The All-Consuming World

I received a paperback ARC of The All-Consuming World, authored by Cassandra Khaw from Erewhon Books, for review consideration. Cover art: Ashe Samuels, cover design: Samira Iravani, interior design: Cassandra Farrin and Leah Marsh, solar eclipses: Lalan/Shutterstock, bullet holes: vectorwin/Shutterstock. What follows below is my honest review freely given.

I rated this debut novel 4 stars.

You cannot prepare for this book. I was not prepared for this book, and I jumped at the chance to review this early, at anything written by Khaw early really, because anything written by them so far has knocked my cotton/polyester blend socks right the fuck off every single time, thank you very much. Nothing But Blackened Teeth will be released show more October 19th; haunted house, Japanese folklore! I was respectfully declined for that one on NetGalley. You win some, you lose some. I will have to wait for release day like everyone else. Impatiently!

This is a polarizing read, Khaw had a vision for their space opera and did not hold back on anything. There will be words that you have to look up to understand. There is a *lot* of cursing (sorry, but not really, it’s just cursing, like?). The reader will be a little disheveled trying to keep everything in order, at least I did. And all the horrifying implications weighing on you from the technologies and lore being fed to you throughout the novel! This future makes the Matrix look like a scholastic book fair day and you have twenty dollars, I’m not even playing. I would love to read more set in this universe, fingers crossed they may have some novellas brewing that touch on the mission that is mentioned throughout, or maybe on the ageships’ creation. But polarizing. Either you will put in the effort and get to that ending, man, or you will not, siting whatever reason that made you quit, which will be a valid one. I adored this book and still could only give it 4 stars, because I know it will not be something everyone can just pick up and enjoy, as much as I wish it was. Honestly there were times I didn’t know what I feel about it, I didn’t mind having to look up so many words, but was I missing too much to get it? Was it over my head too much? Some of it probably, yeah. I think that may take a few re-reads, which I like to do with books that hit me the right way. I re-read a lot of my books. But the emotional kick to this novel, the pain, the bond between people—this book has so many parts that made me cry. And that ending. The culmination of it all. Khaw had a vision and whether you make it to the end or not to read it, as someone who did, it’s spectacular. I’m starstruck. show less

I adored this book, from the initial (incredibly) violent opening, to the chaotic ending. I would not claim to understand what was going on for significant parts of the story, and I absolutely did not care. The shared past of the characters, the darkness they were either surviving or were drawn back to, these were sketched in minimalist detail, adding to an atmosphere of unreality.

The viewpoint characters are regularly unreliable, not least because at least one of them has had some kind of control put on their thoughts. It is coercive and, at times, downright terrifying, in how one character is forced to respond to another.

Viewpoints vary between humans and AI. Because it is a far future in space, sometimes those are closer to each show more other than to current humans, and are joyfully alien.

I'm not putting in content warnings, but recommend people who are cautious about violence and body horror to check what other people have said. show less

Violent, gory, sadistic. Almost incomprehensible prose. It took about a quarter of the book for me to start piecing together what the hell was going on.

$10 words every other paragraph, sometimes every other sentence, sometimes every other word:

“The tenebrosity doesn’t, however, linger. With every invocation of Verdigris’ name, it sallows, lightening to the juvenile colors of recent ecchymosis, that suppurating purple-yellow of ruined capillaries and beat-up flesh, an exhausted pigment which, fortunately, does not linger.”

There are three or four lines of dialog that advance the plot interspersed between dozens of paragraphs about each character’s internal state, world view, history, whatever. We get it, we get it already. show more Maya’s totally in thrall to Rita, even though Rita’s a monster and doesn’t give a shit about Maya. And yes, the writing’s luscious, even though pretentious, but honestly, let’s get this show on the road.

Grungy, obfuscating, irritating as hell. Finally, at the end, I loved it. show less

The All-Consuming World is a thrillingly violent, guttingly emotional space opera replete with outlaws, AI, and all manner of things and people broken beyond repair and ready to go down fighting. Gothic, Sapphic, pyrrhic--this is a mesmerising and wonderfully baroque addition to the cyberpunk canon.

There's a wonderful rhythm to Cassandra Khaw's prose. Their language--a heady mixture of poetic description and gleeful profanity--is gloriously seductive, hooking readers in the first paragraph and never letting go. This book is worth reading almost for the prose alone, at least for readers who enjoy high levels of stylization and atmosphere, though it has far more to offer than simple vibes and elaborate style.

This might well appeal to show more fans of Tamsyn Muir; although The All-Consuming World is very much its own book and not very much like any other, some of the feelings it evokes reminded me of how I felt reading Harrow the Ninth. I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy dramatic stories of far-flung adventure and emotional upheaval--and who do not shy away from stories brimming with toxic relationships and trauma.

I received a free e-ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

I have very mixed feelings about this. It’s definitely one of those books that I can wax melodic and rant about in consecutive breaths; I've been seesawing about it ever since I finished it.

The All-Consuming World is a glorious mash-up of familiar tropes, unhesitating violence, relentless trauma and endlessly, graphically inventive words deployed as brutal poetry to grind and cut. I loved Maya, utterly compromised enforcer (and how often do we see a woman in that role? Let alone as the protagonist?) and queen of terrible, terrible decisions. I loved the throughline of Maya being pushed to challenge her programming and acknowledge her feelings for people other than Rita. The non-stop over the top action was absurd and entertaining as show more the wall to wall swearing.

But the book also felt overwritten and under-considered. The prose was so dense with obscure terms it became exhausting. Whenever I stopped to think about it, the world-building and even some of the plot lost coherence. And it just sort of crash stops, rather than ending - sure, it's an all guns blazing leave the imagination to the imagination and the reader's level of optimism, but it's so abrupt I briefly wondered if my advance copy was missing a paragraph. It left me irritated and dissatisfied (a first; I usually love Khaw's work).

I'd still - cautiously - recommend it. Maya is worth the price of admission and at its best, the knife-sharp prise is a joy, all visceral similes and skewed metaphors, familiar sayings twisted to unnerving new uses. Bring a dictionary, you'll need it. Or don't; I could probably – in retrospect – have adopted Maya’s stubbornness and let the unfamiliar terms wash past me, snatching the gist from context.

Full review

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Trigger Warnings

There are multiple abusive relationships in this book (physical and emotional). When the synopsis says the characters are working through their trauma, it is not a figure of speech, it is also not past tense. The abuser is very much still in play. Trauma is not treated as a plot, and I would suggest reading my review of the CYMERA festival to see Khaw’s thoughts on how trauma is treated as a subject in the media. There is also a lot of violence, violent language, some torture scenes, death, loss of limbs and physical trauma – keep in mind that the characters are mercenaries who are clones so death and damage to their physical forms happens often.

don’t think I’ve ever read a show more book that has pulled me in so many directions when it’s come to opinions. I use a plugin for my reviews, and it has the option to divide a review into customised sections. I’ve never felt the need to use it until reading this book. There were parts of The All-Consuming World that I struggled with, primarily the hard science and technical parts. I’m not a huge fan of hard science fiction and while I could understand where Khaw was going with the cyberia aspects, some of it was a little too jargon heavy for me at times.

Thankfully, these sections of the book were just the right length in my opinion. They were enough to give context to the humongous scope of Khaw’s fascinating world-building in The All-Consuming World, which we need to remember doesn’t just cover a planet, it covers the entire universe. We’re in a future that is far past our one little earth, and probably our own little galaxy at this point. With that in mind, Khaw has given themselves a playground to challenge pretty much everything and unlike a lot of authors they have gone into the sandbox and gone wild. I use the gaming terminology, sandbox, because Khaw comes from a gaming background, and it shows in their writing. There is no hesitation to get stuck in and create something entirely new out of nothing. Here is someone who is not worried about whether it conforms with a genre; they’ve made their world and as long as it fits in that world then it works – which is exactly as it should be. It’s a lesson a LOT of writers need to learn.

In this universe, artificial intelligences rule. But these aren’t the type of AI’s we conjure up when we think of AI, they’re not the human exterminating kind or the robotic kind. They are completely sentient beings who are made of data. They grab voices and sound bites from the twentieth and twenty-first century to use as voices, they create avatars to give themselves a virtual or physical body. And they control the universe through various organisations, each one having its own fundamental beliefs, very akin to human civilisation. Humans still exist, although as clones or cyborgs rather than the humans we are familiar with. The AI’s, known as ageships, have mixed feelings about them. Some are enamoured with them, some hate them, some ignore them. The ageships aren’t that different from humans, save for that they’re made from data and instead of bodies and brains made of tissue, they are made of processing power instead.

How the universe came to be is not covered in The All-Consuming World, and it doesn’t need to be. The how and why isn’t important. It’s the who and the what, because this is a story about a group of people and how they interact with each other. It’s also very much a story about abusive relationships and manipulation, and it’s an important story to tell. Khaw captures the narrative of an abusive relationship perfectly. What people don’t realise is when you’re in a relationship that is abusive, especially emotionally abusive, you’re in a perfect world for most of it. Your abuser takes on the role of a saviour. They are the only person who understands you, who wants you or can handle you. Without them, you will be alone, and you are lucky to have them. With them, everything is complete and feels right.

In The All-Consuming World, the victim is emotionally and physically abused, and we watch as their perfect world begins to fall apart. It’s like if you’re wearing glasses/sunglasses, and it starts to rain, except in this case the drops of rain are problems with the relationship. You wipe away the first droplet, then the next, but eventually there are too many for you to keep wiping off, and you have to take the glasses off. It’s then that you realise that the lenses are tinted, that you’ve been seeing things wrong the entire time. You try to put the glasses back on, but they don’t fit quite the same way any more.

Khaw takes us through all those movements while the gang gets back together and starts planning one last mission together. There are secrets upon secrets, reveals and manipulations, and there is a lot of violence.

This is a violent novel in every way. From the language to the fight scenes, to the way it takes hold of societal and gender norms and tosses them out the window. In a previous review, I commented on curse words being overused and how there was no reason for them. In The All-Consuming World, I didn’t feel this at all. I felt like every single curse word was filled with emotion. They were punctuated with frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, desperation and so on. They have purpose; they are expression. In a world where clones are considered completely expendable, language is one of the few things these characters have complete control over. As a disabled woman who doesn’t have autonomy over her body, I completely understand that. When you don’t have control over aspects of your life you seize control anyway you can, and while to many people the violent language in The All-Consuming World seems unneeded, it’s actually a very clever technique employed by Khaw to show this.

One final thing I love about The All-Consuming World, and I haven’t intentionally left this to last, it’s just the way the review has gone; the cast is made up of genderfluid characters and queer women. There is not a male human in sight, there is only an AI called Pimento who identifies as male. As AI’s, the ageships do not conceive gender identity the same way as humans do. Some of them choose a gender identity as an avatar preference, while others seem to flick between the two or even a combination of the two at any given moment. Human characteristics in general seem to be more of a game to them. They collect human aesthetical data, like we would collect items in a game to customise a character or avatar. It is both unnerving and fascinating, especially as they are able to whip out anything in seconds due to being computers with virtual bodies.

This is not a quick read or a beach read for entertainment’s sake. I studied Science Fiction Literature, and Cyberia and Psychobabble (two completely separate courses) at University level and The All-Consuming World reminds me of some of the texts we studied for those courses. I think there is this assumption that because something is fiction, it is going to be and has to be an easy read. That is not the case, nor should it be. The All-Consuming World is being promoted as recommended for fans of Ursula LeGuin and I would agree with that sentiment, I also found it reminiscent of William Gibson and Frederik Pohl.

As I mention in my review, I struggled with the jargon even though I quite literally studied Cyberia and Psychobabble at University level, so it does not surprise me that quite a few people did not finish the book due to this. I would urge people to try to move past it though as there is a lot more to the book and once you get past the initial technological confusion the character development is fascinating.

There is a lot to unpack in this book, and it’s designed to make you think, to react, and it’s not going to leave you with lots of warm fuzzy feelings at the end. There may be some, because it’s not all horror and blood, but like everything in The All-Consuming World it’s complicated.

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I really wanted to like this book. Angry queer cyborgs vs. AIs in space? Sounded right up my alley! But the mix of over-the-top violence and excessive use of obscure words (seriously, there was a word I had to look up on every page) really didn't work for me. There's a compelling plot thread with Maya and her not-really-consensual relationship to Rita, and I liked some of the supporting characters. But the pacing of the "A plot" was very odd; it felt like we spent 80% of the book getting the band together and then rushed perfunctorily through whatever it was they were supposed to do. And with all the hinting about their last mission, it never quite became clear exactly what happened, before the ending sort of abruptly crashed in. show more Pimento was fun, though. show less