I would have given it 10 stars if I could!
5 October 17, 2017
This book was one of the most remarkable stories I've read in a long time. The story is fast-paced and easy to follow, but the Vivian Amberville universe is vast, complex and multi-layered, just like the characters. The story takes place in a dark and dystopian UK (now called Great England) - a futuristic world ruled by poverty, social dissolution and an incurable sickness brought by the rising ocean ties called "Black Flu".
We meet Vivian, an orphan who suffers under the tight hand of Martha Burlington, a woman who runs the Ala Spuria Shelter for Strays (sort of an English orphanage for low-born, orphaned kids). Vivian escapes the orphanage through a Number Lottery by "bending the odds" and ends up being adopted by a rich and prominent family from Milton Keynes. Vivian is a troubled child, who realizes she can make the most unlikely event, likely (weaving odds), a realization which brings her to all sort of supernatural experiences.
She ends up hallucinating about a "hidden dimension" and even ends up going there in person, to a place called "Non-Existence". What she experiences is A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter-level of storytelling. I don't want to spoil it for you, but Vivian's adventures beyond the fabric of reality is what really hooked me to this story. In that world, Vivian is both villain and hero, and ends up participating in "The Weaver Trials", one of the most dangerous competitions in cosmic reality.
An astonishing, surreal story that deserves a huge audience. I would have given it 10 stars if I could. incomparable to anything I've read so far!
We meet Vivian, an orphan who suffers under the tight hand of Martha Burlington, a woman who runs the Ala Spuria Shelter for Strays (sort of an English orphanage for low-born, orphaned kids). Vivian escapes the orphanage through a Number Lottery by "bending the odds" and ends up being adopted by a rich and prominent family from Milton Keynes. Vivian is a troubled child, who realizes she can make the most unlikely event, likely (weaving odds), a realization which brings her to all sort of supernatural experiences.
She ends up hallucinating about a "hidden dimension" and even ends up going there in person, to a place called "Non-Existence". What she experiences is A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter-level of storytelling. I don't want to spoil it for you, but Vivian's adventures beyond the fabric of reality is what really hooked me to this story. In that world, Vivian is both villain and hero, and ends up participating in "The Weaver Trials", one of the most dangerous competitions in cosmic reality.
An astonishing, surreal story that deserves a huge audience. I would have given it 10 stars if I could. incomparable to anything I've read so far!