Book Review: The Blade Between

 

Image: The cover of the book shows a dark ocean portrait of a whale viewed from below. The sea surrounding her is pitch black and her body is a mix of bright teals, black, and white. Over top of the image is the cover of the book in large white capital letters, covering the top half of the cover. There is white liquid dripping from the bottom corners of the "E" in the, "B" in blade, and the second "E" in between. Below that, in grey capital letters is Sam J Miller's name. Coming down from the middle of the right edge in smaller red letters is "a novel." Across the bottom in smaller white and red letters is "author of blackfish city."

While waiting for my ARC of Sam J Miller's newest novel- The Blade Between- to arrive, I noticed that my library had procured the audio version and I decided to grab that to get started while I was waiting. I ended up finishing it quickly. The audio version has great narration and voice acting that fit the tone of the book. This book, like some of Miller's other work, straddles genres. In some ways, I found myself thinking that you could take the fantastical or paranormal elements away from it, and still have a great story about a ton of complex characters interacting in another gay boy returns to working class homophobic home town type of story. As a result, this sometimes left the paranormal elements feeling unfinished. They occasionally felt like refrigerator magnets that were part of the big picture, but not the heart of the story until we reach the end.

Nonetheless, this book explores quite well the various ways in which real life people with real life struggles find themselves in conflict and cooperation with one another. How does one fight with the white working class against encroaching gentrification and destruction of their jobs when said working class has more violently homophobic and racist members than the gentrified areas have? How do you find solidarity in groups who hate their own members like that? How do we understand concepts of sexuality? Is it only how we identify, who we love, the actions we take, what we like, or all of the above and more? Can one be proud of where they come from when it also includes immense amounts of pain? What can we do to work together and make things easier for youth that come after us? I think the paranormal parts added an interesting twist to these things, even if I wish they were more fleshed out.

To avoid spoiling this story, I will end this review here. I really have enjoyed everything I've read by this author and look forward to his next release.

This was also posted to my goodreads.