A slight though potent novel, my favorite kind. Composed of crystal clear writing, The Living Realm is immediately compelling and sensual, full to the brim of equal parts beauty and melancholy.

Our protagonist spends a drought-stricken summer in Berlin's Grunewald forest. The lazy sun soaked days stretch out before him, full of swimming in the lake, sunbathing with his friends, and hitting the local cruising grove. But as the heat intensifies and the summer progresses, he begins seeing several of his former lovers (all now dead) in and around the wooded lake.

It feels glib to call this novel “beautiful” the way it feels flippant to call a parent’s death family “sad. The writing is atmospheric, evocative, and profound all at once. It feels too big for such a trivial adjective. While reading I felt I was in the Grunewald, I could smell the sunbaked forest and feel the cold spots of deep lake water. Paired with shimmering prose, the character work is also remarkably strong. By the end I came to care for these people who felt more like real acquaintances than like fictional creations. I tore through this book and immediately wished I could read it again for the first time, this is one of those novels.

The Living Realm is a love letter to human connection and to life in its countless forms. A book about how relationships, fragile and transitory though they seem, might also be the most powerful thing we have, how they can transcend space, time, even death. If you read one book this summer, read this one.

This is a damn good book. I would respectfully like to peer inside the mind of Jordan Tannahill and observe for a while. The Living Realm is a rare gem of speculative fiction.