thank you NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this in return for my honest review! ❤️

the book follows two main characters - noah, an everyday joe who has unknowingly been employed at an eldrich horror-esque newspaper company; and malachia, who works for the congregation, who finds her entire city of silence empty. the story follows these two trying to figure out what in the heck is happening around them. 

now i would like to preface that i really dont enjoy giving low ratings to indie books, but i cant lie and say i enjoyed this more than i did. i would also like to preface i am a vibe-rater first and foremost, but even though the vibe of this book was great, i did find there to be quite a few issues holding me back from enjoying it more.

i want to start with the positives of this book. firstly, did not expect lgbt+ rep going into this! i am always a sucker for rep, even if it is incredibly inconsequential. i enjoyed that in the world shiveley created, gender & attraction doesnt matter when you’re working a job of lovecraftian horror. i love when in horror/fantasy being queer is not an issue at all. 

i also am a sucker for mixed media in books!!!! the random newspapers at first were just pretty to look at & i skipped them, but then i realised “hey i want to read these” and they were cool! also i have no idea why my brain originally decided they were just for aesthetic and had nothing to do with the plot. why did i decide that. i found the mini-stories(?) in the newspapers super intriguing, especially moss-girl. wouldve loved to know what happened to her though </3. the fact the newspapers, although they could stand on their own, tied into the overall story by showing us what type of company printed matter is, letting us get freaked out before noah is even aware of who he’s working for. 

speaking of noah, god was he funny! honestly he carried this book. his humour was honestly the biggest thing that kept me intrigued. instantly in the first chapter with his likeability, his “everyman” characterisation and his wit i was sold on him. this kind of faded with time, but i cant lie and say simply because of how great a character noah was, i thought this would be a 4-star book. 

and now i have to discuss why it wasnt… and the main reason is malachia. i had absolutely no idea what was going on with her plot. i dont mind when a book introduces concepts unique to this world, but when concepts such as the “mansion of silence” and the “third silence movement” and the “congregation”... i mean hey if its shown not told that works! i promise im not that dumb needed things spelled out that explicitly. but there was no showing or telling. i could not piece together what was happening until i was like >85% finished this which does not make for an enjoyable reading experience! and i only had this issue with malachia’s chapters. noah works as he also has no idea what is going on like the reader, but with everything weird occurring being pretty normal for malachia, it felt like i, as the reader, was left behind in terms of background information.

also malachia was essentially a noncharacter. that might be because i had actually no idea what she was yapping about 95% of the time… because it was all context that was missing. idk when i was reading her chapters my heart was not in it, i was waiting to get back to noah’s fresh hell.

i think that is the book’s fundamental issue. it does not explain its unique concepts. gun to my head i could not summarise this book without a guide. not because i wasnt concentrating, but because i was incredibly confused. im so serious i cannot tell you what malachia was doing this entire story. like i can TELL you, but what was her goal? anything beyond surface level, i cannot tell you a single thing. noah’s story was a bit easier to grasp, but at some points i was still lost. honestly though with noah’s story i found it easier to just be along for the ride because he was so bewildered with what was occurring, as was i. malachia seemed like it was just another monday for her, which meant i felt like i was being dragged through the entire story with new concepts being added when i had just figured out what the city of silence or congregation actually was. i think the actual story of this world defo needd more fleshing out.

the other major drawback of this story is that it feels like it doesnt know what its trying to do. at some points it felt like weird horror, other times it felt like dark fantasy, and at other times it felt like a magical realism x horror novel. this book kind of reminded me of piranesi in a way, with the reader also having no idea whats going on but is along for the ride. noah is also kind of like the titular piranesi, in that they are both silly goofballs which make the book great. but the plot in this novel kept pulling me in so many different directions, and in <200 pages, we dont have time to be doing this much. 

i think this book’s fatal flaw is not having more pages. i think if there were more pages, a lot of the “issues” i had whilst reading this would have been resolved. i still had a good time, and i can definitely say this book is unlike anything i’ve ever read before! sadly i do think its hiccups are too prominent for me to have overlooked whilst reading this, and as they negatively affected my enjoyment, i cant look past them.