These Bright and Perilous Designs by Felicia Martínez
Publisher: Thinking Ink Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, LGBTQ, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeA layered, lyrical, and heartbreaking novella.
In the near future, a grieving son uncovers the secret journal entries of his genius mother-and the life and love story she tells is layered across multiple universes.
In one universe, Phaedra falls in love-tragic and doomed-with Hippolytus. In another, the pair are brilliant and misunderstood software engineers whose creations threaten the world.
In ancient Greece, in the near future, in every world, some things remain true: Phaedra and Hippolytus’ love is doomed, and Phaedra’s scorned husband Theseus will do anything to seize their designs.
Greed is a disease that ruins everything it touches.
The dual timelines complemented each other beautifully. Generally, I tend to prefer one timeline over the other when I read stories written like this one, but in this case I enjoyed both of them equally because of how detailed their descriptions of the characters and their relationships with one another were. Honestly, they could have both stood alone as novellas, but they worked even better together here.
I struggled with the stream-of-consciousness writing style because of how it interacted with the plot development. There were times when I wasn’t sure what was going on with the characters due to how few concrete details were being shared in those scenes about what they were currently experiencing. This is something I’m saying as a reader who was quite excited to read this book due to my love of Greek mythology, but unfortunately the main storylines never quite gelled together for me.
One of my favorite things about this tale was how well it explained the original myth that inspired this modern-day retelling. There was no reason to read about the plot or anyone featured in it ahead of time for readers who may not be familiar with it because of how much effort was put into explaining who all of the characters were and what conflicts they were facing. This is something I love seeing in this type of book, and I only wish it were more common than it currently is.
These Bright and Perilous Designs was creative.
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