The Fall is All There Is

Messy but intriguing

Where to start with this one. The story is told in a stream of consciousness style by someone who is a bit on the spectrum so I do get why it is so messy. But as a reader I found it quite distracting and hard to follow at times, which is a shame because there is a lot of very clever and interesting things going on.

The world building here is first class. The sense of desolation and decay, the idea of two apocalyptic events leaving behind the fragments that remain, it is all very well worked and I really want to see more and learn more about it. The use of ancient tech as a kind of magic like system is also well realized. Everything about the world was fascinating from the Gaunts (people infected with souls of the dead) to the strange biotech horses were wonderfully twisted and weird.

The story itself is following the political machinations between four quadruplets as they try and sort out succession, all told from the point of view of the youngest. This is where things get messy and I fully understand that family is messy but a lot of the times I found myself lost here. I also appreciate the portrayal of autism in a fantastical setting - and I feel this was very accurately portrayed - but unfortunately with the driving plot being around Machiavellian political maneuvers the single POV combined with that trait did tend to be frustrating in terms of figuring out what was going on. That being said all the characters are very well drawn and the picture of what is going on does clear up as the story progresses. The dialogue and banter is done extremely well and the engagement between the characters whilst often shifting and contradictory is organic in its own way.

CM Caplan obviously has a mind full of wild ideas and I fully respect that and really do want to read more of them. The world here is one of the most intriguing I have come across in a long time, the author's grasp of dialogue is very good and the characters drawn are vivid. The central politicking of the book actually ended up as a bit of a confusing distraction to those elements that I was enjoying, but there is just so much potential here that it cannot be ignored.