PositiveLocusMagSarah Pinsker gives us a tale that manages to beautifully blend technology and family life, large-scale transfigurations with individual epiphanies, in a person-sized chronicle of challenges, maturations, and uneasy accommodations to and resistance against \'progress.\' ... There is deep identification with all four nicely drawn individuals, built up quickly before the plot really begins to accelerate, and also delivers useful alternate perspectives on the Pilot, as well as handy plot reveals. The David chapters are particularly compelling, as they represent in a unique style his subjective modes of thought, post-Pilot ... The thick details that portray spousal and parental and sibling relations are fresh, vivid, and very touching. You will really believe in the authentic, organic nature of this family ... One thing that Pinsker does admirably is to spread out both the heroism and the moral failings.
Karin Tidbeck
RaveLocusTidbeck’s book flows directly from the Ur-master of the whimsically uncanny and disorienting, Lewis Carroll. It picks up mythic fairy-tale resonances from George MacDonald, and some quotidian creepiness from Arthur Machen, and wry feyness from James Branch Cabell ... It’s a narrative that blends unearthly estranging motifs and incidents with a vivid naturalism, in a low-key yet implacable manner that conjures up in the reader almost subliminal associations with potent mythic tropes. In other words, it disdains the tricks and traits of commodified fantasy in favor of more ancient methods and objectives, thus becoming timeless in its effects ... it shows a level of unassuming but beautiful prose which many a native speaker might envy ... The whole book is fleshed out in this kind of elegant and harmonious prose which never strains for melodramatic effects, but which still hits forcefully when needed ... Taken all in all, this sophomore novel from Tidbeck is a remarkable accomplishment, full of eerie magic, human pathos, and mystical urgings.
