Fiction Reviews
The Book of Elsewhere
(2024) Keanu Reeves & China Miéville,
Del Rey, £22, hrdbk, 341pp, ISBN 978-1-529-15053-7
One of the great literary surprises for me this year has been the announcement of a collaboration between film actor Keanu Reeves and New ‘New Wave’ wunderkind China Miéville (The City and the City, Embassytown, Railsea, Kraken). It sounded unlikely - at its worst, it sounded like one of those generally awful ghost-writer novels purportedly written by one of the celebrities of the day, but in reality written by somebody else. To me it is a reminder of those occasions in the past where luminaries such as Sir Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Michael Crichton and others would pass out ideas seemingly on the back of an envelope for others to then do the hard work and actually develop.
However, had I known more about this beforehand, I might have been less cynical. For a start, both co-authors have been at pains to point out that it is a proper collaboration, with ideas during its writing freely travelling between the two. This partnership does seem to be more genuine, although I would suggest that whilst Keanu came up with the ideas, it is China who mainly puts those ideas into prose.
Having said that, it should perhaps be pointed out that this is no mere vanity project. Keanu Reeves is actually a writer on the quiet - he is the co-originator and part writer of the BRZKR comic books, from Boom Studios, since 2021, on which this novel is based. He’s quietly done his training.
Mind you, first impressions are that this is not a book far out from this characterisation. In The Book of Elsewhere the main character is a dark enigmatic antihero once named Unute, but having lived for thousands of years and been reborn a few times is now referred to as ‘B’, He’s a kind of Stephen King Gunslinger-type character, a modern day Clint Eastwood with - yes, let’s admit it – more than a certain resemblance in looks and manner to Keanu Reeves. I’m sure this is deliberate - I understand the BRZKR comic character also looked rather like Keanu.
It is clear from the start that B is clearly tired of life, having lived over eighty thousand years through many, many lives, and many events (imagine having to sit through thousands of years of family dramas?) and as the book progresses it becomes clearer that not only is he trying to remember his forgotten past and discover the key to his immortality, but also to possibly try and find a way to free himself from it and end his life.
Much of the first part of the book spends time on this. Having read through all of this intensely meaningful introspection, to the point where you may wonder what the hell is going on – we get to the main plot, which is about Unute working with a U.S. black-ops group who have promised to help him with his own dilemma. In return, they hope B will help them to develop a means of accessing his Berserker rages in a serum that could be quite useful in battle.
The situation is complicated when one of the Special Ops team is seemingly killed but comes back to life – like B, it seems that the soldier is very, very difficult to kill. This impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself.
In this simple synopsis this all sounds like a fairly straightforward action novel, but it is not. The narrative is in fractured pieces, filled with deep thoughts, unusual ideas and intense detail – amongst other weird things we have resurrected ancient deer-pigs, incubating eggs, strange cults, unusually coloured lightning and zombified bodies as well as ancient gods and a strange adversary. Along the way there’s some nicely detailed side stories of people from other events in the past who have encountered Unute that fill out the narrative’s background nicely.
Of course, what readers are wanting, having waded through this detailed and complex intensification of moody introspection, is for Keanu – sorry, Unute – to burst into violent action, John Wick-style. When it does happen, it is admittedly quite impressive.
All of this is imaginatively described, of course – one of China’s trademarks. The language is florid, a rather lyrical prose, almost on the edge of pretentiousness, with a literary vocabulary I rarely see in science fiction these days. Words like puissance and choerosmorphism are strewn about throughout, which at times made me itch to find a dictionary. (Even those reading the book on a Kindle may find it struggles with the vocabulary – I checked!) Having read some of China’s other work, though, I did think that Reeves may have limited Miéville’s usually intensely verbose narrative a little. It’s definitely China’s style, but possibly slightly less in your face than normal.
All in all then, this is an interesting collaboration that may not be what casual readers would expect. It’s dark, deep and violent, filled with imaginative yet strange ideas and quirks. Fans of China’s work will love it, others expecting a pulp style novel may be more bemused. It can be a challenge, admittedly - at times I found it hard going - but there’s no denying that it is thoughtful, imaginative and makes the reader think. With this in mind, it may not be a surprise that a live-action Netflix film based on the novel (and starring Keanu Reeves, naturally) is also in development, with an anime spinoff series to boot.
There is, of course, potential for sequels.
Mark Yon
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