I’m sorry to say that I did not enjoy this at all. I don’t think it was bad as such, but there was nothing at all that appealed to me about it.
Tchaikovsky writes a lot of novellas, and he has a distinct talent for writing fun little experimental ones. The premise of this is simple enough, and familiar to readers of works like The Magicians: What if the world of a beloved childhood book was real?
In this case, the protagonist is the grandson of the author of the children’s books in question, and has ambivalent feelings towards them to begin with. As the blurb indicates, the residents of not-Narnia have come forth of their own accord, and our protagonist finds this difficult to believe, let alone cope with.
So why did I not enjoy this? To start with, this is clearly a project that Tchaikovsky was using to cope with 2020. Unlike John Scalzi who wrote a silly and fun “pop song of a book” with The Kaiju Preservation Society, Tchaikovsky’s coping mechanisms took a dark and depressing turn. The protagonist is an unlikeable and selfish jackass, with very little in the way of redeeming qualities. The world of Underhill is unpleasant and creepy. And the real world is in the midst of the harder lockdowns of the early pandemic panic.
Like I said at the top, I don’t think this was poorly written or ill-conceived or anything like that. I just know I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I pushed through it because it was short, I was given the ARC and promised a review, and I generally like and respect Tchaikovsky, but if it had been just a little bigger I would have given up and DNF’d it.
Comes out March 28.