Driftwood is probably the most creative thing I’ve read since The Library at Mount Char. It was just … staggeringly imaginative.
This is not a large book. I started reading it shortly before going to bed, intending to read only the first chapter or so and get a feel for my new book. Three hours later, I’m done, and have so many thoughts and emotions bouncing around inside me that I still can’t even think about sleep.
Let me tell you about Driftwood - the place, not the book. Driftwood is where worlds go to die. At the edge are worlds that have just experienced their own unique apocalypse. As time passes, the worlds press in on each other, shrinking and shrinking as they move towards the Crush at the center of Driftwood. The outer edges of Driftwood, the newly dying worlds, are still much as they were. As one moves inward, things compress, and worlds that had been the size of a continent or a country are now reduced to a town, then a neighborhood, packed cheek-by-jowl with the surviving scraps of other doomed worlds. As they near the Crush they are abandoned entirely, as the remaining survivors abandon their home as it nears its fate. But they still share that fate regardless – when a world finally reaches oblivion, the people of that world go too. You can’t escape this by walking to another world. (something people do all the time in Driftwood. You can’t not.) You can’t outlast the end of your world, and you can’t do anything to slow its death. It can take a long time to die, but the world and its people will die.
There is one exception to this: a fellow called Last. His world fell into the Crush long, long ago, and his people went with it. No one knows how or why he’s still around, least of all Last himself, but he has, persisting long past the natural lifespan of his people. Some of the Drifters (the ever-changing interbred people who live on the fringes of the Crush, and as close to natives of Driftwood as it is possible to be) think he’s just a story, some think he’s a con man, some think he’s a hero, some think he’s a god. Last just think’s that he’s a person trying to get by, a fluke, though he is very emphatic on the subject of his non-divinity.
Except now there’s a rumor that he’s dead, that he’s gone into the Crush at last, and Drifters have gathered together to commemorate him (or stand vigil for him to return, or hail His Ascension, or sneer at the lot of them, depending on one’s personal opinions).
This book is in the tradition of The Canterbury Tales, or, to put it in SF/F territory, Hyperion. It’s a series of vignettes being told by people of how Last touched them, or their people, or their families. Last’s inexplicable permanence made him a very unique person in Driftwood, able to serve as an advisor and guide through its ever-changing maze (always for a price). The stories all have a common thread: the desire to preserve what can’t be preserved, to remember and be remembered as long as is possible, to not go gently into that good night. The stories are all evocative, often warming, and at the same time heartbreakingly sad. Everything in Driftwood ends up in oblivion, no matter what you can do.
It is somewhat ironic that I’m reading this as an advanced copy (thanks to the folks at Tachyon Publications for the ARC). I’ve been reading lots of ARCs lately, which is awesome, but I’m very conscious of all the books that I’m not reading. This book has got me wondering at all the books that have been forgotten. Books that got published and flopped. Wonderful gems that today might rise to the top of the SPFBO but were written before self-publishing was a thing and no publisher was willing to take a chance on. Books that only ever existed in the imagination of people who always wanted to write, but never had the time. Driftwood makes me want to stop reading new stuff and start finding old, forgotten books. To save them from the Crush for as long as possible.
Because there’s a kind of reality to Driftwood, and at some point - maybe years from now, maybe decades, maybe centuries - Middle-earth will find its way there, and Westeros, and Hogwarts, and Discworld, and the Stillness, and every other world we fantasy readers know and love.
I picked this book up with middling expectations. I read A Natural History of Dragons a few years ago, and thought it was ok, but it didn’t really catch me and I had no interest in the rest. This book caught me. It caught me bad. And made me want to go out and read and maybe give a few forgotten worlds just a little longer to flourish.
Driftwood is quite short - as I said, I read the full thing in about 3 hours. There's no suggestion of a sequel, but there's certainly room for one. Hell, there's literally room for infinite stories in Driftwood, by the very nature of the place. But I'm not sure whether or not I want there to be. This book might be better as a small, perfect standalone.
Either way, the book comes out on August 14th.
Bingo categories: published in 2020. Maybe Exploration. And if anyone feels like arguing that this is a metaphorical Book about Books, I'll back you.