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<p>Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author has been a friend of mine for Quite Some Time Now.</p>
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<p>This is what used to be called a fix-up: where an author has published multiple stories in a setting, with one or more characters in continuity, and they go and write material that goes between the stories and make a book out of it. Driftwood is a really fertile setting for the fix-up that bears its name, because it features a potentially infinite number of worlds colliding, annihilating in slow-motion and leaving scraps of people and customs as they go. A Driftwood story could feature nearly any ideas, brought in from another wave of worlds.</p>
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<p>The continuity in this book is provided by the character Last, undying, wandering from world to world. The other characters aren't quite sure what to make of Last--Last is not always sure what to make of himself--but sometimes having a guide is enough, even if you're not sure what he's doing until the end of the section--or after. The nature of Driftwood gives a chance for others to serve as foils for Last in different directions--almost in a Doctor Who style, where part of the Doctor's differences are due to his Companions at the time. But Driftwood steers clear of our history, its cults and cultures its own, its fate its own--and Last is shaping his own fate too.</p>
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<p>I had a good time with this even though I'd read some of the stories already. Having them in a different context illuminates them differently--and, of course, you may not have read any of them at all. It works perfectly well as an introduction to this setting, no preparation required. Just dive in...perhaps a tiny bit carefully. There are kind people here, but it's not a place of sweetness and light.<br></p>
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Driftwood is a world where other worlds come to end. From the Edge where worlds find themselves connected to the Crush where the last shreds become nothingness, everything shifts and changes. Bound together by the actions of Last, lone survivor of his world and many others, the reader can explore a complex, varied world within a world.

Driftwood is the latest novel by author Marie Brennan, the author of The Memoirs of Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons). I really loved that series and its spinoff novel because of how well it built a series based upon Brennan's knowledge of anthropology, archeology, and science, together with great characters, a lot of wit, and a fun fantasy world. It's really great and you should read it. So naturally, when I saw her upcoming novel* on Netgalley, I put in a request immediately, and so I obtained Driftwood for this review.

*Driftwood is around 200 pages long from what I can tell, and is at best a short novel and may even be short enough to be considered a "Novella" - certainly I've seen books of similar length called as such. But the marketing text on booksellers' sites lists it as a "novel", and so thus, shall I.

Driftwood is very much in the same vein as the above, a short novel with some strong characters and a very anthropological focus: namely, how do people respond when their worlds begin their inevitable end? And I mean this literally, the story is essentially a series of tales of "Driftwood", the place that worlds go after their apocalypses, where they merge with other worlds as they slowly die out. Each tale is particularly interesting and explores different grounds, all centered around characters interacting with a mysterious man who seems to survive everything. It's a really well done set of tales and if this is the first in a new series, I would definitely look forward to more.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------

Driftwood has been a thing seemingly forever, a place where worlds end. Or really, a place for worlds that have already ended. For Driftwood is where worlds that suffer their own apocalypses go, or the bits that seemingly survive of them. Those bits first appear out of the mist that borders Driftwood, and then slowly start to get smaller and pushed towards the center of Driftwood - the Crush - until they eventually disappear.

Some worlds handle their entry into Driftwood, and their eventual ends, better than others - being willing to mix blood and trade with the other worlds they now neighbor instead of demanding racial and political purity - but all worlds require their own form of adaptation to their end. And eventually, they disappear - everyone does.

Except for the strange man known as "Last", the man who has seemingly been in Driftwood forever and never faded. Many seek him out, seeking some clue to how their world can survive, which he refuses to give them. Others seek him out for his experience and guidance in knowing all the worlds of Driftwood, so they can learn to adapt to the end. But no matter what, Last endures as everything and everyone else disappears.

Until one day, Last seems to have disappeared. In memory of the one person in Driftwood who seemed to be eternal, the residents of Driftwood come together and tell their stories of how he helped them, or at the very least affected their lives, and try to figure out who Last really was.....or is.

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Driftwood is the type of "novel" that is often kind of hard to distinguish from an anthology - the novel is bookended by two short segments told through first person, and then contains a framing device story - the seeming funeral of Last - to tell a series of stories about the time people sought out Last for Aid. So if you're looking for a cohesive story of a single character, you won't find it here - Last isn't ever the main character of his stories and what we know about him comes generally from unreliable sources, no matter how well intentioned and the short first person segments.

Instead, we have a series of stories that are essentially telling the tales of how different peoples and individuals tried to deal with the ends of their worlds - and the ideas that their worlds were not special or as unique as they once thought. Driftwood provides the perfect setting for these tales: made up of different shards of worlds that all follow their own rules, which merge into each other over time before disappearing. Even the inhabitants do this, to the point where peoples find themselves interbreeding to become unrecognizable as part of any given world - the drifters - where any "one-blood", a person whose ancestry is purely of a single world, stand out more than anything and languages tend to merge the deeper you get into a pidgin.

And so this world provides for the stories of peoples adapting and learning to cope with the inconceivable. So you have a high chancellor braving his king's order not to visit the "false" outside worlds in order to find an outsider from a world that could heal the dying king, the last of a lineage without which his people would not know how to go on. You have a woman who desperately searches for a way to obtain an object her people left behind in a part of her world that is now too dangerous to enter, an object that means everything to her people. You have a historian who wants to chart and map Driftwood as it is, just for fun and knowledge, and is willing to take dangerous risks t pull it off. You have a priestess and leader who seeks out Last to obtain memories long lost of her people, so they can teach the young what once was. You have a boy, a true drifter without a world, who seeks something, a purpose or greater being to make the difficulties of Driftwood make sense. And you have a pair whose story is so short and surprisingly I won't say any more about.

These stories are very well done, and again, show the anthropological side of Brennan's stories and interests. Not everyone will react well to the end of everything - god knows we can see that today - but more will than you think (and Brennan perhaps makes this argument by having only one of the five major stories be focused upon someone acting destructively - and even then that person is driven less by the destruction of his world than other influences). But there are, even for coping and trying to survive positively, a number of ways to get by, and these stories show a good variety of such in interesting ways that really captivate.

It's a fascinating novel that works well and ends on a really nice touch, and I'd love to see more with this world, though I admit to being unsure what Brennan would do with it. But that's why I keep reading her as she manages to meet or exceed my expectations repeatedly.

I can pretty much state that Driftwood is going to be one of those books where other people rave about it and I just shrug and move on to something else. This is definitely one of those Not For Me books and that's a real shame, as initially it looked like it was going to be much more suited to my tastes than it turned out to be in the end.

The basic premise of the book is that its setting is made up of a wide variety of worlds that are coming together, to end up in something called the Crush - as a result, your world gets squeezed against another which could be wildly different from yours, on its way to eventual destruction. That variety of worlds means there's a need for competent guides, able to pick up a wide variety of languages and understand cultural issues, and that's where Last comes in. We meet him on a couple of occasions in the book, as he's employed to sort out problems and then later, after his disappearance for a long period of time is taken as evidence of his death and people are telling stories of him at his memorial.

I guess in the end it comes down for me to world-building in search of a plot: the overall story is a series of vignettes of how different people cope with the experience of their world being torn apart, with Last playing a greater or lesser role in each one, but I ended up at the last page going 'is that it?'. Not my kind of book at all, though I dare say it will get squeals of delight from folks whose tastes are very different to my own.

What a wonderful story made up from a few short stories, connected by one man named Last. Who is Last and why is this his name? And how is he still alive, wandering around Driftwood, making legend of himself?

I was hooked up from page one and the thing that pulled me in was a beautiful prose. I really liked the style of writing here, it carried with itself the sense of wonder and, sometimes, a nostalgia. And every short story gives us a feeling of magic, but also fleeting and vanishing of everything. Because Driftwood is where worlds die. There are many of them, but they aren't whole. They come to Driftwood after their apocalypses, shredded and dying, just to exist for a while and then disappear into the Crush.

With its construction, this novel reminded me a little of first volume of the Witcher series, where we have some kind of introduction to each story and then we got the story. Also Last as a character in times reminded me of Geralt of Rivia.

Like I said, this is a wonderful story with a beautiful world, or worlds, all connected by Driftwood and Last. Excellent idea and I hope we will see more of the universe.

A master class in world-building, Driftwood follows Last, a Drifter who vanishes without a trace and from there the story unfolds about his effects on the lives of his fellow citizens. With sympathetic and varied characters, masterful world-building, and cerebral humor, the author manages to build a cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Truly, my only complaint would be that the novella was not a 30-part series!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Wow. I'm so caught up in this novel that I think part of me is still in Driftwood.

This incredible ride begins with Last: he's an inhabitant of Driftwood, the place where hundreds of different worlds go to die.
Last has outlived by far his race's life span, and he survived the death of his world. His ability to stay alive, while everyone else's life span in Driftwood tends to shrink along with their world, is a mystery: who really is Last? Is he a god? Is he a genetic miracle?
And, most importantly, where is Last?
That's right: apparently, Last pulled a Carmen Sandiego on his fellow Drifters - acquaintances, friends, followers - and vanished without a trace.
Lots of people, then, gather to talk about him, speculate on his possible death and tell how he made a mark in their lives.

However, calling Driftwood only "Last's story" is kind of underwhelming: he is the fil rouge of this story, but Driftwood is so much more than him alone.
It's a wrecked world where hope is far more valuable than promises.
It shows what unity is, and why it's the core of life.

Driftwood stares right into the eye of death and spits in it.
Driftwood is stubborn and naïve and inevitably bound to disappear eventually, but you are less doomed if you live like you are never going to die.

This was utterly incredible. An unbelievable feat of creative worldbuilding. If you like cerebral fantasy that's still delicately wrought in beautiful unembellished prose, this is definitely for you. There are lots of tropes turned inside out here - not a world being built so much as a world ending; not an unreliable narrator so much as a narrative which surrounds an unreliable or unknowable character whose pov is never used. It's a series of encounters and tales that are initially confusing but break through to a glorious whole picture. A stunning novel with strong themes and engaging characters.

This. was. so. cool! I've never read anything like this book. It was so unique, atmospheric, and vast. I love stories where everything ties together, especially when it's done really well. I love the fact that this tale is told in many voices/perspectives. It was definitely a bit confusing at first and it feels like you're being thrown face-first into a new world. However, this doesn't last long and it's all explained well in the end. I would definitely read more by this author and plan to pick up a physical copy when this comes out.

“Driftwood is the end, the end of the ends. Nothing comes after that. Only oblivion, and maybe not even that much.”

A beautiful book made up of many stories, species, and worlds, all connected by a man named Last. Brennan described it as “a mosaic novel, with the story being told through many voices and many sub-tales… It’s made up of the short stories I’ve written already, plus a novelette-length tale that’s new, and it’s all stitched together with a frame that gives context and greater meaning to the pieces within it. Which makes the text kind of like Driftwood itself.” Perfection. This is one of my favorite books now and I really can’t get over how brilliant it is. I feel like I need to immediately buy this author’s other books and I definitely plan on buying a physical copy of this one when it’s released.

The blurb says: "Mirroring the world that many people are currently living in, the Driftwood stories chronicle the struggles of survivors and outcasts to keep their worlds alive until everything changes, diminishes, and is destroyed."

If you’re confused in the beginning, don’t worry, everything gets explained rather quickly once you’re past the initial little tale where you first meet Last. But here’s a little hint:

“Every world ends someday. Or maybe I’m wrong; who knows? If a place doesn’t come to an end, it doesn’t come here. But Driftwood is where worlds come to die.”

If that doesn’t make you want to read this, I don’t know what else to say. I really just want to write a few pages about what Driftwood really is, and what the Crush is, but alas, that’s a giant spoiler.

There are so many things to love about this book, and the characters are one of them. I thought the jumping around with different characters and their stories would bother me (because it almost always does), but I loved it here. Each world is so different and fascinating, and the stories really sucked me in. Plus, they’re connected in little ways by one character.

There was one story/chapter I wasn’t as fond of, “Remembering Light”, but one among the many isn’t bad, and I did enjoy the story… just not near as much as the rest of the book. It was slow and vague up until the very end. Just wasn’t the best story in the bunch is all.
And one last spoiler type thing that kind of bugged me: <spoiler>We don’t <i>really</i> know what happened to Last. I assume he died, but I’m not crazy about ambiguous endings.</spoiler>

(Side note: I couldn’t help thinking how, if Earth ended up in Driftwood, humans would definitely find a way to completely destroy it and kill everybody, or at the very least, they’d start sowing hate and mistrust at every turn. One character <spoiler> Kuondae</spoiler> does that, and I kept thinking “so maybe she’s got some human in her down the line”. So many times while I was reading about all these different species walking around together, trying to survive together for as long as possible despite the insane circumstances, did I think “I just know that <b>humans would not be able to handle this shit.”</b> Religious fanatics would be fueling some crazy ass fires, everyone would be fear mongering and xenophobic (or whatever word means hating and fearing other species/worlds/realities), and the militaries and governments would either separately start nuking everything or band together to nuke everyone else/everything they didn’t understand. Darkly funny and deeply sad, but I thought about it quite often.)

Anyway. This story is so creative and magical, I wish I had thought of it. And whenever I have that thought while reading, I know I have to recommend it. I would have anyway though, because it’s a fun book with characters and plots that stay interesting start to finish.

Driftwood is one of the most incredibly creative fantasies you will find. The story isn't about world-building as much as world-shattering. Think of a universe built of concentric circles.

On the outside is the Mist. Then, there's the Edge which is filled with all the worlds new to Driftwood, all having faced their own apocalypses and shattering into pieces as they move toward the center. Past this Ring of worlds, each containing unique amazing species and barely separated.

At the Edge, worlds are new to Driftwood. They just had their apocalypses. Farther in, there’s the Shreds, which are but remnants of entire planets, crumbling into Mere neighborhoods and city blocks. And then there's the Crush, where world crumble and die. Sort of like a giant black hole from which nothing emerges.

It's rather hard to visualize how these worlds all come together and how beings travel from one to another, but eventually you as a reader accept the concept.

Also added into the mix is an immortal being, Last, who acts as a bounty hunter or tour guide. He eventually becomes the focal point of the book, but the story is never told from his point of view. Just from those who encounter him and there are many of these who seek from him things he cannot bestow.

The format of the book is a little different too. This isn't an epic quest for the holy grail, but a series of connected folktales told by various people about the Shreds and about Last, the one who cannot die. This is one of those books so creative that it's just fascinating to read. And there's so much here with so many worlds that more stories could perhaps emerge.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.