Peng Shepherd's The Book of M delivers the confusion and frustration of massive world change by playing on the strings of your heart.
Magical realism certainly collides with prepper fantasy novel in The Book of M. People are losing their shadows and with them, their memories. As the world falls apart, folks with their shadows run in fear, while the shadowless run mad. Struggling to remember the world reconstructs it in the image of their flawed memory. The Book of M is the story of Maxine, having freshly lost her shadow, attempting to keep the memory of her husband Ory as-it-really-was, rather than change him into something he was not.
Shepherd does an amazing job writing her main characters. Very unique in a dystopian novel is how these characters, governments, and pop-up societies behave a lot more as I imagine real people would in these situations.
I bet most of those heroic prepper dudes all die of food poisoning anyway.
Science and magic are pretty interchangeable in The Book of M, but I never felt pushed into "you just have to believe X" to make the story work. I was addicted and had a hard time putting the novel down.
I was able to find The Book of M at my local library, via the Libby app.
The Book of M: A Novel by Peng Shepherd via Amazon
