Review: The Book of Air

This one came to me as a review book, having put a hand up to participate in a blog event Clink Street Publishing are running. Score one for uncanny book intuition, because this novel was absolutely brilliant. It is one of those books where too detailed a review of the story would inevitably be full of spoilers.

Set not very far in the future, following a massive disaster for humanity, The Book of Air offers two intertwining time lines, in slightly different periods. The plotting is brilliantly done, unravelling multiple interconnecting narratives. The two strands of the tale shed light on each other, creating a whole that is far bigger than its parts. The characters are intriguing. The unravelling of the back story to the massive disaster is fascinating, and compelling.

This is a book with a lot to say about what books are, and what we do with them. There are implications here for religious texts, for how humans mythologize and what we do as story making creatures. There are reflections on the human desire for ritual and tradition that I think Pagan readers will find especially resonant, if uneasy.  There are a lot of ideas about power, social structures, ownership, and the way we construct ourselves politically. It’s also a story full of love, regret, mistakes, massive and unfixable mistakes, loss, grief… there’s a lot of breadth and depth here.

The book blurb flags up, so I feel safe to mention that one of the timelines involves a community that has built its entire social structure around Jane Eyre. There are four books in all owned by, and inspiring this community, and making sense of what the other three are, and their implications, is both rather funny and a bit heartbreaking.

Too often what a book offers is either action or introspection, these being the boundaries between genre and literature. I’ve always wanted both. It’s a delight finding a novel that delivers both, without either compromising the other. A great deal happens, some of it is incredibly tense and dramatic. Characters reflect on their experiences, and wonder about what’s going on, and try to make sense of things.

I can heartily recommend The Book of Air. Joe Treasure has created an extraordinary piece of work, beautifully crafted and full of gems.

Find more on the author’s website http://www.joetreasure.com/