This book was...a trip. I have not read any of the comics so I wonder if that is why things were a little confusing. I also have not read anything by China Mielville before this either so I may just may not be accustomed to his writing style. Overall this was a good attempt, but missed it with me.

What made this book such a miss was that I saw how cool the story could be. The premise of the story carried most of the good across the entire plot. The flow of the book felt purposefully confusing as if the characters were being dropped with only a quarter of the perspective it would take to understand what was happening. I do think that this is very niche of a story which means that I do think there is an audience for it. I do not think however it is easy enough to follow to appeal to a larger audience making it harder to access.

The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves is an intriguing addition to the literary world, blending elements of poetry, philosophy, and surrealism. The book explores themes of existence, identity, and the passage of time, reflecting Reeves' own introspective and contemplative nature.

What Works: Reeves' prose is often poetic, with a lyrical quality that draws readers into a dreamlike state. His musings on life and the human condition are thought-provoking, offering glimpses into the mind of an actor known for his depth and introspection. The book is beautifully designed, with compelling illustrations that complement the text and enhance the reading experience. Fans of Reeves will appreciate the intimate look into his thoughts and creative process.

What Falls Short: However, the book sometimes feels disjointed and abstract, making it difficult to follow. The lack of a clear narrative structure can leave readers feeling lost, as if they are wandering through a maze without a map. Some passages are overly cryptic, requiring multiple readings to grasp their full meaning, which might not appeal to those seeking a more straightforward storytelling approach.

Conclusion: Overall, The Book of Elsewhere is a mixed bag. It showcases Keanu Reeves' unique voice and creative vision, but its abstract nature and lack of coherence might not resonate with everyone. It's a book that will likely be appreciated by those who enjoy experimental literature and are willing to delve into its enigmatic depths. For others, it may be an interesting, albeit challenging, read.

Let me preface this with I love Keanu Reeves. Let me also preface this with I swear this has nothing to do with my review. I haven't read any of the graphic novels that this book apparently has to do with, but I was not even remotely behind in this book because of it. The storyline was so interesting and unique, well thought out, and amazing that I was just constantly thinking about it. The story follows Unute/B, a warrior, death himself, undead? So innovative and interesting, I was drawn to this story as it crossed genres, time, and space, and was such a compellingly thought out book. I have not read anything by Mieville either, but have heard amazing things about that author as well. However, I am absolutely dumbfounded at how awesome this book was. Science fiction? Historical fiction? I cannot place it in a genre aside from "amazing" and "awesome", honestly. I cannot describe it other than you have to read it for yourself. Absolutely highly recommend this for anyone who wants something fresh, interesting, compelling, new, and likely to make you want to read everything by both of them now.

This ebook was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I would first like to start this review, by acknowledging that I had no clue this novel was based/connected to the comics. I had to go out of my way to gather extra info in the comic world to understand this story better. This story follows B, who is a god. He cannot die and wants to ended it all. His desire to end this endless life brings him to a black op operation that wants to help him with this while also fighting against this evil that B who has lived through multiple battles does not recognize. B and Diana are the only characters I enjoyed reading from and had more development. The rest of the characters had no debt to them. Also, the flow and writhing style was not the greatest. There were chapters that read amateur writer, and some were better. I wish I could tell you more about this world and magic elements, but it was hard to understand what was happening. It was character driven which I enjoyed and also felt a little cyberpunk vibes. I would say this did make me add the comics into my Tbr, because the storylines does feel like it would translate better into that type of style than a novel. I would also say that more action pack oriented individuals would be a better audience for this book. It would have been great if world building and flow was less choppy, and the book mentioned the relation to the comics this review would be on my Fable, GoodReads and Lemon8 Jun 7,2024

Thank you to Del Ray and Penguin Random House for this advanced copy.

I don’t read a lot of fantasy. But, the book cover is cool and so are Keanu’s movies, so I gave it a go.

I didn’t understand a word of it. And that’s not a bad thing. I don’t necessarily need to understand everything I’m reading in order to enjoy it. And this is one of those books that even if I didn’t know what was going on, I still wanted to know what was going on. From what I understand (with help from the plot summary) on the publisher’s website, it’s about an immortal warrior who just wants to die.

This gets my vote for originality. I’ll be picking up a copy when it launches and I’ll save it for fifty years from now when someone will be able to understand what it means.

I initially requested this book even though l wasn't a huge fan of the Brzkr comic because I was curious what China Mieville would do with the material.
I am glad I did.
The first volume of the collected comics seemed to mostly be about how to illustrate Keanu Reeves and increasingly violent ways to kill people. This book, however, immediately adds nuance and meaning to the story.
The main character is B or Unute. He is a man who is very strong and can not be permanently killed. He has been alive for about 80,000 years, has traveled the world many times, and has perfect recall. He now works for an extra-governmental agency that is trying to discover the secrets of his longevity in exchange for helping him to become mortal.
The story flashes between different parts of the life of Unute and those around him, moving the story forward and giving insights into the true motivations of those around him now and in the past.
The climax is a bit unsatisfying, but does set up the possibility of a sequel. The characters and the idea behind the book come straight from the Brzkr comics (I have since read more and they get better), but take those ideas and characters in a different direction. Definitely worth the read.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

Thank you to the publisher for early access to this book. As others have also said, the pacing in this book was somewhat of a challenge. This story would have been better told in a comic or graphic novel - I just tend to not enjoy action books.

I was in the mood for something a little different and something Sci-Fi when I requested this book, and this book definitely delivers on those fronts. I walked into this book without reading anything else by Keanu Reeves. The writing style threw me for a huge loop. At first, I thought it was written like a screenplay. It doesn't celebrate the flow of language, but briskly paints a scene with almost harsh to the point descriptions. Its movement is almost like someone stomping through a room. Once I understood that Keanu Reeves also wrote a comic book, it was so much easier to read and "watch" in my head. Each sentence is like a new comic panel or frame. I thought to myself, "Ok, I got this." Then, the next chapter is a completely different style of writing. Then it was back to choppy comic panels. I needed the different writing styles as the book moved through different time periods, POVs, and memories though. It ended up being more of a reader guide to when and where I was at then the chapter titles. I still spent a good portion of the read confused.

The story follows B, an immortal soldier/tool (the product of a human and a bolt of lightning??), who is tired and wants the ability to die- or at least the option. In exchange for his fugue abilities on a black ops team, the military/government say they can help him. (To no one's surprise, they have their own agenda and there are opposing opinions.) The narrative dips in and out of B's memories, different POVs, and moves back and forth through the 80k years the character has lived. At times it's introspective, hella gory, mysterious, cruel, and -yes- confusing. It felt like this was a book of man trying to understand himself than anything else.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves cyberpunk sci-fi, mind-bending/hypnotic writing styles, anime, manga, or comic books.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for allowing me to read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to netgalley for the ARC!

I honestly need to give this another chance, I just don't think I was fully in the mood for it when I got it, and didn't give it it's full due.

I was excited to read this because it sounded like a really interesting collaboration. I had read a couple of the BZRKR comics and I thought this being loosely based on that universe sounded good. I just couldn't get into the style of writing. This is my first Mieville book (and it'll likely be my last). I'm just not the right audience for this unfortunately.

THE BOOK OF ELSEWHERE
Keanu Reeves
China Meiville


Somewhere in between the land of near and far exists a book.

THE BOOK OF ELSEWHERE

“B” has lived a thousand lives and has but one request: he wants to die. He finds a group of people that will help him fill that request.

In exchange, they have their own request. Filling out their request sounds simple at first but ends up being much more complicated than ”B” thought it would be.

In order to stay true to his word he will have to go to the ends of the universe. What he finds there will have him questioning his mortality, his existence, and whether or not he really wants it to end this way.

Dedicated to their mothers, I was already smitten by the dedication and hadn't even gotten to the first chapter. It feels otherworldly. It's captivating because it feels foreign and exciting and at the same time it feels like a tale as old as time.

There are sentimental lines, sfumato concepts, and gray characters that contemplate the morality of gratuitous violence, immortality, and Gods that existed before religion.

A Renaissance man writes a Renaissance book.

Sign me up every time!

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey for the advanced copy!

THE BOOK OF ELSEWHERE…⭐⭐⭐

This book has a very good story in it. But I don’t believe we got it. The opening scenes were action packed and started a great set up for the story. The flashback with the main characters wife was fantastic. The action scenes when they got going were amazing.

The main issue I had was that so many characters were vanilla and forgettable. The pacing was all over the place for me. Just when things were getting going it would flip to a flashback.

I might have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read the comic. I think that may have been the major problem for me.

I received an ARC of The Book of Elsewhere from NetGalley. This book is based on Keanu Reeves' comic book series BRZKRKR. Parts of this novel would have been better served to have been a comic book or a film - the attempt to describe the action is unwieldy.

As much as I wanted to like this book I couldn't finish it. I tried but only made it about a third of the way.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first book with these authors, I was already familiar with Keanu as an actor but didn’t know him as an author. This book is not like anything I’ve read before. A non-linear story about gods and science, death and war. I was fascinated. I give this 4 out of 5 stars. The writing is amazing and while the story can be confusing, each chapter made me want to read more.

Yes, The Book of Elsewhere is by that Keanu Reeves. Aiding him (perhaps as a ghostwriter, though trying to dissect which parts come which author is tough) is China Mieville, champion of the New Weird speculative fiction movement, left-wing political activist and extremely verbose academic, and one of my favorite authors of all time. So, yeah, I had to get this book.

The Book of Elsewhere is based on Keanu Reeves’ recent comic book series BRSRKR, which is slated to receive a film adaptation, though you don’t need to have read the comic to understand the book (I still haven’t.). It follows the story of a mysterious immortal warrior referred to as either Unute, or as “B” by his current companions. He’s basically if John Wick was a bit more talkative, regenerated rapidly from any wounds, was possibly the oldest human being ever, and sometimes regenerates inside a giant flesh pod/egg if his body is too damaged.

This description might lead you to expect that the book is a fast-paced, action-filled thriller with simple prose, destined for best-seller-dom…but to the book’s great credit, it’s certainly not that. This is a complicated, messy, and deeply weird book, one that doesn’t hold its audience’s hand and is willing to risk throwing off a lot of its potential readers. It jumps back and forth throughout time and narrative voice, from the book’s present, in which Unute is working with a secret U.S. government agency in exchange for the best scientists in the world trying to figure out how to make him mortal, to many moments in Unute’s past, often told in the first-person by various people who crossed his path and were forever changed.

Unute’s great killing power is augmented by a berserker rage that leaves him unable to control himself, radiating blue lightning, and leaves him without the memories of what he did when he finally comes to. Most of the time, he ends up killing some of his own team; a price the government is willing to pay for his skills and knowledge. The other central character is the leader of a part of Unute’s task force, a government bureaucrat with a lot of genre-savvy. Between her and Unute, they bring up a litany of possibilities as to Unute’s existence, pre-empting any fan theories. And while the book’s end does seem to give a definite answer as to what, metaphysically, Unute is and represents, it still leaves the wide open of mystery of how he came to be in the first place.

This is a grim and dour book, with lots owed to the pulpy dark camp of the John Wick movies, but it still manages to be funny and delightful on rare occasions. One of my favorite bits of sci-fi worldbuilding comes when Unute briefly references ancient civilizations with advanced technology that eventually fell, without records of their existence, leaving his handler practically salivating at each little scrap of hoarded knowledge. Unute, despite everything, despite having lived and died millions of times, still feels like a person. He still has likes and dislikes, favorite records and fond memories of friends. In many ways, he’s even more human than John Wick is portrayed to be. I loved the subtle distinction in Unute’s ultimate desire from other famous immortal characters; he wants to become mortal and lose his ability to regenerate, but he doesn’t actually want to die. He just wants the possibility, the sense of meaning that the inevitability of death gives the rest of us humans.

I won’t spoil it here, but relatively early on in the book, we learn of the only other being Unute has ever met that seems to be the same thing as him; and it’s not another human being. It’s yet another example of some piece of this book that speaks to the love and deep knowledge of pulp, of science fiction, fantasy, and other genre fiction. It’s something that feels new and fresh while also making you wonder why no one has ever included it in any of the other, related stories. It’s this sense of play and imagination that really makes The Book of Elsewhere work, past the stream of obscure words and obfuscated mysteries and time-jumps. It’s a surprisingly personal book - I don’t know much about Keanu Reeves, but I do know that he’s suffered a lot of loss from the deaths of many of his closest family. A key subplot involves one of the soldiers in Unute’s team, trying to find ways of working through the death of his husband, another member of the team, killed by Unute in another berserker rage. The book is concerned with death from every angle; all the ways we want to fight back against it, hate it, rage in its face, and how we might not want to actually live in a world with it forever kept at bay.

I never knew where The Book of Elsewhere was going to go next. This wandering, spiraling plot structure could easily be construed as aimless or boring, but it gripped me with its surreal story, the simple poignancy of an immortal character like Unute, and the sense that around every corner would be some new weird wonder. It takes some time to really start to click, and its definitely not your bog-standard fantasy or sci-fi romp. I imagine lots of people will bounce off it. But if you’re a fan of the Weird, I’d highly recommend it.

Rating: **** 1/2

China Mieville AND Keanu Reeves? I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this.

This is pretty much exactly what I expected when I read who the authors were. Mieville brings in his trademark Weird while Reeves supplies a great deal of gore; no complaints from me, as both a Mieville and John Wick fan!

This isn't an easy read; it's violent, sure, but as per Mieville's typical style the book has no interest in slowing down to match the reader's pace. But if you can hang on tight, you're in for a phenomenal ride! My one piece of advice would be that you definitely ought to read BRZRKR to get some context, though I'm not sure how necessary that may be.

I was so excited to read this book but it was on another level of weird, to the point where I couldn't necessarily get behind it.

Having read--and loved--China Miévile's book, Perdido Street Station, and just loving Keanu Reeves, I had to read a work co-written by them.
I was not disappointed although this genre, or combination of genres (science fiction and fantasy) is not something I usually read. But, as I said, I had read Miéville and although very different than my general interests, loved him.

This is at least in part because of his beautiful, lush prose and images. I cannot tell in The Book of Elsewhere who wrote what of course--or what the process of collaboration looked like--but certainly one of the pleasure of this book is the writing.

The book has a great deal of violence, some of which is quite gory, something that I actively avoid and was difficult for me to read but the power of the story -- perhaps more accurately the imagery and poetry of it -- helped me power through the challenging parts.

Unute (also known as B) has been alive for thousands of years and is apparently unkillable. A top-secret governmental organization has been formed to learn about him and from him--and to benefit from that knowledge (for power of course). Even studying him, employing him for warfare is dangerous.

But this brief introduction doesn't begin to capture the feel of this difficult but fascinating work. I had to work--or rather think--overtime to try to keep up. I couldn't do it and I was frequently and ultimately frustrated but it was a wonderful failure. It's a fascinating work, absorbing and tantalizing. Although it's not a long book it certainly wasn't a fast read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey. The Book of Elsewhere will be published on July 23, 2024. And thank you to China Miéville and Keanu Reeves for their brilliant, intoxicating, impossible work.

While I enjoyed the actual writing, I don’t think this story transferred from the comic book to the novel pages with the heavily figurative language. It was dense and difficult to get invested in, which ultimately led to me DNFing. I hate DNFing ARCs out of respect for the authors and publishers, but I realized that my review wasn’t improving as I continued reading.