I almost stopped reading Felix Gilman’s new magical sci-fi
drama, The Revolutions, on a number of occasions. Not a
terrible book, it can, however, make for a frustrating read, and though it
largely makes up for it near the end, the beginning is a slog. Gilman won a
fair amount of acclaim and stunning reviews for 2010’s The Half-Made
World and 2012’s The Rise of Ransom City, and
while his latest novel is an ambitious attempt to try to come up with something
new and different, it never lives up to his earlier hype. The book tells a
unique story, but it is the manner in which it is told that derails the
narrative.
