The Book of Elsewhere, by China Mieville and Keanu Reeves (Del Rey, 2024)

It's no measured reviewer sentiment, but I simply found this novel sublime.

You think you're walking into an action-packed, John Wick-esque romp. What you end up with is a searing exploration of life and death, time and memory, fear and religion, carried by the duo's soaring prose and infused with lyricism and poetry and an unflinching approach to the core of the human heart. Deeply moving, I also couldn't put it down.

Our protagonist is an 80,000 year old immortal, and in his world, civilizations have risen and fallen multiple times. He's seen them, and survived them, and died and been reborn multiple times. Despite all this time and experience, the question at the heart of the book is, who is he really? A god, a freak, a deathforce?

There's ancient languages and civilizations, there's science and magic, myth and religion, and the struggle to bear the weight of life in the face of pain. If it were just about the themes, it would be good fun, but there's beautiful, brilliant literature here, and for that, bravo.

4.5/5 top tier fiction.