait to pick it back up when I get the chance. The author's background interests me so much; absolutely fell in love with the prose that I wanted to know more about the author, only to find out that Oliveira's previous works are focused on comic book writing! Very cool, especially given the intriguing experimental writing style of past and present and biblical and contemporary. Also YAY Canadian author, I'm almost disappointed I missed his book launch talk :/

Never thought I would learn so much about Christianity through a queer biblical retelling. It's oddly an ode/love story to religion while also critiquing its flaws. It is truly such a captivating read and I'm very much looking forward to finishing this work and explore Oliveira's other works. I want a physical copy so bad so I can finish it!!

Unfortunately, I do not have any religious trauma that I can heal through reading this book, I was here for vibes and the vibes were good. The pov is Jesus's lover and I enjoyed reading his adoration of this man and was specifically tickled when the man himself retold some of his stories. I felt as though some of the references were lost on me but I did enjoy reading this piece of work! Anthony Oliveira put his heart and soul into this one and it deserves to be seen and loved.

I was staggered by the short story this was built from back in 2019, so I knew I would love the book. And I wasn't wrong. I was, however, shocked at how dexterously Oliveira interweaved fiction, poetry, quotation/allusion, and memoir into this genre-defying work, and I remain in awe of it's beauty and humor. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, since that's kind-of Oliveira's signature tone, but this work exceeded my sky-high expectations.

An absolutely stunning, beautiful, poetic book! The experimentation with form, myth, and scripture created such a moving and heart wrenching queer story. While only getting to know the characters through fleeting thoughts and moments, I felt so connected to them. This was such an impressive project and I'm so excited to see what Oliveira comes up with next.

What a beauty of a book! I was lucky to have a physical copy of this book as well so I read back and forth between both the ebook and the paperback. I loved the concept for this book! I think a lot of it went over my head due to the religious nature but I enjoyed the play with setting and relationships. The dual voices was great. The queer love was a joy to read and I liked the poetic writing.

I have put off reviewing this because I am not sure I can provide a critique or review to a work so passionate, obsessive, and winsome a search for self in the Church. I am not prepared with the ecclesiastical doctrine nor the literary theory sufficient to provide more than a surface level "enjoyment" review; and I would be doing a disservice to Oliveira to provide that to a novel so lyrically, methodically, narratively dynamic..

It's not a high-concept piece of literary fiction outside the grasp of the common man; I was simply touched and feel it deserves a better review than I can provide.

Like the bible, Dayspring is poetic and very queer. It's viscerally incarnate, and about love. As someone else whose childhood was firmly Catholicised it was so familiar and so sad—I was brought right back to the rooms in which I argued with my catechism and CCD teachers, and personally, lost my faith. There are still some so beautiful things that I miss—the messages I always felt I was reading opposite of everyone else—and somehow this book contains all of them. It doesn't ignore all the things about religion that are anathema to faith and love, but here at least love is stronger. This one will stay with me a while.

Happy Easter! So, this is an ambitious book. And I don't think I'll be able to fully capture the great extent that the author has explored same-sex desire and Christianity, but I will try. Bear with me.

Dayspring is not so much a novel as a loose collection of free verse, Biblical passages, and poetry by Christian authors of the past millennia put together as a meditation on the naturalness of same-sex desire and the religion. Much is noted for you, but most is not: it's up to the reader to disentangle what is a reworked passage of Kings, what is a phrase from a John Milton poem, and what is the author's own words. More than an author, Oliveira is a collage artist: much like musicians sampling a beat, the author retools the works of two millennia of Christian thought on the erotics of Christ into a contemporary understanding, adding his own lyrics to the greater sampling he has pulled from the pits.

The book follows the point of view of "John the Beloved," the beloved disciple of Christ, as he grapples with the intensity (dare I say, sometimes abusiveness) of his connection with Jesus while knowing how his loved one's story will always end. A bit like Achilles and Patroclus, with some interesting HIV/AIDS vibes, John narrates the story of Jesus, complete with twenty-something disciples, single-mother Mary, and vivacious Mary Magdalene.

The experience felt a bit like archeology. I was raised quite religiously in the "Evangelical" Pentecostal church and would attend Mass with my grandma in the summer. I learned a lot of the Bible, but not nearly enough to keep quite up with this. I spent the first half pretty intensely glossing it: beyond the usual canon, Oliveira makes use of Apocrypha, texts from the Koran, and later Medieval tradition to draw the greatest amount of material on the life of Christ as he can. For obvious reasons, much of the first half works in the story of David and Johnathan, with the Gospels coming in heavy as the story of Jesus' preaching begins.

One of the most coherent uses of Christian texts is the plethora of Beguine and "Free Spirit" thinkers. All of the big ones (Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, Sister Catherine Treatise) make an appearance, and when paired with poetry from the "mainstream" work Juan de la Cruz, make a cogent argument for the ridiculousness of the former's prosecution. In these, Oliveira highlights the eroticism and emotional intensity of the potential relationship with Christ.

The story is also far from linear. Weaving in and out of Biblical towns set-dressed with contemporary objects, slang, and scenarios, the author has done what Christians have done since the beginning of time—place them in a time and place that allows us to relate to these figures as closely as humanly possible. It took a little for me to buy into it, but with 400 pages to play in, I quickly figured out how to wrestle with it. Just as desire is timeless, so is God—and just as he is omnipresent—so is time.

There's far, far too much to go into detail with everything that this book plays with. I recommend glossing as I did to some extent, but make sure to watch out for obvious reworks of the Gospels, the Old Testament histories, and Revelations. So much Revelations. The author absolutely soaks his prose in Biblical imagery, often taking phrases, sentences, and whole pages into it. It's tangled and beautiful, but a tiny bit the reason why I could not rate this 5 stars. With so much taken from other sources, much of the construction of this is simply other people's work. That's fine. I think Oliveira is a talented writer and obviously an extremely talented synthesizer, but I could not in good conscience pretend that he is the sole progenitor of the entirety of this work.

Being a person of even some faith in God while being queer is often more a headache than it's worth. Most people think you're secretly self-hating or delusional, and maybe we are, but my relationship with God and religion will always be a warm place in my heart I can call to when at my lowest. It's no surprise that many try to disavow as much of their past as they can, so this work was a wonderful, wonderful read over Holy Week, and I'm grateful for it.

HE IS RISEN INDEED. (I'm also writing this up on Easter Sunday for an extra dash of blasphemy). I was lucky enough to hear about this back in 2022 when I interviewed Anthony at FlameCon, and I've been eagerly anticipating this ever since. My friends, this lives up to the hype and then some. Do you want a gorgeously written book that slides between the instances of a life, dreams of a future that may or may not be, actually interrogates Christian theology and theologians, leans into lyricality, and also occasionally looks at the absurdity of your lover also being the son of God. There were a few moments in here where I had to put down the book because I was sobbing. On the day I'm writing this, Oliveira is hosting a launch event for his book that will also be a sing along showing of Jesus Christ Superstar. Go look up the poster by Jacopo Camangi, it's astounding. This is out in mere days as I write this (Tuesday 4/2), and you want to pick this up, because you're going to be hearing about it on the year end lists.

I was very intrigued by the description of this book but I found the prose/poetry style and formatting challenging. I was confused by the time jumps and modern vs traditional setting and ultimately DNF at about the 50% mark.
I could not stay engaged in the story and I was distracted by the formatting and stylistic choices as well.

Opulence!! Poetry!! A wholly (holy) queer sensuality and sensibility!!

I took my time reading Dayspring because it demands to be savoured. I read this page-by-page on public transit and frequently caught myself mouthing the words. When at home, I read aloud, enjoying the taste and sound of this in my mouth. I truly loved this, found myself frequently emotional. The writing is at once deeply specific and eternally transcendent and I found myself impressed by Oliveira’s talent and precision.

Truly beautiful!! Need to read again!! Would be super into the audiobook!!

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the e-ARC!!

wow. i’m so exhausted from reading this, i need to go back and start reading it all over again. i felt like i was intruding on someone else’s journey through falling in love all the way to grieving the person they loved. while a lot of this story made complete sense and some of it made zero sense. it’s as if we aren’t supposed to understand everything and to just go along with it. the writing is beyond gorgeous and geniusly put together, anthony oliveira is a remarkable writer. i laughed, i teared up and laughed even more (jesus being depicted as a snarky smart ass was not on my bingo card for 2024) if you’re a former youth group kid that ended up gay and grew up to appreciate the queerification of the bible, this book is absolutely for you to pick up.

I've long enjoyed Anthony Oliveira's presence on social media, simply by virtue of the fascinating but narrow Venn diagram he represents - how often do you find a queer theologian and classics academic who also loves camp cinema and the X-Men (well, comics in general, but you know the way to my heart), all while also just being entertaining, deeply human/e, and just a fascinating, unique person? Oh, and he's also a phenomenal writer, as his essay "A Year in Apocalypses" will testify. So it didn't take me much to be sold on Dayspring, Oliveira's debut work of fiction, basically sight unseen. Closer to prose poetry than it is a traditional novel (I am always a little wary to ascribe formatting choices to an advanced ebook copy, but everything I've seen makes this seem accurately laid out), Dayspring is remarkably hard to summarize or even convey in my capsule reviews; in its broadest sense, it is the story of John, the disciple "whom Jesus loved," and his relationship with Christ, one anchored both by emotional and sexual love and desire. Now, is that relationship a retelling of the Gospels, or is it a modern allegorical telling? Well...yes - and it's also a post-modern telling, in which Christ (whose dialogue is written in red font) points out the historical origins of some of the tales around him, remarks that some of these stories have been revised over time, rolls his eyes over Peter's inability to understand metaphors, and in general, reminds us that if Christ came to earth as a man, then he must have lived as a man - which means that he might have farted on his boyfriend, or yelled at the sea when he was frustrated with it, and so forth. And if all of this sounds like a conventionally religious book, well, it should not (and if you know me, you know that my own feelings on Christianity are...complicated) - did you miss that Christ has a boyfriend, whichever time period we are in, or that this is a book that is both about queer love but also divinity, about the way society weaponizes faith against queer people but also denies Christ's messages of acceptance, about how the gospels and so much of the Bible are revised and edited over the years into "canon" while also being something more for so many people? And it's also a book about what we do with all of this in the modern era - an era where Christianity has become toxic and corrupted for so many of us past the point of repair, where "religion" too often has come to mean "hateful and vile," where queer people are still judged for actions that can be found even in religious texts. Somehow, Oliveira turns all of this into a beautiful, sprawling, meditative work that feels deeply personal to his interests - side tracks into medieval art, allusions to comics, musings on historical writings, astonishingly beautiful writing - and yet hits home even for this straight agnostic (at best) English teacher in the American south. (Mind you, this is a book so dense with allusions - religious, historical, literary, and more - that it certainly will appeal more to those with a knowledge of those fields, especially Christianity.) It is a dense book whose short length belies its complexity, density, and nuance, but it's also a beautiful book about hope, about shaping the world with the goal of moving forward, about reminding us that change is a process and not an end, about the fallibility and beauty of humanity, and about the fundamental belief that things cannot always be like this, but that it is up to us to fight for this and move on. I found it a truly moving book, one that I annotated and marked up to high heaven for its beauty but also for its humanity and its hope - at a time where the world can feel overwhelming and faith can feel like a fool's errand, Dayspring is a meditation on what humanity means, on what it meant to have a fully human God on earth, and what it can teach us about our own lives - and in doing so, I was left deeply moved and inspired by its impact.

God is gay all the time and all the time God is gay.

I must admit, I’m exhausted after reading this. It is flowery, verse filled ramblings, flowing like the Sea of Galilee under His feet. The author has a way with words, and as lovely as they are, I need to rest.
If you take the time to read this and pause, the satisfaction is overwhelming. It is memoir, biblical stories, comedy, and devastatingly homoerotic. We aren’t meant -as readers- to understand all of it. We’re just simply along for the ride.
I think to truly enjoy this, one needs a working understanding of the Bible and Christianity, (thank you, dad, for forcing me to go to Sunday school my entire childhood) and an open mind. I can’t wait to have the physical copy of this in my hands so I can reread and annotate. So many beautiful quotes and musings. The author took their time and poured their heart out and for that I am grateful. You can open to any page and be whisked away by breathtaking prose. The plot is not linear, just vibes. Extremely unique and unlike anything I have ever read. Jesus as a top is something I’ll always be down for.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of these thoughts and opinions are my own.

i don't know if this was for me. ultimately i didn't feel smart enough for this, or maybe i'm just not familiar enough with the biblical tales to truly appreciate it. the writing, however, is stunning. i ended up DNFing simply because i don't feel like it was for me.

Oh Lord, this is so beautiful. It is one to savour slowly. The prose is dense and dreamy and visceral and healing. But also at times, snort-laugh-inducing. Conversations with Jesus (his contributions in red text) paint him sometimes as a delightfully frat-bro-ey dude, part Himbo, part son of God. It's unlike anything else. I adored it.

I really wanted to love this one. I was so intrigued by the synopsis and it sounded right up my alley but I can't get into it at all. DNF @20%