Bill Hsu's Reviews > The Book of Love

I was very surprised to see this announced so soon after the wonderful and wacky White Cat, Black Dog: Stories. It's a very different (ahem) animal though, very frustrating for me overall.

I'm a big Kelly Link fan, and I frankly don't recall another of her stories that's so respectful of YA conventions. Not just the teenaged characters, but also their endless musing on teenager concerns, the chatty scene-setting and exposition, and detailed reiteration of core events and motivations. I'm generally not a fan of such heavily YA-flavored texts, but Link's familiar way with repartee and dark humor kept me going. There are clever ideas, surprising and surprisingly goofy magical events, and nice uncanny moments. Of course I appreciate the diverse cast, and the (view spoiler)[male-male wizard liaisons and sexcapades (hide spoiler)].

There are flourishes of Link's trademark breezy magic realist writing, when she's less hampered by YA practices:

The woman's name was Giselle. Her husband was Malcolm. Malo Mogge had promised to take one of them with her to Zermatt and then on to Mumbai and Britanny. There had been some sort of contest, none of the details of which Thomas had paid much attention to. Both Giselle and Malcolm still had all of their fingers, and nothing was burnt up or broken, so there was nothing he needed to clean up or replace. Giselle had been the winner. Thomas hoped, sincerely, that she would enjoy being a fox.

There are a few impressive set pieces (view spoiler)[Mo's parade of statues, nice (hide spoiler)], but also a lot of "Secret Origins" backstory material that does not clog up Link's stories. Writing like this kept me going (names elided to avoid spoilers):

... YYY looked: the shirt had become a pavilion of dark blue silk. XXX took his arm and drew him off the rock and inside his former shirt. Here was a lacquered platform heaped with blankets and a red ceramic stove with a fire already lit inside. "This seems very... Instagrammable," YYY said. "Imagine the post: Oh my God, you guys, my magical boyfriend ate my ass in this culturally appropriative Orientalist fantasy tent. Afterward we had hot chocolate and some baklava!"

I hate to have strong reservations about a novel that mentions Julius Eastman and Eight Songs for a Mad King! But I thought the final conflict and resolution was really drawn-out and not very surprising. (I'd guessed the "secret" of the powerful missing talisman, and I'm usually terrible at this.) There's a small but crucial detail that's left open (view spoiler)[(doesn't Avelot/Bowie still have Mogge's rib?) (hide spoiler)] so maybe there'll be a sequel.