This is dystopian fiction, a kind of anti-Becky Chambers vision of the future in which humanity destroys the world, understands why and how it was destroyed, and hurtles towards doing it again anyway. Narrator Ven once belonged to the priesthood, where he interprets and sorts data excavated from the past, from trivial information like selfies and pictures of food, to more dangerous and forbidden knowledge like political screeds and diagrams of nuclear weapons. This is a very show-don’t-tell book, and Ven keeps secrets from the reader as well as from the people around him. The book builds patiently, the postapocalyptic world drawn with gorgeous detail, while Ven sinks deeper and deeper into his own head as he tries to grasp the complexities of the people around him. For a long time I didn’t know where this book was going, and then about a third of the way through it got very compelling. Slow start, amazing finish.
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