RavePaste Magazine\"The novel contains numerous passages suffused with music, and while Gabel’s prose takes flight during these performances—alighting upon notes and measures, the tips of bows and fingers and artistic icebergs binding her quartet as much as the music does—they are not the most powerful sections in the book. That honor belongs to Gabel’s nods to the pain art requires; not mental and emotional pain, but bodily and mechanical ... The Ensemble reveals this relationship to be rich in horror and honor, a harmony of sacrifice, the sheer exhaustion of performing stretched across the staff as a rack, music notes written in blood.\
