Shades of Forever by Chris Kluwe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a lot of things to say about this book, and most of them are good. It does, however, require a bit of mental adjustment, at least with me, before I get to the core of WHAT this book is and what it's trying to accomplish.

Without that adjustment, I'd mostly be trying to figure out what I just read. For example, it starts out like a post-post-apocalyptic story with lovecraftian under and overtones, firmly SF, but then it feels like I just stepped into a pretty good LitRPG, complete with an understated system to level up various skills and main levels, and THEN it becomes a hard SF complete with spaceflight and fleets complete with existential threats to reality, and THEN it becomes a tight little humorous, adventurous core of a novel circling and encircling health, healing, love, sanctuary, and being decent despite everything.

That's a lot to unpack.

And approaching it AS a story that's wild and genre-hopping and very aware of all the things it borrows while never losing track of its emotional healing core is ABSOLUTELY necessary.

No, this isn't a LitRPG although I was really excited in the direction it took with it. No, it's not a space opera, although I thought it was right on par with Sanderson's SF. No, it's not a YA lovecraftian humor, although I was rocking it when it ran with it.

But it was all of these things. And it was healing, too.

Ambitious? Perhaps perfectly in line with our current world and everything our nerdy sensibilities need? Very self-aware and damn well crafted?

Yes, to all the above.


View all my reviews