The West Passage

The West Passage, by Jared Pechaček

One of the best books I've read in a long time, definitely my favorite so far this year; quite possibly I should include this in my top ten of all time, were I to keep such a list, which I don't. The West Passage is fresh, intricate, emotionally compelling and cathartic, and above all else it achieves what all of speculative fiction attempts in every word: it creates a world entirely other to my understanding and then makes me live in it. The consistency of the world, which is alien in every way while staying heartbreakingly human, makes it genuinely one of the most impressive books I've ever read.

The reviewers on Goodreads are not as impressed as I am, and I've never been so tempted to yell at commenters on Goodreads for being bad at reading. Pechaček has set this book inside of an illuminated medieval manuscript, and I suppose the modern American educational system hasn't prepared people to encounter this. I suppose some of them may have never seen illuminations of people who are rabbits, or penises with legs and wings, or knights riding snails, and so they have no frame of reference. I shouldn't yell at them just because they're bland thinkers with the palates of toddlers. People want their 'medieval-inspired' fantasy novels to just be modern girls with swords and horses, but this is not the modern world, it is an ancient one, and so everything down to the physical shape and construction of the world is different from the world we were all raised in. The past is a foreign country.

The setting isn't the only thing that impresses me. There is a central mystery as intricate and delicate as miniature clockwork, side characters who are scary and tender and desperate and funnny, primary characters who struggle and transform both literally and figurately, and the ending...

I don't want to give too much away, but honestly my favorite thing about this book is the way history hangs on it. The setting is based on the kinds of imaginings we see in the pre-modern world, which is fascinating and delightful, but this book is concerned with history in another way. The palace is a place of dynasties risen and fallen, of previous regimes mouldering in forgotten basements, of old evils unburied, of documentation turned to history turned to story turned to song and then forgotten.

History is a heavy, heavy weight. The doom that comes for us, down the West Passage, is the turning of the cycle of history and the way we can't escape the inevitable crush as it turns, again, to something old wearing a new face. The palace decays around us. Our very identities are the pantomine of bitternesses so old they're worn to shapelessness, and yet they drive us to ruin. And then...

I wept at the end of this book. It's so good. Every word is perfect.