Review: Liz Seach has written a novel that sings ...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 24, 2013
(This review is for the whole of the first book of "The Book of Beings")I do not often read YA novels, but when I find one as wonderful as "The Book of Beings" I am reminded that categories and genres are inessential necessities forced upon us writers. Liz Seach has written a novel that sings. Its prose is keen, its main character is witty, and its storytelling is as close to flawless as one can get. Though I am not comparing this work to any of Jane Austen’s novels, I do believe it has a contemporary Austen-like voice that is worthy of admiration. Manon Blau is irresistible for all the conventional reasons. She’s smart, humble, funny, and perfectly human. Any reader would want to hear her tell her story—she’s really quite good at it.Great writers often try to manipulate language beyond any detection of its having been manipulated, and many of them fail. But some writers, some good writers, are able to pull it off in their first novel. Liz Seach has succeeded at such a task. Her language is simple yet elegant, stylized yet natural, and seamlessly serving a plot that unravels without effort.There is something chilling about the prologue, the opening thoughts or words of the Being who, I would argue, is actually the main character of the tale. He—or it perhaps—builds his human form through the human it comes to love and know, biblically speaking. Religion is nonessential in the Book of Beings, and yet Christianity, Catholicism, Paganism, Buddhism, Mysticism and Otherworldliness invade its every word. There are things that we can never understand, mysteries we will never unravel, but perhaps the imagination can break the barrier from time to time, letting in the light that allows us to peek inside the darkness."The Book of Beings" is thought-provoking, mind bending if one is to really think about it. There is something frightening and yet enthralling about the unknown, the otherworldly, and its ability to commune with mortality. We are, after all, spiritual creatures by nature.I leave you with the words of Liz Seach’s besotted Being.“She would end its life because it was unexpected. What miracle is ever expected? I asked. He sighed and shook his head at what I did not understand of Humans.”