Unute might be a god, a weapon, a warrior, or the embodiment of death itself. His berserker state leaves destruction in its wake, and though he wishes to be mortal, each of his many deaths lead only to an endless cycle of rebirth. Trying to understand what he is, Unute 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 80,000-year-past, a death-defying cult, an immortal deer-pig, and the secret at the very core of his power.

Let’s get this out of the way first—The Book of Elsewhere is not an easy book. Miéville’s writing (and this is very much a Miéville work, despite Reeves’ influence) is as dense and prosaic as it is poignant and lovely, and at no point can readers expect handholding as the narrative twists through Unute’s labyrinthine past. I pushed through the first few chapters feeling overwhelmed and confused, trusting that much like reading A Clockwork Orange or Catch-22, my brain would eventually acclimate enough to make sense of the story. 

Did The Book of Elsewhere ever truly “make sense”? Yes, and—delightfully, perfectly, maddeningly—no. This is cerebral speculative fiction at its finest, and though the jumps in time and perspective may leave readers guessing at first, they do coalesce into a gut-punch of a story, threaded with influence from classics like Frankenstein and Dracula to psychological surrealists like Murakami (and of course, a healthy dose of Reeves’ sci-fi/fantasy action background). Reeves and Miéville render Unute’s violence, loneliness, and brief moments of connection through thick and often gruesome prose, and although I finished “Elsewhere” with more questions than answers, I can’t shake its piercing insight into what it means to be human, to be animal, and to be alive. 

This book certainly won’t be for everyone, and I’d advise readers unfamiliar with Miéville’s work or “weird fiction” as a whole to approach with caution. But to those up for a gritty, complex, and blood-soaked literary challenge—strap in. You’re probably going to have a headache after finishing this book. It will be worth it.

A plethora of adjectives. A dearth of full stops. The prose in The Book of Elsewhere reminds me of college literature courses. Here’s looking at you, James Joyce.

This book contains run-on sentences that quickly emerge as run-on paragraphs. I’ll admit that it took me almost 20% of the book to succumb to the style. Once I did, I saw the beauty of letting the words just flow over me like waves without worrying about WordPress turning its green editing smile into a red faced frown. [See what I did there? That is nothing compared to the huge sentences in this book. Really, this entire review would only contain one period, if written by Ms. Miéville.]

If you ignore the prose style, The Book of Elsewhere contains a simple plot of an immortal who just wants to die already. It has been done much better in prior manga and even vampire tales. I even enjoyed the manga this book is based on, BRZRKR: Bloodlines, more than the plot here but mostly because of the outstanding and vibrant artwork that emphasized the pure fun of fictional gore.

While I love genre mashups, this one doesn’t work because literary fiction and gory manga plot lines mix about as well as oil and vinegar. I can’t imagine many people being fans of both though I do think Keanu’s pure humanity might lead a few readers to buy the book. But I doubt they will finish it. 3 stars solely for the unusual mashup idea.

Thanks to Del Rey and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

This book is weird science fiction, and I'm still not sure if that's in a good way or not. I suspect people will struggle to make it to the end of this one. The story is extremely disjointed, with plot lines switching abruptly and constantly, leaving you asking yourself, "Where the heck am I?"

This book was clearly written for those who pay extra close attention to all the random events in order to connect everything together. If you love solving puzzles, this is a read for you, as every little detail matters.

I'm still not convinced I even know who B is—heck, I don't think B even knows who B is at this point. This has to be one of the weirdest books I have read in a long time, and honestly, I'm surprised I didn't DNF it, as I came close a few times because of how jarring the plot switches are.

I will need to ponder this book some more and write up a fuller, more detailed review once I've had proper time to process it all over at SFFINSIDERS.COM. One of my colleagues over there read this as well, so I am curious to discuss it with him finally to see if we felt the same or not.

THE BOOK OF ELSEWHERE by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville is stylish, spare and elegant and somehow overwrought feeling more like a creative writing exercise in places than a coherent piece of fiction. I liked the writing, the voice, but could not keep the details of narrators straight long enough to follow the story in my own mind. Cool idea, a very unique presentation, but ultimately not for me. I imagine super fans of speculative fiction, graphic novels, and military thriller may find more to enjoy than I did. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

A solid entry from China Mieville. If you’re used to, and enjoy, Mieville’s style of weird fiction, you’ll enjoy The Book of Elsewhere. Though confusing at times, such is to be expected. I won’t spoil anything, but the premise is interesting, yet I it felt could have been executed better. I wouldn’t recommend this as an entry point into Mieville’s work, just as I wouldn’t recommend Blood Meridian as your first Cormac McCarthy novel. Regardless, it’s worth a read, especially if you’re already a fan. Plus, who doesn’t want to see Keanu Reeves dip his toes into more things?

The Book of Elsewhere follows our MMC, B, who cannot die. B is assigned to a secret military group and works with them to take out high profile enemies. After a tragic assignment, one of B’s colleagues dies but he may not be completely dead. B is continuously trying to find the answer to his mortality but now that another immortal may be among the living, B is doing his best to end them.

This book is the same story as all of Reeves Bersekr comics. I’m reading the same story. I thought it was going to be something different but in reality it’s an extension of work he’s already published. I’m not interested enough to read this story again. Unfortunately I will be DNFing this book at 15%. I hope someone will enjoy this if they haven’t read Reeves other work.

Not for me. Maybe some more or different editing would have helped. Something about this just doesn’t read well for me.

I requested this book solely because the name Keanu Reeves was attached to it. But sadly this was a DNF for me. If this was a script for a movie, the writing would be excellent stage notes and set up. But as a novel it just did not hit the mark for me. Too many big ticket vocabulary words with basic sentences structures. And I could not wrap my head around what was happening in the storyline. I love sci-fi novels, but I don't think "cerebral" books are for me. But I appreciate having the opportunity to give it a try.

I had read a few issues of the BRZRKR comics and liked the concept but not the execution of the story so I came into this one hoping that I would enjoy this book a lot more, but again I was disappointed by the execution. There are so many POV style changes in this book, it is so jarring. Sometimes we’re in first person, then second person, then third person. The style of the writing is certainly not for me and it made it hard to follow the story at times, which is unfortunate because I believe the actual plot is really good.

I love the concept of the immortal warrior who goes into berserker rages and the investigation into what makes him this way, plus how they could potentially use what they discover about him to create super soldiers or help humanity in other ways. But again the way the story was told did not work for me. Others may enjoy the way it is written if you like the odd POV style. If you can get past that, the plot is really enjoyable. Plus, its Keanu Reeves. I cannot wait to see him actually play this part in a movie because I know that is why he wanted to create this story. The character “B” looks just like him.

Anyway, if you like different writing styles, immortal warriors, and lots of mystery and intrigue about legends and gods, then you will probably really enjoy this.

The Book of Elsewhere is the first new work of fiction by China Miéville since 2016. (In the interim, he published nonfiction books on the Communist Manifesto and on the Russian Revolution). The book is a coilaboration between Miéville and the actor Keanu Reeves. The main character, known as Unute or B, and the basic contours of his world, were originally developed by Reeves for a comic book, or graphic novel, called BRZRKR; its various installments have been co-written by Reeves and a number of comic book authors. The novel massively expands the franchise; and a feature film and an anime series are in development.

Unute is a warrior, born 80,000 years ago, and apparently immortal. He has superhuman strength, and the power to go into a berserker fugue state where he pretty much kills everyone around him. His body recovers quickly from injuries that would be mortal to anyone else; and when he is injured badly enough to actually die, he soon regenerates, breaking out of an egg in full adult form. He is also blessed, or cursed, with the complete memory of all his experiences over thousands of years; though he is not conscious during, and therefore does not later remember, the short periods during which he regenerates in the egg.

All this is recounted, in outline, in the original graphic novel. (There are three volumes of BRZRKR written by Reeves in collaboration with Matt Kindt, which together form one continuous narrative; two additional stories, written by Reeves with Steve Skroce and Mattson Tomlin respectively, provide additional incidents in Unute’s career. In all these cases, I am only listing the writers; a number of visual artists collaborate as well).

The Book of Elsewhere, with its considerable length, allows for a great expansion of things that were only sketched briefly in the graphic novels. We mostly see Unute in the present moment. He is working, uneasily, as part of a special unit of the American (apparently) secret intelligence forces. They send him (together with a crack team of soldiers) to various hot spots around the world, in order to commit assassinations or wipe out groups of (supposed) “terrorists.” Unute doesn’t seem to have any particular committment to American hegemony, and the military and intelligence authorities cannot really order him to do anything that he doesn’t want to do. But he goes along with their requests in return for having them study him so he can learn more about himself. In particular, Unute is tired of being immortal; he doesn’t want to die, but he wants to be able to die.

The writing is vivid and intense, as we would expect from Miéville. There is a lot of action, both in the present and in a number of flashbacks to Unute’s past, and to stories of individuals whom he encountered briefly over the course of the ages he has been around. There is no scientific agreement about just when Homo sapiens developed a full language, and all of the capabilities we have today; but 80,000 years ago is a reasonable figure. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens has existed for something like 150,000 years, but evidence of cultural achievement is more recent. On the other hand, our ancestors interbred with closely related species (the Neanderthals and the Denisovians) between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago. So we can assume that Unute’s lifespan pretty much coincides with the history of human “species being” (to use Marx’s term).

There are a lot of (pleasurable) digressions and side developments, but the novel is fundamentally concerned with the (philosophical) meaning and nature of Unute, or of the very fact that he exists. He is continually looking for any others who are like him, or who are similarly immortal because they exist in some sort of binary/dialectical opposition to him, but this quest is frequently disappointed. In particular, his murderous abilities do not exist in the abstract, apart from any historical contexts and situations; though they are continually being enacted within such contexts and situations, of which working for American power is only the most recent. Whatever Unute may be, he is emphatically not an ahistorical principle of evil or tyranny or fascism.

Unute does, however, turn out to have doubles and/or enemies in certain metaphysical contexts. His nemesis for much of the novel is a large pig, specifically a Babirusa, which seems to have the same powers as he does: it cannot die, or at least it regenerates whenever it is killed. This Babirusa has hunted, and sought to kill, Unute for most of his 80,000 years of existence. In addition, if Unute is a force of Death, as he often considers himself to be, then he is unavoidably in opposition to a force of Life, which itself may be eternally present, or at least eternally reincarnated, in the same way that he is. Unute does have an enemy of this sort. But the enmity of this opponent, and the enmity of the pig as well, change over the course of the novel; and seem in the last analysis only to constitute false oppositions. In a more fully dialectical sense, both Unute and his uncanny doubles seem to be agents of Change, and in this respect they are more similar than they are different, and they are alike opposed to the entropic decline of a universe fated to end in a heat death (as the Victorians mostly believed, and as some physicists today still maintain). I fear I am saying too much, and perhaps giving away spoilers, even to go this far. The theme is worked out in much more careful detail over the course of the novel, and especially in its final sections. I will just say, first, that in the course of his career, although Keanu Reeves has occasionally played bad guys, he doesn’t usually do this; he seems to prefer that, if he is not in a heroic role, then he is at least in an ambiguous one that they audience can identify with in spite of various unpleasant aspects (e.g. John Wick). And in the second place, I will note that China Miéville has played with similar ideas in earlier novels, going all the way back to Isaac’s crisis engine in Perdido Street Station, which is able to mobilize the potentiality for change in any given situation.

I will stop here. In any case, The Book of Elsewhere is a rich book, worthy of both its creators.

4.5 stars. This book is so complicated but a wild ride. I see the word “cerebral” thrown around and I have to agree - I had to look up A LOT of words to follow along. But it’s also beautiful and creative.

Part sci-fi, part fantasy, part military/Jack Ryan/Tom Clancy, part mystery. Unute was a fascinating character to follow and I enjoyed the alternating chapters where we got to experience some of his many lives.

It was tough to read but absolutely worth it. Would recommend to anyone looking for their next weird read.

Thank you to NetGalley, Keanu Reeves & China Miéville, and Del Rey for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 ⭐️

This is a military, sci-fi, thriller that is unusual in its presentation and graphically very violent. It centers around the story of,"B", who is a warrior who cannot die. A dead soldier comes back to life and an unraveling of mysteries starts to take place from that. I understand the book also takes place in the same world as the BRZRKR comic books (also created by Reeves).

It's an interesting book that has a solid plot and enough mysteries to be revealed that kept me wanting to read more. It does feel disjointed, and while it is non-linear, it just didn't flow well enough for me. The prose also came off kind of pretentious at times, but it wasn't a deal breaker for me. It's the kind of book that I think would be interesting to re-read, but I didn't like it enough to actually want to do that lol.

If you're into weird, military sci-fi books, then it might be one to check out. Just know that it's not an easy read, especially initially starting it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Keanu Reeves, China Mieville, and Random House Publishing Group for my early access to this.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I enjoyed this book and think you will to.

Thank you Keanu Reeves, China Miéville and NetGalley for an ARC copy of The Book of Elsewhere.

Unfortunately this was a DNF at 33% for me. I really struggled with the writing style and had difficulties following who the current narrator was at any given time, especially since narrators often weren't broken up by chapters, but by paragraphs with no notice of the switch. I love the concept, and found Unute to be fascinating. That being said, I also found difficulties understanding Unute's abilities/background until I did research into the BRZRKR comic book series (which is sick btw! Love it). But, since this is only labeled as a stand alone novel I think it would be nearly impossible to understand on its own. While I don't foresee myself coming back to finish this book, I will definitely be exploring the comic books!

Not everyone can write a sci fi novel that holds the readers attention on every page but these authors have. This is an amazing story with great depth. The plot is engaging and interesting. The main character is a guy who cannot die and most of the story is told from his point of view. The description of the characters brings them vividly to life in the mind of the reader. The dialogue is sharp and witty. Readers will love the way the story is divided into different scenes that give background and other elements for the plot. Great job!

The Book of Elsewhere begins in a military barracks, but this isn't really a military book. Instead, it is a book about a god who is grappling with metaphysical questions while dodging a rival god. I did enjoy the book, but the choices that the authors made in narrative structure made it more difficult to follow. The overarching plot, though, was intriguing. I liked some of the characters, but many of them were unlikable and/or underdeveloped. I would read more by Reeves and Miéville, though.

I tried, I really did (I'll admit mostly because of Keanu Reeves), but I had to call a quits after slugging through 20% of the book.
I have seen this book being described as "cerebral," which I guess is just not for me. I read for enjoyment, and I don't enjoy having to re-read pages to try to figure out what is going on. Others may enjoy this style of writing, but I just found it to be disjointed and confusing. I don't mind non-linear storytelling, but it just felt way too choppy for me. I think this may have worked better for me as a graphic novel.

I really enjoyed the slightly surreal mystery of this, and the alternating chapters with all kinds of perspective changes on the history of our mysterious main character were really interesting. The more mysteries were revealed the less I was into it—although I know it's a requirement to reveal some secrets, I kind of liked it better when most of everything was weird and inexplicable. I found some of the explanations less compelling than the experience. I enjoyed it most when it was all vibes!

Reeves and Miéville really bring gravitas to a book. I immediately requested because I saw those two names. I didn’t jump in blind, though. I read the synopsis just to make sure the premise sounded like something I could vibe with.

The Book of Elsewhere, unfortunately, ended up being a DNF for me. The concept and characters are all fantastic; I just can’t get past the very awkward writing style or find a flow for the narrative that helps me settle in. If there’s no consistency to the sentence structure and usage, the story can’t shine through. I’m afraid that’s the case here with the writing style. I made it to about 28% and couldn’t progress any further. It really felt like I had a composition paper draft in my hand and I was working through it to give back to a student.

I really wanted to love this one, but it took 3 days just to get to 28%, and I was hating reading. I just don’t have the time to clog my TBR like this. I’d love to see it as a movie. The plot really is fantastic.

I give this 3.5 stars. I admit, I was excited to read a book by Keanu Reeves! I mean, I love him as an actor, and he seems to be a really great person. He has passions like all of us, and it seems his passion is action sci fi. This story is based on Reeves' own comic book, Brzrkr. Since I had never read that, I may have been a little lost. However, the story is fairly easy to follow. "B" seeks the ability to die like mortals. Thus there is violence, which is not surprising for this style of tale. Overall, it was interesting but not quite to my liking.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions expressed are my own.