DNF @ 10%. I think there are some missing elements in the synopsis that are important to some readers. This book was marketed as a sci-fi romance across time and space with some reincarnation vibes, which we love. However, it reads very literary fiction x fever dream with such chaotic and nonsensical prose, which I can't stand. I can see how the writing is beautiful, but I just couldn't follow. Unfortunately, I couldn't imagine enjoying this book if I chose to finish it, so I chose to DNF early. I think if it reaches the right audience it will be great!

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the ALC, I am sad it didn't work out.

I was really torn on how to rate this, because I think a lot of people will enjoy this book, but it just was not for me. It just felt like the synopsis given did not match what I actually read. It was very confusing and if the back of the book hadn't told me, I don't think I would have understood the connection of the characters as we moved from one story to the next. This one just really went over my head, and I genuinely don't even really know what to say about it. I did enjoy the narrator, and she did a great job.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape for the free audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This story is unlike anything I have ever read before. With Sri Lanka as the backdrop, the book takes so many twists and turns through different timelines and spaces. Exploring love, death, and friendship from unique points of view. Haunted woods and violence take the lives of the main characters on a new trajectory pushing the limits of what is possible. Thank you Dreamscape Media for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Thank you Tordotcom, NetGalley, and Dreamscape Media for an ARC and an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

Man oh man I love Vajra Chandrasekera’s work so, so much, and Rakesfall was such a treat. I mostly read this on audio, which was very well done and I definitely recommend—Shiromi Arserio did a wonderful job narrating. I did go into this sort of forgetting what the synopsis was, and ultimately just went “well, The Saint of Bright Doors rules, so it’s fine,” and I think that benefitted me. It does get weird narratively and at times a bit hard to follow, but I really enjoyed it and I think it’s the kind of book that will be a joy to reread. It’s a brainier book than I typically review for, and I probably would’ve felt I absorbed more had I read this primarily physically, but I definitely plan on rereading. I admire Chandrasekera’s craft and ambition, and this was such a delight for me to read.

Rakesfall asked a lot more from me and my little brian than my usual reads, but it was so worthwhile and it worked quite well for me. I do think this is worth a shot, but maybe give it a couple of pages before you commit.

I think this book will do great, it's a very interesting book with great characters but it is confusing. There are so many different things and plot lines going on at once that it did get almost impossible for me to keep everything straight. I agree with the other reviews I've seen for this book, the synopsis doesn't exactly match what the book is actually about which did make a book a little disappointing. The audiobook narrator was great. I'm interested to see more from this author.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the audiobook in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this advanced audio copy!

The cover design is absolutely out of this world stunning. Perfection.

To be frank - I think I made a mistake with this book. After completing it I realize that this book is a slow burn - meant to be a slow burn. I consumed it far too quickly and feel like it went largely over my head. This is a very difficult book to rate. I liken it to a film you can watch over and over and over and pick up a new detail every time. I feel like whatever rating I give it will be unfair until I've read it at least 3 times. For me, it just missed the mark for what I in particular was looking for. I love that it dives headfirst and without any hesitation into the complexity of death and dying and moving on to another lifetime. As a believer in reincarnation I jumped in head first and felt a bit overwhelmed. Looking forward to my next read through, perhaps on paper, so I can annotate it.

Thank you so much for this ARC!

First of all, I think this premise was fantastic and the setting was very intriguing however, I found this book quite hard to follow most of the time. The weaving of stories into stories made my head spin a bit and I didn't quite understand what was going. I still don't think I completely get it.

The narration was fantastic with a great variety of tone and characters vocalised. I felt engaged by this and this was the main reason I kept going.

I feel I probably would have understood this more, had I read it and not listened to it.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audiobook ARC of "Rakesfall" by Vajra Chandrasekera.

I thought the premise of the story sounded very intriguing which is why I requested the audiobook, but unfortunately it wasn't for me. I had problems following the different storylines however the prose was beautifully written. It could be that for this story the audiobook format doesn't work as well and the story is easier to access by reading the actual words.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for allowing me a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for a review!

Truthfully, this was not for me. I might have known that if the description was accurate. The actual content doesn't match the description at all and I think with a proper description, the right people would find this and love it. Otherwise, this book will suffer for it.

The Description would have you believe this is actually going to build a relationship between two people over time. And in a way it could, I guess, but it's so non-linear and confusing, I can't even tell which character is talking or what is going on. Since there's no hint or explanation for the story set up (or what it might be mirroring), and the book description doesn't clue us in on this either, it didn't make any sense. I didn't care about a single thing I read about. I was just lost and bored from the start. I shouldn't have to read other book reviews to make sense of it. As others have said, it kind of starts to come together around 68% of the way through, but I was still so confused about everything else they've been referencing or how any of this works that what we did get didn't do anything for me. The beginning really ruined the entire rest of the book for me.

None of what I heard reflected how it is marketed. This isn't a "story" - it's an "experience" which, don't get me wrong, I am all for - but it doesn't work here. I don't really know how else to express it. We get a lot of cuts to other parts of our main characters life, world history/current events, etc. but it doesn't do any good if you can't follow the characters/story. I'm still not sure how the TV show in the beginning of the book is supposed to factor in.

I will say, the narrator was good. I received the audiobook version (which I do think aided in some small moments of confusion). Her pacing & tone was well done. I enjoyed her character voices and her voice/acting alone was enough to help me through.

This was obviously not the book (and author, it sounds like) for me. If the description was more accurate I wouldn't have picked it up likely (or at least would have known what to expect). I understand that the point is to wind these two people together and for you to feel lost between their past, present, and future, but this is not the way. Being cryptic and poetic doesn't make it good. It works for film to intersplice timeframes together (sometimes) because we can see what's happening, and comprehend transitions a lot better. This hodgepodge approach doesn't work for books. If you can't find the straight line through the weaving plots, you've lost.

I saw a 5 star review that said "I don't think I understood most of what was going on." This book is like The Lodge scenes in Twin Peaks without any of the story/context to help it out. Imagine watching Twin Peaks and it only being the tree sized nerve-endings creature with a brain, speaking backwards and calling itself the arm. This story is like that. Some people will love it, but I disliked it.

The audio narrator kept me very engaged. The story was good a bit confusing at times. I think this a book that I will pick up to read physically. I think I’d be able to make sense of some of the confusing parts. It’s giving fever dream. I’m here for it and will read it again once published.

Twisty stories within stories, this was very confusing to follow. I kinda understand what the author was going for but feel like this book fell flat. I also have no idea what the point of this story was..

I liked the narrator for the audio.

I really liked this book. I just think that the narration could have been a little more interesting. Her voice was very calm, but it wasn't as engaging as I would have liked from an Audiobook.

I want to say I was smart enough for this, but I don't think I am.

It was intricate and descriptive and lush. If you like sci-fi thats going to make you think, Hindu mythology, and characters that are reincarnated, this should be your jam. It felt a little bit like a fever dream, and although the plot could be considered linear, also felt like a combination of short stories with a thread through them.

I will admit that I was lucky to get an audio ARC, and the audiobook was excellent. HOWEVER, I think this is a book you should really read physically (if able), because I think having the time to ruminate and annotate would help with the understanding.

I think I have more questions than answers with this one, but I had a good time throughout.

Thank you to Dreamscape and Netgalley for an early audio copy.

This was just too literary for me. Some of the sentences are beautiful but I had no idea what was happening in the story. I hope others enjoy it though!

I was so incredibly excited for this book as it has been on my highly anticipated list since I saw its announcement. The blurb sounded fantastic.
I received an audio ARC on Netgalley. The narrator is fantastic. Her voice flows, her change of characters is exceptional- it is the story itself that I cannot connect with and felt incredibly bored despite how soothing our narrator was.

This story feels like it is trying to be something profound while falling short. Reading or listening to this felt like being in a fever dream. I read a lot of prose and lush writing styles but this one felt all over the place while simultaneously being flat.

After investing four hours of an almost 9 hour audiobook...this is unfortunately a DNF for me.

Vajra Chandrasekera es un autor natural de Sri Lanka que tiene ideas muy interesantes y una prosa muy cuidada, pero que me abruma con la complejidad de las estructuras que utilizar para sus narraciones y al final me parece que no llega a ninguna parte. Algo así me pasó con la novela ganadora del Nebula, The Saint of Bright Doors. Pero es que con Rakesfall la sensación se ha acentuado. Me parece una mejor novela que su debut, pero aún así me frustra ver que lo que podría ser un libro cautivador se queda a medio camino.


Rakesfall es una novela épica, en el sentido de narrar una epopeya que se extiende a través de la historia de la humanidad, siguiendo los pasos de Annelid y Leveret, dos almas destinadas a reencarnarse y encontrarse a lo largo del tiempo. Esta es la premisa principal del libro, que cambia de estilo, de escenario y de personajes en cada una de estas reencarnaciones, a modo de collage que debería servirnos para comprender una imagen completa, aunque me temo que en mi caso no lo he conseguido del todo.

Además de esta estructura de vidas enhebradas pero que se separan y se vuelven a unir, quizá la apuesta más arriesgada de Chandrasekera es variar tanto el estilo en cada una de las iteraciones, aunque hay que admitir que dominio de la prosa no le falta. Me refiero a frases como “Any non-obvious computer problem is magic, quantum bogo-dynamics in effect” o “a burning microscopic quantum of will at the heart of a fossilized leaf in the centre of a great igneous smear buried deep in the crust”, por poner solo dos ejemplos. Nos encontramos ante un libro que requiere una lectura muy pausada, alejada del acelerado ritmo de vida actual. El autor incluso se atreve a rizar el rizo introduciendo relatos cortos dentro de algunas de las partes que componen la novela, en una búsqueda fractal de la belleza literaria.

La narración del audiolibro por parte de Shiromi Arserio es quizá demasiado aséptica para el mensaje transcendental que Chandrasekera aspira a hacernos llegar. Entiendo que es un libro muy complejo tanto en la forma como en el uso de algunas palabras pero también creo que se le podría haber insuflado algo más de vida al texto. Por supuesto, los intérpretes de los audiolibros varían entre obras, pero hay algunos que realmente parece que “viven” lo que están contando, como Joe Jameson en Play of Shadows, lo que dota a las novelas de otro nivel de disfrute.

Acabé la lectura de Rakesfall con sentimientos encontrados, pero estoy segura de que hará las delicias de los lectores que disfruten más de la estupenda forma de escribir del autor que yo, que busco no solo forma si no también fondo.

Freshwater meets Black Mirror in this jarring and heartbreaking story of bound souls. Asking the questions of who we are and what we are to other people as we explore these characters throughout their lives and the harm they inflict on each other. I have a feeling this is a book I’ll enjoy even more on a second read.

RAKESFALL is a book that takes place over many generations and many years from history to the far distant future. Annelid and Leveret first met as children against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war. In the demon-haunted woods there is more violence and this sets off a cycle wherein their souls continue forward across the ages, finding the pair continually reincarnated into the future to the point where nothing is recognizable any longer.

I started reading this back in April and I quickly realized at that time that I wasn't in the right headspace for this book. This is a true lesson about picking up the right book at the right time because when I restarted this, I really enjoyed it. This is the type of book where you have to be okay going into it to have things a bit vague and unexplained at times. There are places where the author seems to be focused more on the play of language in a really beautiful way, but it sometimes felt like it was leaving the rest of the narrative behind.

I especially enjoyed seeing the author's ideas of the future and the way things change beyond the bounds of our human concepts of the world. I would definitely be interested to read from this author more in the future!

This book was almost really great.... the premise is there, and most of the time the writing is good, but the story did not come together for me. I will probably keep an eye out for other books by the author in the future, because I think they clearly have a lot of talent and vision, Rakesfall just wasn't for me.

I did receive an audio ARC from Dreamscape Lore, and I am so grateful. I think the audiobook narrator did an exceptional job and that's what pulled my score up from a 3.5 to a 4 star!

The cover got me!!! After reading the synopsis, this went on my most anticipated reads list (Thank you Net Galley & Dreamscape media for the ARC! 💕).

I'm hesitant to rate this because maybe the audio version didn't work for me. At 20% in I was so confused that I went back to the start and even slowed it down to 1.5x speed.. I still couldn't follow whose pov we were in or what time period it was. I pushed on, hoping the pieces would start clicking together, but I have no idea what happened or where they came up with the synopsis of the book.

I will pick up the physical version once it's officially released and give it another go.