Peng Shepherd

Set in a dangerous near future world, THE BOOK OF M tells the captivating story of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe, risking everything to save the ones they love.

The Book of M

Brad Thor's Summer 2018 Fiction Pick for THE TODAY SHOW! "Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage (2010) and Station Eleven (2014)." --Booklist WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER? Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself. One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless. As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure. Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

A Novel

rumbledethumps

I bought this book as a "blind date" from my local bookstore, which means I had no idea what book it was until I got home and took off the wrapping paper. On the paper, someone had written "If you liked Station Eleven, The Stand, and The Dreamers, then give me a try!"

I had never done this before, but gave it a shot. Was not disappointed. I had never even heard of this book before, so I went into it completely cold. Great storytelling, some well-foreshadowed "surprises" that served the story well, and were not meant to be twists for the sake of twists.

Might have to do this blind-date thing more often.

Brad Thor's Summer 2018 Fiction Pick for THE TODAY SHOW! NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY Elle • Refinery29 • PopSugar • Verge "Eerie, dark, and compelling, [The Book of M] will not disappoint lovers of The Passage and Station Eleven." --Booklist WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP TO REMEMBER? Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself. One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too. Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless. As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure. Like The Passage and Station Eleven, this haunting, thought-provoking, and beautiful novel explores fundamental questions of memory, connection, and what it means to be human in a world turned upside down.

Shona Tiger

** spoiler alert **
           An uncomfortable read, but such a magnificent and imaginative story! Managed to be startled towards the end, so that was a great bonus.

Alfredo santos

Amazing story. I felt it at times a bit long but the plot was interesting enough to keep going. 
For me it was a Birdbox meets The Walking Dead meets Fantasia. Didn't want to put it down, specially at the beginning.

This is probably the first time a book has kept me up at night. And it wasn't because I was reading it; I couldn't stop thinking about the ending. 
(view spoiler)[ I kept thinking about Max and what happened to her. At one point, I forgot that Ory ever met Ursula that I wondered if Max and Ursula were twins and I just missed the detail. I had to come here and search for reviews with spoilers so I could get my doubts answered! I had a LOTTT of thoughts at the end though:
-When the amnesiac said, "Are you ready to meet Max again?" I WASN'T READY. I breathed slowly for a full five minutes until I felt I was ready to meet Max! BUT THAT WAS ONE HELL OF AN ENDING. I miss Max. *sigh*
-I thought about Ory and how determined he was to find Max, and when he did, he just left her. IT WAS STILL MAX. If a person can love someone if they lost their memories, why can't Ory love Max whose memories are just inside Ursula??? I really don't understand human nature. It would've been one hell of a love story though...
-I could be wrong with the time jumps here and there, but wasn't Naz still too young to be with Ory? It was kinda weird, but well, love is love :)
-I loved the characters of Vienna and Malik, they were the cutest father-daughter duo, I just loved them so much.
-Ugh, Hemu Joshi. I loved his stories about the Indian Gods and Gajarajan! It was with so much pity that I read the chapters he was in; knowing his end was coming, but not knowing when, but also being at peace with it. Peanut butter, just ironic.
-What I don't understand AT ALL is HOW did the amnesiac get the shadow of an elephant?! I get why they started calling him Gajarajan, in honour of the elephant but it is mysterious how he got that shadow.
 (hide spoiler)]

One of the amazing things about this book was how every chapter ends with a bang. I don't find that in many books anymore. The chapters in this book are short and how they end makes you want to keep reading more. I felt that the book didn't really address the phenomenon of The Forgetting came about; I waited till the end wondering if they would answer that question, but at least they could find a solution to the incident.
I really liked this book and for a debut, it was pretty GREAT! You can bet I'd be one of those people who gets her next book first.

Fun fact- I was dazed by excitement when I found this book at my favourite bookstore; I had just come across a review about this book and the amazing reviews it got, I couldn't just own the ebook. I had to OWN THE PAPERBACK (there was no hardcover :() Best read of 2018, so far!

Story Eater

Okay. I'm not going to use pretentious, clichéd words like "noteworthy," "groudbreaking," "gripping," blah, blah, blah, etc. 

I will say, "wow." This was a long book. It was very detailed. It had copious amounts of characters and subplots to follow. The print was tiny. It was weird. To accurately describe the narrative I just read, I would have to say this book feels like a cross between Gabriel García Márquez and Kazuo Ishiguro: Magical Realism meets non-tech sci-fi. 

I found myself having to re-read passages because I did not understand what was happening-just like the characters had to recalibrate themselves when stuff happened in the book. The weirdness crept up on me. As the plot progressed, so did the deconstruction of the characters. I don't know how many times the people that saw me reading this book asked me why the title was The Book of M. I had to tell them, until the very last page, "I don't know."

I found one drawback to the book for me: just about every page or every other page, especially in the first half of the book, had the f-word in it. I feel with a plot this clever, that word so often brought the brilliance of the work to a dull glimmer. At about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way in, it faded away. Other than that, this book will be a playground for Narratology studies.

3.5 stars.

Man, I really wanted to love this. The beginning didn't grab my attention immediately, but hooked me after a couple chapters, and held my interest until about halfway through. It really stalled, however, as a lot of it felt pretty drawn out. There were a lot of travelling sequences with not a lot of meat, and the library scene confused the hell out of me.

Once the story becomes set in New Orleans, it turns BATSHIT. So many fantasy/magical elements that weren't explained well, leaving me wondering what the hell I was reading. I really wish things were explained more, as there's nothing that bugs me more than an intriguing story that's derailed by nonsensical events.

I will say though, the ending saved the book for me. (view spoiler)[The twist of Max's memories and shadow being attached to Ursula was amazing but heartbreaking. My heart honestly aches. (hide spoiler)] This is what bumped up the rating for me. It's the most emotion I felt the whole book.

Overall, really intriguing premise, I just wish there were fewer fantasy elements or, if they had to be included as they were, they needed to be bound by certain rules and explanations. For example, (view spoiler)[how was one person able to make the whole marketplace vanish, when other people were forgetting plenty of other things with no recourse? Shouldn't it have had to be a collective forgetting? (hide spoiler)] I wish this and other things like it were explained in more detail.

A vivid, touching and original debut, following the effects of an extraordinary catastrophe on very ordinary people.Set in the near future, THE BOOK OF M tells the story of a mysterious natural disaster that causes people's shadows to disappear and, shortly thereafter, their memories.The phenomenon imbues its victims with strange magic, but at a horrible price: it robs them of a memory each time they use it. Many try to resist the power, but the temptation is too great.As the shadowless victims forget more and more of who they are, reality begins to bend to reflect their fractured recollections, plunging the world into a terrifying, ever-shifting alternate landscape.

Olivera Mitić

3.75/5⭐

Početak me je oduvao jer je imao apsolutno sve dobre elemente postapokaliptične priče koja prati mali broj preživelih, što je meni čak potencijalno omiljeni zaplet. Šepard je sjajno oslikala emotivnu stranu smaka sveta i nije se ustručavala da predstavi neizbežne gubitke ljudi i slamanje srca. 

Ipak, kako je roman napredovao, tako smo se sve više udaljavali od originalne postavke. Na kraju smo se, izgleda, našli u romanu magičnog realizma i izgubila se veza sa prvobitnim zapletom. To je verovatno i moglo da se pretpostavi računajući kako je koncipiran sam gubitak sećanja, ali meni nije leglo i dobila sam utisak kao da su nasilno spojene dve potpuno različite priče koje, osim glavnih likova, nemaju previše dodirnih tačaka. 

Žao mi je što mi ovo nije leglo onoliko koliko je moglo, posebno kad se uzme u obzir da sam već dugo planirala da pročitam The Book of M, ali tu se već ne može ništa uraditi. Mislim da ću nastaviti trend čitanja distopijskih romana u kojima ljudi gube sećanja i uskoro pročitati i The Memory Police, pa je zajedno sa ovom knjigom uporediti sa Severance, koja mi je možda i najbolja knjiga koju sam uzela u ruke 2020. godine.

Lottie oliver

Review to come!!! But absolutely phenomenal

Bree

So I tried twice to read this book. I tried and I failed miserabley. As much as I love the idea of the story and where it could possibly go, the writing just wasn't... It for me..I didn't get that umph or that spark of excitement that I get when I fall in love with a book. 
I did try hard but I can confirm that I will not be reading or even trying to read it again.

The Book of M

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