There is a great evil approaching. The last Guardian of the West Passage is dead, and rather than officially naming her apprentice as her successor, she used her last words to give him a single command. “Tell Black it’s coming.”

Kew should have been named as the next Hawthorn of Grey, the new Guardian, the most recent of a long line of people to hold the name and the title designating him for duties not fully understood in living memory. Now he must make the journey from the Grey Tower to the Black Tower in order to pass along his teacher’s message. If he can accomplish this, then he might prove himself worthy of recognition as a Hawthorn, taking the place he has been training for all his life.

Pell is an apprentice to the Women in Grey, an ancient order who exist to provide funerary care to the other people of the city. When Hawthorn is brought to the women for her funeral, Pell briefly crosses paths with Kew and sneaks away with a book that Hawthorn had in her possession.

The first indicator that something is wrong occurs during Hawthorn’s services, when her funerary mask is accidentally broken. Between that and the theft of the book, Pell begins to fear that her actions are bringing time itself out of alignment, with snow beginning to fall in what should be the middle of summer. Rats are pouring out of statues, and none of the women can be bothered to guess if something is truly amiss.

Jared Pechaček has created a somehow vibrant ruined world, reminiscent of Gene Wolfe’s Book of New Sun, blending things both magical and technological and decades or centuries past their prime. Frankly, I love worldbuilding that deliberately hides or doesn’t worry about how everything works, leaving plenty of mysteries in place. A massive palace ruled over by the Ladies (mysterious and powerful giant beings) serves as the setting for the entire novel, and it’s filled with ominous creatures as well as new allies for Kew and Pell as they go their separate ways to set things right.

The West Passage came out on Tuesday, 7/16, and it’s an absolute joy of a novel. It’s weird and truly fantastic, and I can’t wait to see what Pechaček does next. My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2024/07/18/the-west-passage-a-review/

Deeply fascinating world, could not help but draw parallels between Pechaček's fantasy world and our reality today, both crumbling in their own way. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free advance copy.

**Features:**
- A dark yet whimsical world in the vein of Alice in Wonderland
- Parallel journeys where each step in the journey is more important than the overall goal
- Examines the naivety of youth versus the reality of people looking out for their own interests

There are many signs that the Beast approaches, but only the Guardians would know them. Too bad there are no Guardians left to see them. This book is strange in the best of ways and will definitely hit the spot for readers looking for a unique experience. It takes place in a dark world with an eldritch aesthetic but still manages to have the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland. The book does a great job easing you into its quirkiness and this skillful world building is what makes this a five-star read for me. Though main characters Pell and Kew follow a linear storyline and have their own goals they are trying to accomplish, the true focus of the story is on the different experiences the characters have along the way and the nature of the world itself. That being said, readers who enjoy a strong central plot or in-depth characters will likely struggle with this particular read. However, those who are looking to go on a bit of a journey through a unique world will be delighted with this read!

**A dark and whimsical world**

The Guardian of the West Passage, the last of her kind, has died. However, rather than using her dying breath to name her apprentice the new Guardian, she instead gave him a mission: tell the Black that it is coming. To honor his master’s dying wish, Kew sets out along the treacherous West Passage. But how will an unnamed apprentice convince the Ladies that rule the land that the message he is conveying is true? Meanwhile, Pell, an apprentice to the Grey women, is eager to prove herself ready to take on the full duties of her order. However, Pell soon realizes things are not quite as she has been told and the looming danger will challenge her in ways that she could never imagine.

This book takes place in the strange world of The Palace with each section being ruled over by Ladies and their different orders. However, this is a world that has been crumbling apart long before any ancient danger could threaten it. The book is clever in its use of Pell and Kew as its main characters. Both are young apprentices with an idealistic view of both the world and their positions in it. They have enough familiarity to ease the reader into the world, but they are still surprised and challenged as they explore parts they have never truly experienced before. Even if their experiences are completely strange, what they learn from them and the overarching message is extremely relatable. The way this book manages to make something both extremely odd and completely relatable is what makes it truly stand out.

**Happily lost in the rabbit hole**

Though I have given this book five stars, it is definitely not a book I would recommend to everyone. There is definitely a main plot and goals that each character works towards, but they all exist in the background. Not everything the characters experience or do is directly related to the overarching plot and they are frequently made to question their personal goals. However, there is a lot being revealed about the nature of the world through these experiences that shape the characters in unexpected ways. In order to enjoy this book, you must be the kind of reader who enjoys the journey regardless of whether the destination is clear or not. I was honestly surprised to find myself jumping into this crazy adventure so wholeheartedly, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

What a unique story and fantasy! I wish I could've gotten the full experience of reading this with illustrations and all. Despite that, I still really enjoyed the characters and the plot.

Thanks so much to the publisher for inviting me to read this title early!

I was completely blown away by the amount of intention and care that went into the worldbuilding! I found it to be a slow read, if only because I needed to really take my time with all of the fantastical elements in it, but I really appreciated it. The cover alone was enough to make me interested in reading this, and I may not have ever been aware of it without the email. Most of all, I loved this because as far as I can tell, it's just one book. We love a standalone!

So much of the world was visceral and so easy to visualize but at the same time it sometimes felt impossible to really picture what I was reading. I really enjoyed the different kinds of people (if they can be called that? Who knows!), particularly rabbit-eared Frin and all of the bird people. The Ladies were eldritch and terrifying and I found myself anxious whenever Yarrow or Hawthorne got too close to one. Peregrine is a certified book boyfriend and I will not take any criticism. We DID have fun.

It got a little bit clunky towards the middle/end, when we were approaching the climax of their journeys and it got a little slow for me there. I think it could have benefited from a little more high-stakes action at that point rather than more exploration. Once the stories converged though it became much better paced and I really enjoyed the ending. We don't have to stay chained down by the decisions made by everyone who came before us! We can break cycles! We can extend grace and mercy in the face of violence!

If the pacing had been a LITTLE bit better this would be a 5-star book. This is my favorite kind of scifi/fantasy--eldritch, weird, ethereal, and beautiful. I would LOVE to see a graphic adaptation of this in some way--not even a whole graphic novel but like an art book. Character designs, that sort of thing. It could be STUNNING.

Definitely a new favorite! I'll be looking out for this author's future projects for sure.

I received an ARC from NetGalley.

The Guardian of the West Passage's death throws the Grey Tower into chaos. Summer snow paints the looming silhouette with a chilling omen – the Beast is awakening. The fate of the palace hangs on a too-young Mother of Grey House and the Guardian’s squire. Both must embark on individual journeys, venturing into the treacherous West Passage to save their people.

This story captivated me not for its plot, but for the atmosphere it conjured. It felt like tumbling into a Miyazaki movie or the mind-bending reality of Alice in Borderland. Unravelling the lore of the towers and their enigmatic Ladies was pure joy, like piecing together a forgotten myth.

While the plot itself wasn't the driving force for me, it was a captivating framework for exploring this richly imagined world. The true magic resided in the dreamlike setting and the mysteries waiting to be unravelled.

Decided to drop this when I almost hit 50% mark. I was curious, really. But I couldn’t connect with the story for whatever reasons. I couldn’t conjure the scenes in my head at all, thus it was really hard to follow the story along, until i completely lost it.

Sorry. It’s just not for me, I guess

Is this the trippiest ARC I’ve ever read? Most likely.

The West Passage is an ethereally eldritch tale following Kew, the would-be Guardian but currently apprentice of the Guardian of the West Passage, and Pell, an aspiring grey lady who tends to life and death in “the Palace”. They are both inhabitants of The Grey Tower, which is part of a castle city. They both navigate their own journeys to try and save The Palace from the threat known as “The Beast”.

I think to say that this is a very surreal fantasy would be putting it mildly. This is not a character driven book, and its more the world around Kew and Pell that drives the plot. There are so many viscerally vivid happenings in the book, weird and unsettling but powerful and interesting nevertheless.

It would be fair to say that I’ve never read a book like this in my entire life. Its so interesting but I was dismayed by the lack of character focus, which is more of a personal taste if anything. Its such a difficult read, mostly from a visualization standpoint than anything else. Its hard to keep up sometimes but you are motivated by the mystery and intrigue of the book itself.

This is NOT for the faint of heart, but if you are looking for a new type of fantasy, this would be a great choice. For me personally, I didn’t love it or get sucked into it, but it is certainly a testament to the power of fantasy and storytelling.

I think people are either going to be absolutely GAGA in love with this read or they are going to be very confused. It's intricate. It's strange. It uses its own logic. I've seen other readers compare it to Alice in Wonderland for the strange otherworldly logic here and I think it's an apt comparison but only for that aspect of the book. This is a weird and wild medieval fantasy with beasts, giant Eldritch ladies, and a quest that will introduce you to many wacky characters. This book also goes very dark places and I was sometimes shocked at how violence and whimsy live side by side in this strange world. I'm really excited for other readers to get their hands on this one and hear what they think. There's so much going on in this book that is difficult to describe in a quick review/synopsis. If you're looking for something weird, whimsical, dark, and intricate - this is a good pick for you!

For me, I gave it a 3.5 because I was impressed and enjoyed the epic world-building and the layers of logic. At some points on the quest, I got confused and the stakes diminished for me as a result. At a certain point I had a hard time continuing. However, I pushed through that and it picked back up and I ended up really enjoying the end.

for an honest review.

Wow. This is certainly one of the best books I’ve read this year. Perhaps ever.

Set in the medieval, fantastical world of the Palace, its five towers, and the West Passage, the reader follows Yarrow and Hawthorn (along with many other effervescent minor characters) on their respective and collective journeys to defeat the Beast – a fabled monster with a mysterious and destructive past.

Reminiscent of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, with somehow even more whimsical and strange world building, The West Passage covers themes of tradition, love, loss, friendship, duty, belief, and coming-of-age. I admit I was confused for the first few pages of the story, but once I clicked with the narrative and the complex uniqueness of the world, I swiftly became invested in the characters and the plot. There are incredibly dark moments balanced with fresh, light, humorous ones, interspersed with short chapters of lore and history. The characters and their towers are incredibly alive. Everything just pops off the page, from the people to the giant, powerful Ladies, the frogs giving birth to lambs, the beekeepers, and the somewhat educated apes.

I hope Pechacek continues to write novels in this vein. I’d pick up everyone. Absolutely worth every reader’s time!

This is an immensely intricate story - definitely not a brain off kind of read, but it was definitely well done. I liked it, but I think I read it at the wrong time. I wasn't ready to parse through all this descriptive language.

A little weird with a surreal world. I don’t think this book is going to be for everyone. Perhaps a sliding 2-4 star scale depending on what you want in a fantasy novel. If you want a straightforward world and story 2 stars. It’s odd but well written so it’s quite readable. But if you like your worlds a little odd then it might be more on the 4 star scale of things for you.

I really enjoyed this weird fantasy! Cozy fantasy is having its moment and I do love cozy fantasy, but I also love a book that is going to make me think and is not gonna spoon-feed me anything. The world-building was intricate, the characters fascinating.

3.5 stars. Sci-Fi is always hit or miss for me but this one was a good solid story. At times it is difficult to keep pace with the story, as the names and even genders are fluid. Basically, a world is dying, a monster is coming and it's up to the youngest Mother of Grey House and almost-Guardian to protect the palace/realm/Ladies. It's going to have to be read to be believed. Also, I feel like there was a ton of world-building and then bam: abrupt conclusion. But a very interesting read.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for this e-arc.*

🖤 The West Passage ARC Review 🖤

Thank you so much to Jared Pechaček and TorDotCom for the opportunity to read and review this book!

The West Passage is a standalone fantasy novel. After the guardian of the West Passage dies, there is no successor named. With no new guardian to protect the people, there is a vulnerability in the realm. So who will rise up to protect everyone when the West Passage is threatened by a beastly threat?

This was an interesting read. While I enjoyed the story overall, I felt like I wasn’t super attached to any of the characters. It follows the journey of multiple interconnected characters and I enjoyed the journey overall. I felt like the world building was super detailed in some areas and super vague in others. I also struggle with fantasy books that have super descriptive world building, but that’s an issue with my own ADHD brain and not necessarily a book issue

Overall this was a three star red for me. The world building was a little unique but I struggled with the overly descriptive writing style. This book was not a romance so no rating will be given for spice

If you’re a fan of complex fantasy novels with intricate world building and epic journeys, then absolutely pick this one up!

HIGHLIGHTS
~beware speech without speech-marks
~names are everything and nothing
~in the midst of surreality, a train
~eldritch is putting it midly
~a most unusual set of bee-hives

There is a castle, of sorts. It is populated with people, of sorts. It is ruled by ladies…of a sort.

A quest, of sorts, is undertaken. Two quests. Because a monster (of sorts) approaches, and the seasons are broken, and much lore has been lost. Even a quest – two quests – may not be enough to save things. Especially when neither adventurer has any idea what they’re getting into.

We’re used to stories of castles and people and quests and monsters. They’re practically commonplace! And yet I beg you to believe me when I tell you that The West Passage is like nothing you have ever seen before. It is the dream a Medieval manuscript might dream, if you gave it enough poppy and absinthe and just a little ecstasy (whether the drug or the emotion is at the potion brewer’s discretion): boldly baroque, casually surreal, full of curlicuing story and powerful honey and illumination(s). It has all the weight of an ancient myth, grand and mostly-forgotten, every detail weighted with meaning that is tantalising, transfixing, unpredictably portentous. It rests upon an extensive, solid framework that we cannot see, but can be sure is there: there is a logic to it all, a way it all fits together, but it is the logic of dreams, a way we can’t quite follow.

We are not meant to understand. Not really. The Ladies do not deign to share their secrets with mere mortals, and why should they?

<Wandering here and there were cattle, nibbling at the grass. Their horns were tied with blue and yellow ribbons. Their gills flared and contracted as they breathed.>

The actual prose and structure of Pechaček’s debut aren’t experimental; the tale is told linearly, more or less straightforwardly, and readers are not required (or even requested) to perform cerebral gymnastics in order to follow along. You can pick the book up and begin reading immediately without any trouble whatsoever.

But the world Pechaček has created! That is marvellously bizarre, a quietly intense strangeness infused into every element. Cows having gills is the least of it! There are ‘spoon-faced’ people, and the most, um, unconventional bee-hives you will ever encounter, and frogs laying the most incredible eggs. Much of the strangeness is beautiful; some of it is gross or ugly; most of it is neither, only is, and nearly all of it is treated with a matter-of-factness that only adds to the sense of disorientation. It would be so easy for this to have been mishandled, for it to become Too Much, but in Pechaček’s hands disorientation is delicious, addictive, freeing in a way I don’t know how to articulate or explain. Instead of being confusing or annoying or pretentious, the dissonance between how our reality works and how it works in West Passage is intoxicating. I wanted more and more and more of it, and Pechaček didn’t disappoint, showing me wonders and mysteries and miracles everywhere I looked.

<A mason bee burrowed into some mortar.>

It is not possible to be bored in The West Passage. Especially if you take your time with it, go carefully enough to notice every detail – because the details are, often, mindblowing. Take the quote above: a mason bee?! What is a mason bee?! What do you mean it burrows into mortar?! WHAT?!

It’s very easy to read right past delights like this, because the characters don’t bat an eye at things like mason bees, and so if you’re not paying close attention, you are likely to miss all sorts of treasures; the kinds of things and creatures and people that could only exist in a dream, that make perfect sense until you open your eyes in the morning. One has to approach The West Passage with your sense of wonder bright and fresh and ready to be wowed, but also with one’s magnifying glass ready, slowly examining each and every thing before moving to the next. Because while there is great deal that is front and centre and spotlit, there are even more mirabilia to be found tucked away into corners and between lines – like Medieval illustrations peeking out from behind a capital letter or hiding in the margins.

Making this book both a near-infinite treasury, and a book to be savoured, lingered over as hedonistically and luxuriously as possible.

<Potatoes had been set to roast and were taken out for buttering and salting, then browned under salamanders and sprinkled with herbs.>

(Browned under salamanders! As in, the little lizard(-looking) fire-elementals!!! This is such a perfect example of how Pechaček mixes the whimsical and mythical and practical at every opportunity.)

To go back to those Medieval illustrations – if you forced me to describe The West Passage’s aesthetic, my answer would probably be Medieval marginalia meets Pliny’s Natural History with a dash of ‘biblically accurate’ angels. If you’re not familiar with Medieval marginalia, then you are in for a bewildering but delightful time exploring it; Anika Burgess defines it as ‘from intriguingly detailed illustrations to random doodles, the drawings and other marks made along the edges of pages in medieval manuscripts’. And they can be seriously, seriously weird (and hilariously nsfw), like the inexplicable knight vs snail motif, in which the knight is almost always losing, that can be found all over 13th-14th century books. The Natural History by Pliny (written in 77 AD), on the other hand, is the world’s first encyclopedia (kinda) and is packed full of facts that are definitely not facts – such as the existence of dog-headed people, along with an island of humans who get around by hopping, since they each have only one leg with a giant foot. Put that way, it sounds comedic, and you can definitely laugh at it – but there’s a grandness to it too, a glimpse into a world even more impossible than ours, dignified in its impossibility. The West Passage reminds me of both; the secretive whimsy of Medieval marginalia, and the solemn strangeness of The Natural History – both orbiting, if not outright emanating from, the terrifyingly unearthly Ladies who definitely echo something of the ‘biblically accurate’ angels imagery.

But just as the Ladies are far more, and far stranger, than rings of golden wheels covered with eyes, The West Passage is a lot more than marginalia plus Pliny. It’s only that that is as close as I can come to describing it to someone who hasn’t read the book. It also, I hope, gives you an idea of how esoteric The West Passage is – or, no, that’s not correct. ‘Esoteric’ suggests that readers with very specific niche interests or information will understand what Pechaček is doing here, and I don’t think that’s true. I saw similarities between bits of West Passage and these interests of mine – but only similarities, not the things themselves. Possibly Pechaček drew a little inspiration from some of these things – I really don’t know – but the result is something wholly original; there are no Easter eggs hidden here for Medievalists (I don’t think), because Pechaček’s world is not built on or out of Medieval marginalia. Nor are any of Pechaček’s creations lifted out of the pages of The Natural History – there will be no spotting a dog-headed person and getting the reference.

There are no references. There are only, here and there, pieces that feel, a little, like things that are almost, maybe, a touch familiar.

But they are not.

It’s another way in which West Passage is like a dream: almost familiar, almost making sense, almost fitting inside your understanding…but fundamentally not.

(And yet, leaving you with the unshakeable certainty that it does all fit together, that it would all make sense to you if you could just…be less mortal. There is an uncanny and eldritch logic to it all – it’s just that we’ll never comprehend it.)

<People and things from Grey seemed to belong to the time of songs rather than the time of stories>

Like many dreams, The West Passage does not feel as though it started existing only when you discovered it; you may only be entering the story now, but it has been extant for aeons. It’s quite difficult to create a sense of age for a fictional place or culture, but here, it abounds; our merely-mortal main characters are living in the dusty remains of a once-great dynasty, bound by ancient rituals that surely had a purpose once but now have none (or little) beyond the perpetuation of dying traditions. An immense amount of history and other knowledge has been lost – some possibly deliberately – and the waning is obvious in the shrinking number of inhabitants of Grey Tower. The other Towers, which our characters visit during their respective quests, are in very different states, but have still fallen far from the heights of their heydays. What has caused this great decline is unclear, but its existence is impossible to question; Pechaček does an incredible job at making you feel the weight of ages past, and the subsequent weight of responsibility to those vague but vital impressions of past glories. A great deal of West Passage is concerned with this, with the importance but also complete un-importance of carrying on tradition because it is tradition; Pechaček depicts it alternately as despairing, farcical, and irrational – but also as the glue of community, a source of pride, and life-saving. You could read this entire novel as a debate on the value and purpose of tradition, if you like, with the conclusion being something along the lines of: ultimately, it is only by mixing tradition with a willingness to subvert or discard it that we can flourish. Which rings very true to me.

<Butterflies moved in and out between the waving tendrils as if among the ribs of a corpse, perching here and there on slim pale limbs. Some of them had court dress on, others wore nothing at all.>

The West Passage makes me grateful, all over again, for the word queer, because it’s not nicely, neatly LGBTQ+, but it is undeniably, fundamentally queer. I would be interested (and amused) to see other readers try and pigeonhole or attach labels to the various characters, because they don’t fit into any boxes I know of – and yet many of them, including at least one of our two main protagonists, can’t be called straight, either. The realm of the Ladies has an alien approach to gender, in particular; I don’t want to spoil it, but I was delighted by it (even when I was also confused by it – it’s the good kind of confusion, the kind that comes when you encounter something completely new to you; when your mind has to stretch to accommodate that newness, because it can’t be fit into the way you thought things were before). Yet again, this book makes me think of dreams: gender itself feels like a kind of dream, in Pechaček’s world, and gender certainly has the – the fluidity of a dream, here; impossible to pin down, quickly and completely transforming at a moment’s notice, bound by rules that are immutable in context but make little sense outside of it.

(And yet, can’t the same be said for gender in our world? Gender as a concept? Are the ways in which the Towers determine gender any stranger than the ways we do? Not really, if you stop and think about it. If you’re able to be honest about how little our world’s rules – our rules about almost anything – make objective, rational sense.)

I don’t know if it’s correct to say that gender, and its fluidity, is a major theme in West Passage, but it is important, and it is worked into the foundation of the world Pechaček’s created. The West Passage is queer in so very many senses of the word, and it would be remiss not to mention that, and celebrate that. I don’t know what to say about that aspect of the book, beyond that it brought me joy – but you should know that it’s there.

<Hush now, little girl
In the waving reeds
Mother’s gone to fetch the moon
Father’s gone to sow the stars
Sleep now, little girl
In the waving reeds
For the river sings
All the song you need>

The West Passage is a journey that cannot be unmade and should not be rushed, that will leave you a little wilder and weirder than you were before, with a new eye or two through which to see the world. It is a chimeric masterpiece full of chimeras of all sorts, majestic and mysterious and maybe mad, splendidly strange, unflinchingly uncanny. It is dream-spun, illuminated, magnificent; unquestionably a treasure of the decade.

It is not to be missed.

The West Passage is delightfully odd and the most unique fantasy I’ve read in a long tim—though I’d be hard-pressed to articulate the plot.

The West Passage reminds me of the Redwall series for an adult audience. Instead of anthropomorphic animals, there seem to be persons bearing a mix of animal and humanoid features. Instead of Redwall Abbey, there is the medieval-feeling palace, the towers, and the lands encompassed within them (and, distantly, foreign lands beyond them). Unlike that series, however, the behavior of characters in The West Passage is much more morally complex, as the world system is so puzzling—and so refreshing!—that the simple good-evil binary can’t apply.

The simultaneous horror and whimsy of this story caught me off guard. Seemingly jarring happenings don’t faze them, even though they can be quite horrific, and it requires acclimation on the part of the reader. It reminded me of books I read when I was younger like The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and movies like Song of the Sea, and I’m glad that bizarre genre as made its way into the land of adulthood. (Better yet, apparently the physical editions has illustrations? My digital ARC didn’t, and I’m feeling jealous.)

That is not to discount the mature themes wound within the book. Young protagonists Pell and Kew are trapped in a hierarchical society of isolation and decay but also wonder and liveliness. Everyone knows their place, and the status quo seems to overshadow any individual’s concerns and even previous generations’ knowledge. Characters know how the world works but are also oblivious, or impervious, to change that could improve their security or happiness.

I realize none of that reveals much about the plot—that’s because it was so much of a whirlwind I couldn’t distill if I tried. But I enjoyed it immensely by going with the words, wherever they took me. That is to say, expect cuteness and gore, compassion and snark, triumph and disaster, and a need to know more.

Unfortunately, this story was not a good fit for me. I've picked it up several times, but I cannot get myself to proceed and have DNF'd. However, just because it isn't the right fit for me, doesn't mean it isn't perfect for others - which is why I'm providing a 3 star vs 1 star.

I appreciate a little description of the surroundings (a sentence or two) and want to return to the action. I found myself wanting to skip over the paragraphs of surrounding descriptions that I felt weren't necessary to move the story forward.

The timing within the story also threw me off - I felt a sense of urgency to make it to the black tower when both characters initially left, yet they get delayed in one location for weeks & months. That removed the sense of urgency, and I found myself wondering if the time spent at these locations would be important later in the story or not.

The sometimes full-sentence "summary" in each chapter was also oddly detailed, for some chapters I felt I could have just read the header and skipped the chapter. A few words max is most impactful to set the tone without giving away what is going to happen.

Again - I know some people love detailed descriptions and just being along for the ride, but I could not get into it. Thank you for the opportunity to read this story.

I really appreciated the unique worldbuilding in this novel. It had a different narrative tone which immediately caught me off guard. I am always looking for something special.

Despite that, I never completely fell in love with this story. I think the challenge is that this one didn't have a strong narrative direction or direction to the plot. At times, this can work if I'm attached to the characters but I found these ones to be a bit distant.

This novel has some great potential and things I liked about it, but it did not completely work for me.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

In The West Passage, the debut novel by erstwhile social media fashion commentator, strange art purveyor and all round interesting person Jared Pechaček, the story is relatively linear and comprehensible, but the visuals? Ooh the visuals are something else.

The story follows two apprentices from the Grey tower, one learning to become a Mother, caring for people at death and birth, and holding on to a great memory trove of song-lore in the meanwhile, and the other training to become a Guardian, charged with the defence of the palace against the Beast. Shit, as it often does in stories, goes all wrong, and they both have to travel away from their home in Grey to try to put the world to rights, and find a way to stop the looming arrival of the Beast, who threatens to destroy everything. Along the way, they discover that all is not necessarily as they expected to find it in the rest of the palace, find friends and enemies, learn, grow and all that good stuff. You know, stories?

So what is it that sets this one apart? Why is this part of weird shit summer?

Well, for a start, look at the cover. Is that a lady with a tower for a head? Yes. Yes it is. That is very much emblematic of what you're in for here. It starts slow, at the beginning. Off hand comments about twiggy hair or spiny hands that catch on the edges of your attention - did it really just say that? maybe it was metaphorical? - that keep on building and building, little hints, little wrongnesses, until you can't quite ignore them. And then the book hits you with art like this:


That thing on the right? With the gothic architectural twiddle for a head? That's a beehive. It pisses honey. Just... roll with it.

And once you get to this point, the floodgates really open, and it all comes gushing (sorry) out. Pechaček really shines in his visual descriptions - of people, of scenery - and doubly so in his ability to capture abstract, the almost indescribable, with metaphorical and whimsical and often somewhat grotesque language. For instance, we have this passage on the Beast:

the Beast might pass equally as a subtlety at the banquet table of the apocalypse, or as a costume at a masque where every player represents three simultaneous crimes. Now enters Madame Murder, all blood and bone, who is also Sir Larceny, all grasping hands and covetous eyes, who is also Treachery, all knives and masks.

Does this physically tell us what the Beast looks like? No, not at all. And yet somehow we come out with a sense of it nonetheless. And there are many, many things like it throughout the book - things that we have no easy map for within the world of simple physical description, but to which Pechaček gives life through these little passages of metaphor. These descriptions are also heavily grounded in the assumed chronology of the world of the story - as you can see from the manuscript styling of the art (which varies according to where in the setting we are for that part of the story, incorporating visual aspects of different real-world manuscript traditions to give a sense of the relation between the areas of the world), there's a strong medieval flavour running through it all - and so they feel all the more tied into the story itself. They make use of concepts at least passing familiar to either of our two protagonists, to set the scene for the reader in terms that make sense for the story's frame of reference, and so never falter, never break the cohesion of our immersion. Likewise the steady creep of it all, the absolute rejection the classic wall o' text, brick to the face exposition, makes it all the more clear that strange to us is normal to the world. People with bird heads are unremarkable, so of course it only comes up in the text as it becomes relevant (for instance in what sex acts they can and cannot perform). Otherwise, it's just sort of... there.

But that doesn't mean there's no explanation in the story - far from it. I would, in general, describe this as a worldbuilding-forward novel. Much of the core story isn't really about the protagonists; they're just the people it's happening to. They don't really make choices that change the way the plot flows, or perform feats that no one else could do. Instead, they're the vector through which we steadily uncover the mystery of the world... within its own terms, its own lore. Rooted in the perspective of someone from Grey, we learn to interrogate the (very little) we know, and dig further into the wider, richer history of the place we call home, and to understand that the stories we know aren't necessarily the immutable truth we thought them to be. For the reader, that means a steady, gentle exposition, that last pretty much through the whole story, of the core question that hits you on the first page - what on earth is this world? It's a story to explore an idea, to understand a place, and simply to visit it. To see its many parts and begin to know it. And that's somewhat delightful.

Especially because that place is playing with the common fantasy trope of the fallen world - the story takes place in a crumbling, decrepit, enormous castle-like structure, full of tumbled masonry, empty halls and piled rubbish. Nothing is as it was in the days gone past, and people yearn for the glory of the stories of old. So far, so familiar, right? But because this story is so lore-forward, so focussed on that self-narration, the way that this fallen glory comes across is precisely alongside our interrogation of the truth of it all. We are constantly aware, from fairly early on, of the unreliability of our sources, and so we are constantly on guard, watching for the potholes in these songs of greater days, wondering what other information might be hiding there. It makes for a very interesting experience. It also goes hand in hand with one of the areas Pechaček dwells on often, around worship, holiness and magic, and how that plays into the strict hierarchical and inheritance based system that seems to be in place in his world. The Ladies - with their strange and varied morphology - are extremely powerful beings capable of miracles, who head up a governing structure whose steepness is nearly vertical. Our protagonists exist somewhere near the bottom in an even further fallen bywater of this fallen world. The Ladies are worshipped. But how does worship - and holiness, and miracles, all words Pechaček uses directly in the text - exist in a world where that power visibly flows from beings you can see and touch? That's a mystery the text does not exactly solve, but you can feel it being lingered on, in moments, the way the story takes us to these parts of the world, gives us these moments of something... magical.

And that is a word I don't believe is used even once. People are cursed, transformed, charmed and otherwise affected by incomprehensible power... but not once is anything referred to as "magic". In a fantasy book. Isn't that interesting?

Historically, at various points, what cultures conceptualised as prayer, song, poem and magic spell has has intersected and flowed together in ways that seem strange to a modern, Christian, Anglophone mind. We have plenty of historical examples of the holy and the magical overlapping, combining and working together without qualm, or the one being in a place we might expect to see the other. And so it is absolutely fascinating to see a work of fantasy take this historical truth and run with it - so much of this story is rooted in an alien perspective, so why not this thing too? It's another little, subtle... and yet enormous, fundamental thing that adds to the rootedness of the story perspective, layering and layering up the different aspects of the telling to feed into the creation and uncovering of this strange, beautiful world.

But there is a story - and there are characters - and I don't want to imply those aren't a part of the telling. We predominantly spend time with the two above mentioned, who begin the story as Pell and Kew, and both of whom have somewhat differing but interesting perspectives, but who have a common home and a great deal in common in their foundations and worldviews. They are also both incredibly driven by duty, a motivation I'm always a sucker for in fiction.

Once again playing with common tropes, there's something of the traditional narrative to taking these impoverished, ignorant, lowly characters and inserting them into a grander story. But where in many others they might end up politicking with the great and becoming the focus of a world that previously did not care about them, here their interactions with power are generally fleeting, and rarely upset the status quo (and if so, never for long). This isn't a story of their rise through the ranks to grander status. The world has its inertia which one, or even two, people cannot fight alone, even if they want to. Politics, throughout the story, remain obscured and distant to them, beyond the scale with which they are already somewhat familiar, and they are often pawns in someone else's story. Things generally happen to them. And again, for the story being told, for this uncovering of a world, I think this decision really works, even if it makes a lot of the time spent with the characters somewhat melancholic. We see how trapped and powerless they are, how their ability to do their duty - however sacred - is hindered by forces utterly beyond their grasp, and it's hard not to feel incredibly sorry for them, sad for the state of the world they exist in, and by extension and resonance, sad about a lot of other things in the real world besides.

So this is not an entirely cheery book, I have to say. But it's not quite so grim as all that, in the main because much of the story is so focussed on uncovering all this lore, all this wonder, that the awe, fear, confusion and mortal peril tend in the moment to overwhelm the quiet, unrelenting sadness of it all. But it is there, and after closing the final page, it does sit with you - this is a story that lingers in the mind, both visually and emotionally.

Is it a perfect story? I will admit not. I found the ending a little rushed, and somewhat out of tone with much of what went before, precisely because of that rush - everything else has proceeded at its own pace, and given that sense of pervasive doom, inevitable sadness, and when you give a sudden uptick, those are hard emotions to maintain. There's also just quite a lot going on to follow in the last 5-10% or so, and I think some of the more emotive parts of it might have hit harder and been more impactful (read: heartwrendingly sad) if they'd been given a little more time to breathe.

There are also a couple of loose ends of plot - one of which feels somewhat significant - that don't really get tied up in any meaningful way. They just sort of... trail off, as the narrative camera pans past, in a way I found somewhat unsatisfying, rather than plot hooks for a sequel, or deliberate mysteriousness. And they do niggle, now I sit back to reflect on the story.

But on the whole, I think I'm willing to ignore them, because so much of what I got from the rest of it was so good.

It's a deeply strange, intensely visually driven book, and a story you read to get a mad ride through a baffling world, rather than to fall in love with people or to be carried away by events. But so much of what is it is so beautiful, so vivid, so enthralling, that even an intensely character focussed reader (i.e. me) could be carried away by it.