Name: Felix Yz
ISBN: 9780425288504

Lisa Bunker

Thirteen-year-old Felix Yz chronicles the final month before an experimental procedure meant to separate him from the fourth-dimensional creature, Zyx, with whom he was accidentally fused as a young child.

Felix Yz

I picked this up on a whim because the cover fit a reading challenge I was doing and I was so very pleasantly surprised by it! 20 pages in and there were two confirmed queer characters, with a couple of others showing up/being confirmed as queer later. Considering this was a totally random middle grade book, I was super happy to see so many queer characters of different identities represented.

The actual story was kind of hand-wavey science fiction version of a terminal illness story. When Felix was a toddler, he got caught up in an experiment his father was doing and ended up melded with a fourth-dimensional alien called Zyx. Now at 13, the scientists in the know about Felix's situation have decided that Felix and Zyx have to be separated before Felix (and possible Zyx) die. The book is Felix's log of his experiences in the month leading up the Procedure. 

Felix has an amazing narrative voice, with a distinct personality that made reading the book feel immersive. Zyx was a lovable, enigmatic presence that I enjoyed and was frustrated by in equal measure. On the one hand, it would make sense that a being who would normally exist on a different dimension from us would find it difficult to translate his experiences and thoughts in a way that's intelligible to us. On the other, there's still so much more I want to know about Zyx! They were in Felix's body and Felix was (largely) in control, so how did that feel for Zyx? What were their experiences like in those final days before the Procedure? Or even in those first days they were fused and suddenly squished into only three dimensions instead of four, just a rider in someone else's body? This book definitely had me thinking!

Felix Yz

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