"The Book of Elsewhere" by Keanu Reeves is a captivating and thought-provoking novel that transports readers into a realm of mystery and wonder. Reeves' debut in the literary world is nothing short of impressive, showcasing his talent for storytelling and his deep understanding of human emotions and experiences.

The novel's narrative is rich and immersive, weaving a complex tale that is both fantastical and deeply introspective. Reeves' writing is eloquent and evocative, painting vivid pictures that draw readers into the world of Elsewhere. His ability to create a sense of place and atmosphere is truly remarkable, making the setting feel almost tangible.

The characters in "The Book of Elsewhere" are intricately crafted, each with their own unique personalities and backstories. Reeves delves into their inner lives with sensitivity and insight, making them relatable and engaging. The relationships and interactions between characters are authentic and compelling, adding depth to the overall story.

What sets this book apart is its blend of philosophical themes with an engrossing plot. Reeves explores ideas of identity, reality, and the unknown with a deft touch, prompting readers to reflect on their own perceptions and beliefs. The novel's pacing is well-balanced, with moments of tension and introspection seamlessly woven together.

"The Book of Elsewhere" is a testament to Keanu Reeves' versatility and creativity. It's a beautifully written and intellectually stimulating novel that will leave a lasting impression on its readers. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a blend of fantasy, philosophy, and rich storytelling.

Full Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine via NetGalley.

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville is based on the BRZRKR comic books created by Keanu. I haven't read the comic books, but the story sounded very interesting. This is weird fiction. You have to be ok with not knowing exactly what is happening in the very beginning. The story will reveal itself with chapters alternating between "present" time and stories from the past that tell the history of Unute aka B. Not only does B come back from the dead, he also goes into rage states where he becomes a killing machine. If you don't do well with violence, you might want to skip this. Although B is the main character, I wouldn't define him as a hero. He's not necessarily a villain either. The first few chapters were very slow going as I puzzled things out. Once it all started to click, the pace really picked up. You had me at religious fanaticism and pig-worshipping cults! If you have read the comic books, definitely pick this up. If you haven't but are looking for something that is an atypical action thriller, give this a go.

Bonus points for incorporating Babe, the immortal babirusa. Honestly my favorite character. I could read a whole series just based on Babe's adventures through history.

This book was a wild ride from start to finish. I was very interested to see how much of the authors you could see in the work- I think both authors shine through in their own ways, but in a seamless fashion. I would be interested to see if they collaborate again in the future!

Enjoyed this book by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville. Great characters, great story, and great pacing. #TheBookofElsewhere #NetGalley

I really wanted to love this book, but it fell short for me. First of all, I don't know if it's the formatting or the editing, but there were several errors and gaps. Also, there was a 3 page sentence. One sentence.
Second, we get to the story. The lore and idea is actually fantastic but boring to read. There were some parts that kept me intrigued, but so much of the book was all over the place and got confusing. I had to force myself to keep reading, I did finish, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

Keanu Reeves is going to draw readers into this book, but they will stay for the truly fantastic worldbuilding and strange writing. It takes a bit to get into, but once you are immersed in the story you won't be able to put this book down!

The concept is intriguing and I absolutely adore Keannu Reeves so there was no way I was going to pass up this opportunity. However…. While I know this is an ARC, an unedited copy, it still feels as if this was too far from ready to be read. I was confused on this page, there are several parts that are hard to follow and it is not an easy read. There is so much telling and absolutely no showing while completely lacking in any details that help the reader picture the scene in their heads. I will buy this book either way because of my love for Keannu and I’ll give it another go after it’s been published.

This novel was definitely different. I can say that without a doubt, I have never read anything else quite like it. I'm not really sure how to describe the writing style except that it is somehow archaic yes futuristic at the same time. Sometimes it is brisk and action-packed, yet at other times it is almost overly formal with its sentence structure and word choice.

I think it would have been a little easier to read with an illustrated component, more like a graphic novel. The story itself was interesting but I just had a hard time with the writing style.

It was basically the literary equivalent of climbing barefoot up a mountain of LEGOS. The view from the top may be incredible but it's a rough path to get there.

While this book is well written, I believe it might be best to read the BZRKR comics before this novel. The first few chapters read like stage directions and descriptions, and it starts in the middle of a narrative or rather 80,000 years into one. The premise is interesting and the characters are well fleshed out. It is a little disconcerting that the pov switches characters multiple times in the same chapter and there are time jumps/unintroduced character povs without notice. I would like to revisit this novel after reading the comic series, and give a more informed review.

Look, I also picked up this book because it said Keanu Reeves on the front of it. Sue me. If you are a fan of other Miéville writings, enjoy comic books, or you really like speculative fiction, you might like this book. However, it just wasn't for me. I thought the prose was clunky, the storyline was jagged, and the novel would have been better as a graphic novel.

The opening of the book was hard to read because none of the characters really had names. The intro also contains a stunning amount of violence, just in case you were wondering what kind of book it was. And the main character is described basically as Keanu Reeves. Is Keanu trying to tell us something? Is he secretly immortal?

As the story progresses, there are so many characters that are introduced that it becomes confusing as you try to hang on to the thread of the story. I thought the twists and turns were clever, but I'm not sure it was worth reading. Again, I can see where this would have been better as a graphic novel because you would have the visualizations to follow the characters.

Maybe this was too speculative and experimental for me, but I just didn't like this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine - Del Rey for the ARC, all opinions are my own.

The style of writing is very stilted and full of fancy ten-dollar words where it just feels like too much. The story is also hard to follow.

Many thoughts on this story, overall it was fascinating and thought-provoking:

Chaos/entropy/stillness to change/positive or negative; we can choose which direction to go, making us more powerful than Unute, who cannot?

"infinite mortality" versus "immortal"- he had what he wanted all along

Energy is energy, we give it meaning and definition and direction and purpose

In the end, the story in the title is not much of a story, it is a happenstance, a blip, a thing that happens without any actual purpose or meaning or direction

reading this book feels like watching a movie written, starring, & directed by Keanu Reeves. it's a little hard to envision the long-lived dark mysterious unkillable strange masculine character as anyone other than Keanu Reeves. that's my only complaint.

as a reader who has never read any of China Mieville's works and only know of Keanu Reeves from movie roles, i was pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed this book.... i delightfully had to keep a list of words i had never before seen and did not know the definitions of....a rarity for this erudite librarian. i generally do not read action thrillers,,, but i do make it a point to read the occasional soldier/spy thriller as it helps me provide meaningful reader's advisory for my patrons. our library will probably get a few copies of this book literally just because Keanu Reeves wrote it

The Book of Elsewhere was a cerebral science fiction book that follows Unute, or B, a man who has been alive for thousands of years and is unable to truly die. Throughout his long life he has been tracked by people who want to use him, study him, or create more of him, but what he really wants is to finally die and there is a black ops group that thinks they can help him out. In exchange, they want to study him.

This story was the type of sci-fi where you don't know where it was going, what was happening, or what to expect. Overall, I enjoyed it which is a little surprising as I am not normally the type to enjoy being completely lost throughout the book. The prologue was a bit rough and made me question reading the book, but the story picked up right after that introduction. It felt very separate from the rest of the story and had a very different tone.

The writing style was a little different than what I normally like, but the concepts, the worldbuilding, and the central story about what Unute is, was fascinating. I found myself wanting to pick the book up again and see where the story was going. The book is long and at times, it felt like it was a little slow paced, but there were so many elements hidden throughout the story that you didn't realize until the end.

Some of the characters in the story were complex, but others felt very 2 dimensional. There were quite a few characters to keep track of and I found myself getting lost in the number of them. It was hard to track which characters were important and others that weren't. Also, the motivations of several of the characters was very unclear. The story also relied heavily on several character POVs which got confusing as some of them were unnamed. All of these characters stories revolved around meetings and conversations with Unute. Throughout the story, I also found that I had very conflicting emotions about Unute. At times I wanted him to succeed in getting answers, but at other times you could see how dark and callous he was and you weren't sure if you were rooting for him.

Even after finishing this book a week ago, I still find myself thinking about it. The twists throughout the story I didn't see coming and I found myself lost throughout the story, but the payoff at the end made me enjoy it. Overall, I would recommend this story if you love sci-fi with an unpredictable story and original concepts.

Slow paced, which in this case is a bad thing, and often confusing. I later read this is a novelization of the BRZRKR comic, but the thing is I should still be able to understand what is going on even if I hadn't read the comic. This is not the case. I was often confused and frustrated and many times had to push myself to continue (as this was an ARC and those I try my hardest to complete to give a fully honest review). This is a story I wanted to like too, as a government agency studying an immortal being is right up my alley. But I never was fully engaged with the story. Maybe if you've read the comic you'll fare better.

The premise of this book seemed so very interesting to me, but the content itself was confusing and I believe it's because I didn't know it was connected to the comics (which I haven't read). I may read the comics and then read this again after publication, but it definitely was a struggle for me to get through.

"A mind-blowing epic from Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books.

She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.

There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who's seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he's known simply as "B."

And he wants to be able to die.

In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

In a collaboration that combines Miéville's singular style and creativity with Reeves's haunting and soul-stirring narrative, these two inimitable artists have created something utterly unique, sure to delight existing fans and to create scores of new ones."

I'm just saying, most celebs get a relative unknown as a coauthor, but then there's Keanu who gets China Miéville!

A great idea, and mostly well done, but endings are hard.

Minor spoiler. If you don't get the reference, don't worry about it.

An immortal, but not invincible, man is being studied by the US Government because we also want immortal super soldiers. The man has perfected the ennui that some teenagers strive for, doing literally whatever he wants while the Department of Defense tried to tell him what to do.

This leads to an interesting drama I've seen before, when someone is going to do what they want so their boss tells them to do it, to make it seem like they wanted it to happen, when everyone involved knows better. I saw it a few times working for a construction company, when the crane operator with the required and hard-to-obtain crane license would go off and do what he wanted, and the foreman would pretend to tell him to do that, so he didn't look useless. The crane operator was basically unreplaceable, so as long as he didn't kill anyone, he was unfireable. We all knew it, and watching the boss try to give him orders was hilarious.


Now imagine that power struggle, with a being thousands of years old and super speed and strength and even if you do manage to kill his body, he will be reborn in a cocoon of magic and come hunting for you again.

The story follows the man as he helps a secret Special Forces team do Special Forces things for poorly explained reasons. He's bored, I guess? And if they study him enough, they'll be able to tell him things about himself?

The plot is fine, it's acceptable for what we're doing. And what we're doing is the characters. The people are well done (most of them) and give a good look at what people do in situations beyond their control and understanding.

The deus ex machina runs a little hard the last few chapters, moving the plot into the right place for the final twist of fate, but the Evil Deadpool was hilarious (if you haven't read that comic, then you might not see that coming).

The only glitch I had was accidently reading the main character's lines in a Keanu Reeves voice. That's my fault.

I really, really wanted to love The Book Of Elsewhere. After reading about 50% through, I finally gave up. It reads like a poorly executed poem in which someone was playing Russian Roulette with their Thesaurus. It contained many large, text book worthy words that will most likely disenchant even the most prolific readers. The narrative was intriguing, but confusing. It was lacking the steady flow of most stories, and I often found myself completly lost. I usually try to finish every book (I'm not a quitter), but kept making excuses to put off finishing this one.

"I don't want to die. What I want is mortality, and that's not the same thing."

The story of Unute, the Child of Lightning, Death himself, or simply "B" is surprisingly philosophical in tone, even reminiscent of the myth of Tithonus. When Eos, his lover, asked Zeus to make him immortal, she forgot to ask that he be granted eternal youth. Tithonus would, indeed, live forever, "but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs." (From the epic Greek poem)

"The Book of Elsewhere" also conjures thoughts of the epigraph to TS Eliot's "The Waste Land," which reads, "With my own eyes I saw the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a bottle and, when the attendants asked her what she wanted, she replied, "I want to die.""

I get the distinct impression that Keanu and China were channeling these sorts of feelings as they collaborated - quite effectively so - on this work set in the BRZRKR universe. A provocative, brooding, and violently original work.