I have to say I was not familiar with Reeves’s BRZRKR comic book series about an immortal warrior that was the inspiration for this book, but after reading The Book of Elsewhere I may have to check it out. Now lets get this out of the way right from the start. I have no doubt that a lot of people are going to want to check this book out simply because they’ll see the name Keanu Reeves on the cover. And I’ll admit that most definitely got my attention. But people should also pay attention to the other name on there cover: China Mieville. Because make no mistake this is every bit a Mieville novel as anything else I’ve ever read from him. And this is where I think some that check out The Book of Elsewhere will run into trouble, or perhaps disappointment. Not because there isn’t a good, thought provoking story here, because there definitely is, but rather because of China’s unique writing style. Even though I’d read several of China’s books in the past, it had been a while and I had forgotten how jarring his style can be. I’m honestly not even sure how to describe it, though I had a friend who had bored one of my books and she put it this way. ‘I can’t read this. I feel like I’m back in school being forced to read Shakespeare.’ She meant it as a joke of course, but I knew what she meant. This is not relaxed, easy reading, not a beach read, or something you can read as you drift off the sleep. (At least I can’t.) No, when you read one of China’s books, you need to focus, pay attention or you might find yourself lost and confused, rereading the same paragraph multiple times in a row without even realizing it, lol. That’s just my longwinded way of saying, China makes you work for it, and for some that may well be a turn off. 3.5 stars I’d like to thank Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of The Book of Elsewhere.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R3J99R8ASK8PSH/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_SRTC0204BT_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

A dark and beautiful tale of Death and Life, an amalgamation of the world’s belief systems and histories with military sci-fantasy and horror sensibilities. Action packed and smart, this gory exploration of divinity and mortality is a real trip. I think you’ll love the sweeping timeframe, the philosophical musings, and the bloody machinations.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy. These opinions are my own.

High level science fiction. Somewhat dense at points. Found it hard to want to go back and finish the book at times.

Very horror mystery centered and plot heavy. Not something I'd recommend to a casual reader.

What made me want to finish was the point that I love Keanu Reeves.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and Netgalley for the ARC!!!

When one of your favorite actors and authors collaborate on a book together- YOU READ IT!! Keanu Reeves and China Miéville take you a cerebral roller coaster in “The Book of Elsewhere.”

The story is about a character known as Unute, or "B" to the people closest to him in the present day.
“B” is 80,000 years old and he cannot die! To be exact, he dies many times but can come back to life.. He agrees to work with a covert U.S. military unit, but when a mortal soldier is brought back from the dead, Unute is plunged into a mystery involving his very long past, a death-defying cult, an immortal deer-pig, and the secret at the very core of his power.

This book was all over the place and I loved every minute of it!! I didn’t grasp everything that was going on but I believe it was meant to be that way! Reeves and Miéville give you a lot of gut-punching “whoa” moments that mess with your head! The story felt like an adult comic book! I thought it had a unique view of immortality and a complex slow burn.. If you’re into weird fiction, then this book is for you!! This book certainly won’t be for everyone, but give it a shot!

Big thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

The prologue and first chapter were 2 prologues in one. The next chapters held too any secrets close to the chest, including character's name. After 3 chapters of this the pace was ruined for me. I appreciate not giving away every secret up front but to hold back names for that long doesn't create the ambience of mystery around the character but frustration when combined with all the other mysteries were attempting to uncover. I loved the concept but the writing and unraveling of plot made it hard to love this as I wanted to love it.

China Miéville is probably one of my three favorite working authors. As a Goodreads review I saw said, when Keanu Reeves gets a ghostwriter, he <I>gets a ghostwriter</I>. So this was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and when I started reading and also realized it was an "Immortal People [and Pigs] Doing Stuff" novel I was primed to love it.

I can't say it quite lived up to my expectations - but then, how could it? I didn't love it, but I still liked it a lot. It's certainly unlike any other Miéville novel, and I find myself wondering what the division of labor was like between him and Keanu (gut instinct: Keanu laid out the outline of the present-day story and Miéville did the actual writing, and there are a lot of interstitial bits dealing with episodes from our Immortal Person's deep past that feel like they could be pure Miéville. But that's pure speculation.)

I suspect that a lot of people will be frustrated with the book, especially if they just go in based on Keanu's name. The plot, such as it is, takes forever to get going and doesn't necessarily even resolve, and the prose is purple as all hell. The literary equivalent of John Wick this ain't. But while it is unlike any other Miéville novel, stylistically and subjectually, there's a lot of cool and unique and ambitious things to be found in there that make me glad I read it.

The combination of two very imaginative and unique authors created a bit of magic that transported me from the tortures of reality, into something completely unique.

***ARC received from Random House Ballantine - DelRay and NetGalley, opinions are all my own. Thank you!***

How delightful to read a book written by Keanu Reeves. I didn’t read any of his previous works nor have I read anything by China Mieville so I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into. It is described as weird fiction and that definitely fits this book.

I will admit for about the first 20% of the book I was incredibly lost. You just get kind of forced into the story with little explanation on what is going on and who is who. This could be a struggle for anyone and for a good part of the first book I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a book for me. But I stuck with it and I’m glad that I did because once I got into it I found it very much a page turner and read it in two days. But I don’t fault anyone for giving up because its a lot.

The book is broken up into two main sections, the current and the past. The past are probably the most cryptic parts of the book as you get more backstory on B. I found the sections probably the more difficult to read since they are incredibly cryptic and at times felt like they were a little over written with difficultly understanding what was going on. For all the confusion these sections do play a part of the sections of the book that are the current parts. They flesh out the backstory of those sections.

It is the other section that has a lot more of the action and a lot more characters. These chapters are much easier to read and really helped to carry the story. There is a lot of action in these chapters that balances out the more cryptic prose of the past set chapters. It also helps to keep this part of the book moving along while you will have to slow down on the past chapters. I liked the more scientific aspects as we see how scientists respond when giving the opportunity to mess around with literal life and death.

B was an interesting character, tired of his existence yet still out searching for answers after so much time. There is also a fascinating interaction with a pig, yes a pig and as skeptical as I was at first on those it was an interesting look at what would happen if immortality was cast upon a creature with limited capacity to understand why.

This book is certainly not for everyone. The writing at time can be all over the place, dense and boring, philosophical and simple. You aren’t getting a straight forward science fiction or fantasy or action book, its a bit of a mash up that strains strongly against the boundaries of each genre until it bleeds over into its own strange take of each. It feels like very much what I would expect from the mind of someone like Keanu Reeves. If you can stick it out and just let the book take you along for the strange ride you will enjoy yourself. I certainly did.

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was thoroughly intrigued by this book, and it was truly unlike anything I have ever read. The writing style is such that you are reading a graphic novel. That is, your mind processes and narrates the illustrations in real time while simultaneously reading and interpreting the dialogue and onomatopoeias. The Book of Elsewhere is written in this manner, and it took some time for me to acclimate.

This is a fast-paced, action-packed, violent thriller involving themes of military, mythology immortality/mortality, time shifting, and questioning the meaning of life.

If you enjoy graphic novels and thrilling, mind-bending comic books like BRZRKR, definitely move this unique collaboration between two great artists to the top of your TBR list.

#TheBookofElsewhere #KeanuReeves #ChinaMiéville # RandomHousePublishing #Ballantine #NetGalley #Thriller #Action #SuspenseThriller #AdultFiction #SciFi #Fantasy

A story inspired by the BRZKR comic books. This is a fantasy story that follows various POVS and is definitely on the unique side. Unfortunately for me I found myself getting lost in the plot and found it hard to follow along with the actual story. The story felt all over the place and it was hard to get invested in the characters. I really wanted to like this but it felt so out of place and it just felt like it didn't really know what story it wanted to tell. Maybe if you like vary complex fantasy stories this one could be for you, however this one just missed the mark with me.

Release Date: July 23,2024

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

I think this is going to be a bail for now. I’m a quarter of the way through, and I have had to backtrack so many times to reread because of all of the point of view hopping, timeline hopping, and seemingly unrelated interludes. I felt constantly unsure about what was happening.

I’d like to try this again later, because I was really excited about it. And it’s giving me strong John Wick meets The Old Guard vibes, both things I’ve enjoyed. So I’ll plan on visiting this later. Maybe trying it as an audiobook. This is definitely going to be exactly someone else’s cup of tea, but not for me right now.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for this arc.

The Book of Elsewhere is a somewhat mind-bending book. I was happily letting myself simply be pulled along by the story for most of its duration, but the closer to seeing the full picture I got, the more frustrated I got. So much of how this book concludes felt like it was coming out of nowhere, with no previous signs of the reveals. Spending so much of the narrative away from what was technically the main storyline made for a bit of a jumbled narrative as well. I struggled to understand sometimes how what was happening in a certain chapter related to any of the rest of the story. If you like your stories complex and non-linear, you might not struggle as much as I did with this one, but despite enjoying some other Sci-Fi stories that work non-linearly I just struggled with this one.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The Book of Elsewhere follows an ancient warrior known as B whose life is thrown for a loop when another mysterious immortal soldier emerges.

This is the kind of sci-fi that will be divisive not because it's controversial, but because it's really full of itself. There's certainly an interesting story here, if you're the type that likes a narrative at the intersection of sci-fi and military thriller. The world is certainly unique and fully-realized, and B is a decent character. It was also kind of a weird read, and I do love a weird read.

But man, that writing. It's the kind of inaccessible that convinces people concerned with pretention that they are better than everyone else if they are able to read and enjoy it, but it's also often not actually that mind-blowing. I recall at one point a character's expression was described using no less than five adjectives, all starting with the letter "d". There is certainly good writing here, but there is also a wealth of odd moments that read much more like posturing and much less like genuine, well-conceived intellectual writing.

In all, I probably would have liked it more if this book was, in fact, an action film starring Keanu Reeves, but I do also think that there is a dedicated, nerdy audience out there that will latch onto this story and all the potential it offers.

The Book of Elsewhere
by Keanu Reeves; China Miéville
the book has a concept of the metaphysical, the mythos of the eternal being and its place and meaning in the universe. I found the book a bit disjointed in the beginning because of the graphic text nature of the story. Their seemed to be jumps in places and times, that i did not follow at first. Then to find that the story is the breath of a memory. The eternal being trying to reason its meaning, and their memory is jumping from one story to the next. It brings to question a lot of the ideas of self and purpose. The internal struggle of defining your own meaning and ideals. Similar in nature to stranger in a strange land by author Robert A. Heinlein.

To say I hated this book would be doing it a disservice. Let's just say that I could not tolerate it for more than a few chapters. I am very sorry, but I do not know whether to blame Keanu or Mieville for this confusing mess, but that is exactly what I found it to be. I got five chapters into the book and simply could not take it any more. It was a chaotic literary mess in terms of time tenses and characterizations and even descriptions. I read the first paragraph to my spouse who said it sounded very "Artistic. Poetic". That's great when you are reading poetry, but it felt like reading through a thick, confusing cloak that is purposely trying to obfuscate everything! I was NOT expecting to be presented with Gravity's Rainbow! I was expecting an adventure novel ala the classic "Destroyer" series. I couldn't connect to the story or the characters-- or indeed figure out what in the blazes was happening most of the time! I am very sorry, but this book is sad dreck.

Seeing a book by Keanu Reeves got me, I knew I had to read it! This was super weird but I guess I am not surprised. It was a bit more dense and made me think harder than I had hoped for, but I can see what they were going for.

DNF @30%
I really wanted to like this. From the synopsis, I really thought this would be a story I could sink my teeth into. But from the first page, I was just confused. It's not that I didn't know what was going on which I didn't, but the writing itself was confusing as well.

🤍Book Review 🤍

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville is a gripping sci-fi novel that keeps you hooked on every page. The story follows "B," a warrior who cannot die and longs for the release of death. In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group offers him a chance to end his life if he helps them in return. When a mortal soldier mysteriously comes back to life, B discovers a force as powerful as himself.
The plot is engaging, with sharp and witty dialogue. The characters are vividly brought to life, and the world-building is exceptional. The story is divided into different scenes that add depth and background, making it unpredictable and entertaining. While the writing style can be uneven at times, the poetic prose and thought-provoking premise make up for it. If you enjoy unique military thrillers and science fiction, The Book of Elsewhere is worth reading.

Very grateful to the publisher for my copy, opinions are my own

I keep trying to like China Miéville's writing and I keep failing. He's just a little too weird for my tastes. I don't mind weird, but whenever I'm reading his works, I feel confused and a little alienated. The Book of Elsewhere isn't terrible by any means, but it's definitely not for me.

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves; China Miéville was a really intriguing story.
The amazing world building and interesting characters made this story so compelling.
The writing was done very well. A fascinating and thought-provoking read.

Thank You NetGalley and Random House, Ballantine and Del Rey for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!