Book Review: Unraveling by Karen Lord

Unraveling by Karen Lord

Hardcover, 304 pages Published June 4th 2019 by Daw Book

As I read this strange and esoteric fantasy novel I had a feeling that many of the readers out there on Good Reads would hate this book and boy was I correct. Reading many of the reviews I was confused. Did we read the same book? Because the book I read was pretty close to a masterpiece of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. I have not done the rankings but this book is easily one of my top ten reads of the year.

Karen Lord writes from a misty magical place, with an Afro-Caribbean feel she creates a fantasy world that is not easily digestible for a generation of readers honed on Harry Potter. It requires you to not rely on tropes and rehashed ideas. I mean there were times I thought things were going over my head but that is OK for me.

This is a fun read with magical portals, city-sized psychic labyrinths, Angels, shape-shifting immortal beings, killers and a murder mystery at the heart of journey through a universe with a Physics based on memory opposed to what we think of as natural science. The weird landscape makes for a really inventive environment that plays with what is real in our memory and the flexible nature of time. In some ways, I thought of this book as a cross between Leguin Lathe of Heaven and the David Fincher movie Seven.

The City labyrinth is populated by tricksters and undying immortals, there are moments of wild imagination that are balanced with the grim serial killer story. For a stand-alone book the mythology of the undying and the labyrinth were great examples of world-building. I learned after finishing this book that some of the settings and characters were in earlier work. So I am not sure how much I missed on stuff because I had not Read Redemption in Indigo.

The actual prose is beautifully composed and the story is well structured. The lead character Dr. Miranda Ecouvo is a forensic therapist and she is really well written. Some of the Angels and the Undying came off more vague to me but that in a sense worked. I liked that as characters they often pointed out how humans just couldn't grasp what their life is like or how it works.

I was first interested in this author because I heard her compared To Octavia Butler and Ursula K Leguin. I thought that high praise might be pure hyperbole but Unraveling delivered. I suspect that Karen Lord is an author I will continue to enjoy and I can see her work becoming a staple of mine. I got this because it was her newest work, but some of her older works seem even more up my alley.

Read Unraveling if you like powerful and grim fantasy with well written and stylish prose. One of the best books of the year in my opinion.