REVIEW: The Book of M (Peng Shepherd)

Book: The Book of M

Author: Peng Shepherd

My rating: 3/5.

Premise: One afternoon, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, but it comes at a horrible price: the loss of memories. Ory and his wife Max had escaped, living in an abandoned hotel. But then Max’s shadow disappears. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world.

This book had a lot of promise. For some unknown reason, people start losing their shadows and with them, their memories. They also have the power to alter the world, for example, things disappearing once forgotten, things changing when misremembered. The story follows 4 main characters: Max and Ory, Naz and 'The One Who Gathers'. Through them, we experience the Forgetting, follow the search for a cure, and experience the hard reality of living in this apocalyptic reality. One thing I loved about the characters was the representation, from race to nationality to sexuality. The representation didn't feel forced or detract from the plot, which I've found in some books. I never felt like the author was trying to push her own agenda or tick a box. For most of the book, the author manages to blend fantasy with dystopia but not letting the magic run away with itself. However, near the end, the plot slows and goes off on a tangent. Then, just when you're wondering how it's all going to be wrapped up in not many pages, the author realises the same and suddenly starts throwing bits together, giving an unsatisfactory ending. Overall, a cool idea, but the ending could've been better.