Review by Booklist Review
In this new outing from Tidhar (Neom, 2022), a mathematician has gone missing, and his wife, Delia, who grew up on an island in the South Pacific, thinks she has a lead. Before he disappeared, her husband was seeking out a book she saw once on her island: Lode Stars, by Eugene Charles Hartley, a science-fiction writer who became the creator of a sketchy mystical cult, the Church of All-Seeing Eyes, which believes that we're all afterimages, data, memories, in a black hole, and only a privileged few can escape eventual erasure. A rare-book dealer agrees to help Delia only to be pulled into a web of shady characters and rich collectors who will do anything to get their hands on Lode Stars. It's an intriguing story that reads well and pays tribute to while also poking fun at some of the greats of science fiction. This short, twisty novel showcases Tidhar's talent at bringing vast concepts together into one satisfyingly ambiguous story, drawing on the human fear of the vast emptiness of space.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
World Fantasy Award winner Tidhar (Neom) wows with a mind-bending existential adventure that seeks to answer the age-old question of why humanity exists. In 2001 London, four characters converge around the lost science fiction book Lode Stars, written decades earlier by Eugene Charles Hartley. It's rumored that Hartley, who also founded the sketchy Church of God's All-Seeing Eyes, discovered the "true nature of reality" and encoded it into the novel, which follows heroine Delia as she searches for her father. The novel also posits that humans are reconstructed memories swirling inside black holes, which are the eyes of God, and that alien "eaters" feed on these reconstituted humans. Only possession of Lode Stars itself can ward off this danger. Albino mathematician Delia Welegtabit, who happens to have the same name as Lode Star's heroine, is drawn into the hunt for the book by her husband, obsessive mathematician Levi. When Levi disappears, Delia turns to Daniel Chase, a rare book collector, to investigate--but then Daniel is himself kidnapped by mobster Oskar Lens, who believes in the book's power and wants it to protect him from the eaters. Toggling between perspectives and the ethereal text of Lode Stars, Tidhar's slippery metafictional tale lyrically entangles scientific fact, mysticism, and mental illness. This is a knockout. Agent: John Berlyne, Zeno Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Tidhar's (Neom) novel begins with obsession over an infamous, possibly mythical book that disappears upon reading and leaves death in its wake. The book, Lode Stars, if it even exists, either brings a truth too terrible to bear to an unsuspecting world or is a great hoax perpetrated by an inveterate con man. A mathematician has lost her grip on reality, a criminal collector has killed himself, and an entire religion has been founded in pursuit of the truth that is supposed to lie within its pages. This novel is one wild ride, combining the purported text of the infamous book itself with a paean to the Golden Age of SF that produced it. Longtime SF readers will easily spot the real-world parallels, but that doesn't stop Tidhar from telling a compelling story of obsession and greed that will make readers think about the nature of reality. VERDICT Readers who fell hard into the metafiction of The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge or the you-are-there gossip of Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee will likely be as obsessed with this book as the characters are with Lode Stars.--Marlene Harris
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
When a mathematician goes missing while searching for a legendary science-fiction novel, his wife hires a disabled book dealer to bring him home. Maybe the universe's energy really does get recycled, because this eclectic speculative novel manages to be simultaneously contemporary, nostalgic, and retro in a way that wouldn't be unfamiliar to the SF icons to which it pays tribute. It's a whodunit in structure but steeped in heavy philosophy with a few Beat flourishes to boot. Delia Welegtabit grew up on a remote island where her proximity to the stars gifted her with a love of mathematics. In London circa 2001, Delia is married to Levi Armstrong, another young mathematician who dreams of making sense of the universe. After Levi disappears in search of a long-lost copy of an obscure 1962 SF novel called Lode Stars by Eugene Charles Hartley, Delia hires Daniel Chase, whose prodigious literary knowledge is blunted by his prosopagnosia (face-blindness), to find him. Immediately, Daniel is summoned by Oskar Lens, a shadowy underworld figure whose delusions and paranoia make him a very dangerous adversary indeed. Stylistically, we're deep into Jonathan Lethem territory (Chandler-esque detective story with a heavy dose of weird) before Tidhar pulls back the curtain on the wizard himself, Hartley, whose book speculates that we're all sentient memories swirling inside a black hole. Menace endures, as predatory parasites dubbed "eaters" prey on these sentient memories unless one possesses a coded copy of Lode Stars, which protects its charge. In a familiar turn, Robert Heinlein drunkenly suggests to Hartley that if he wants to make millions, he should really start his own religion, which inspires the author to found the Scientology-esque Church of the All-Seeing Eyes before disappearing himself. The plot may collapse into noodle-bending nonsense, but Tidhar's rich portrayal of the pulpy golden age of science fiction, distinctive characters, and nimble turns of phrase make for a cool confection. A nifty artifact about the perils and prognostications of the science fictional world. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
