The Book of Elsewhere (2024) by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville

 Book Review

The Book of Elsewhere (2024)

by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville

  Back in 2021 Reeves launched his personal IP project of BRZRKR or "beserker"- a comic book series about a deathless eternal warrior who is 77 thousand years old. I like Reeves well enough, but I haven't been a regular reader of comic books since high school and the logline didn't sound particularly inventive. Then, last month, The Book of Elsewhere was released as a "Keanu Reeves novel actually written by China Mieville."  That description caught my eye, as did several reviews which came to the conclusion that The Book of Elsewhere was way more interesting than one would expect.

  English author Chine Mieville has been on my radar for years but I haven't really honed in on him, maybe because this is his first novel in twelve years, or maybe it's because he has been categorized as a writer of fantasy instead of being properly categorized as a writer who bridges fantasy/science fiction/social science literature.  If I'd know what he was actually about I would have read through his bibliography years ago.  Based on The Book of Elsewhere, I immediately went to start with his back catalog.  \

   Somewhat confusingly, The Book of Elsewhere is described as taking place in an "alternate universe" of the BRZRKR comic, which suggests it's non-canon, but since canon is a twelve issue comic book about an immortal warrior who is also sad, my sense is that the alternate universe conceit isn't important.  The set up is that  B or UNrat- who you have to imagine as Keanu Reeves, exists in the present day as a "super soldier" for the US government.  He goes out on Black-ops, where due to the vagaries of his bezerker state, he sometimes kills both friend and foe indiscriminately.  When he comes out of his fugue state he is often sad about what he has done.  He is also sad about being unable to die.   Part of the back story here is that human civilization is actually tens of thousands of years old, and we just haven't found out about the part that came before ancient Mesopotamia.

    The book shifts between the present and the past.  Besides the main dude, there is the cast of contemporary characters, soldiers he fights with and scientists the government has recruited to study him.  There is a similarly eternal pig who has been trying to kill him over and over again for centuries. There is a "life-based" cult who worship the pig and seek to kill B/UNrat- again for millennia.  

   The main Audiobook narrator is Edoardo Bellerini who is also the Audiobook narrator for the My Struggle series by Knausgaard, which is pretty insane- just writing as someone who listened to the Audiobook for My Struggle.  This was actually a killer Audiobook because of the shifting voices back and forth through time.  As other reviewers have noted, it is, indeed, way better than it has any right to be.  I hope they make a movie/tv show out of this book rather than the comic.