The Elsewhere Express

THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS by Samantha Sotto Yambao is an interesting story. The marketing describes it as a story about a magical train that helps you find your purpose. I see it more as a lovely story about grief, guilt, loss, and love. The train is simply the backdrop in which Q and Raya must explore certain issues they've been avoiding for years.

To me, THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS is such a lovely idea. A train made up of nothing but the daydreams and random thoughts that flood our brains all day, every day is magic incarnate. Ms. Yambao does an excellent job of bringing this magical train to life as well. From the bubbles containing music to the scents made of memories, she takes the charm and mystique of train travel and enhances it with show more beauty and enchantment.

But, to me, THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS is not about the two main characters finding their purpose but rather confronting their grief. Raya is stuck in a malaise of guilt and obligation after the loss of her brother, whereas Q is dealing with his own grief. As they work together to save this magical train from unexpected danger, they must confront their deepest secrets and make some tough, life-altering decisions.

Watching them struggle as they do so is cathartic in many ways. After all, so many of us have regrets and carry guilt over certain things, and an equal number of us find our lives rather stagnant for various reasons. It is easy to recognize yourself in either character, which means it is easy to confront your own issues alongside them. What makes it so THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS so cathartic is watching their decisions heal them because if they can do it, so can we.

I will admit that I have some issues with certain ideas behind THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS, but to talk about them would spoil parts of the story. Let’s just say that the idea of finding your purpose on the train as explained by the Conductor and everything we learn about the identity of the Conductor (and other train riders/employees) doesn’t sit well with me. I have a different interpretation of everything we learn than maybe Ms. Yambao intended.

I enjoyed THE ELSEWHERE EXPRESS more than I thought I would and not for the reasons expressed in the marketing synopsis. I found the story poignant, cathartic, and surprising. The train is simply magical, but that isn’t what makes the story so special. That is due to watching two broken people heal and obtain some much-needed closure. show less

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley from review.

Thoughts: I really loved Yambao''s Water Moon when I read it last year and was super excited to read this new book by her. Unfortunately, I just could not get into this story. After struggling with this for a week and a half (kind of unheard of for me to be reading a book that long!) I was still only 65% of the way through and decided to call it quits. I found the world here incredibly hard to visualize and found the two main characters very hard to engage with.

The story alternates between three viewpoints: Raya, Q, and Lily. Raya is a daughter that was born to a family who wanted single child, a son. They got a son with a chronic show more health disorder and had a second child, Raya, in case their oldest son needed a transplant or something. When tragedy strikes Raya is left feeling that she doesn't have a purpose in life. Q is an amazing painter who is loosing his sight. As he shuts down his galleries and wraps up his final painting project, he has no idea what is next for him. Both Raya and Q are riding the train home when they end up somewhere else on a strange magical train, the Elsewhere Express. Lily is supposed to provide all newcomers to the Elsewhere Express with an orientation, but from the moment Q and Raya arrive, nothing goes as planned.

Initially, I really thought Q and Raya were going to be interesting characters, I liked their backgrounds and challenges. However, once we get to the Elsewhere Express we get thrust into an extremely long and drawn out intro to the train that is confusing and constantly being interrupted by events that don't make sense. I had trouble picturing this world within the train and figuring out what was going on. I tried to kind of "go with it," but that just led me to being completely ambivalent about the story. Raya and Q as characters get lost in the odd world and background of the Elsewhere Express (both lost as in physically lost but also lost as in the location takes over the story and we lose the characters into the background).

The system and magic of the Elsewhere Express is still being "setup" nearly half way through the book. You don't start to get an actual plot until about the 50% mark when you find out something has boarded the train that shouldn't be on there. This really pushes any character development and engagement to the background. While I really love kooky and creative metaphorical worlds, this was a bit of a stretch for me to picture, and I really struggled to follow the story. This book should have been right up my alley, but somehow it missed the mark and left me floundering.

Added to all of the above is the fact that the chapters here are extremely short (most taking 1-3 minutes to read on my Kindle). This made the story feel very fractured since you are switching POV with each chapter. It also gave me a lot of chances to stop reading the book, which I often took because I just wasn't that into the story.

I finally realized I am not at all curious about what will happen to Q and Raya, I am not at all invested in this story, and I don't really care about the mysterious guest on the train. So, I stopped reading this. I find this really disappointing because I really enjoyed Water Moon and how creative that world wasy. The Elsewhere Express just feels like it goes a step too far in ambiguous world-building, and it feels like it leaves its characters behind. I normally give DNF books 3 stars, but I got so far into this one and had so many things I found disappointing that I decided to go with 2 stars.

My Summary (2/5): Overall this wasn't for me. I loved Yambao's last book "Water Moon", but really struggled with this book. The characters seem intriguing at first but get shunted to the background once we board the train. The train seems like an amazing and magical place but then nearly half the book is spent setting up all the rules and magical properties of it. I ended up just struggling to picture anything and really not caring. I was thrilled to read this and left feeling disappointed. show less

The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao is a meandering meditation on carrying grief and dealing with many types of loss all while on a very whimsical, time-defying train.
I liked Raya and Q, the main characters, although I wanted to know more about Q. Despite being a good person, he seems to have feelings of anger maybe beyond the scope of what was filled in by the story. His darkness had to come from and be more than the obvious. I did appreciate the friendship and far preferred it over the instalove relationship in Water Moon, the previous title by this author. I found Raya to be fairly relatable.
One of the issues with this type of story is that everything is so fantastical that it all has to be described and explained. In show more this scene-to-scene chase of a stowaway narrative, it becomes a little exhausting and slows the plot down. It is honestly probably too long and could be pared down a bit for a better reading experience. Toward the last quarter, things did finally pick up as more becomes clear.
Despite some of the issues, I did enjoy the overall story, some of the amazingly imaginative fantasy, and metaphors for loss and healing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the eARC. show less

When I read Samantha's earlier work, Water Moon, I really like her fantastical worldbuilding, but I found the characters to be rather dull/uninteresting. The same thing is happening with this book, but the worldbuilding was a bit too much for me at times since it was difficult to visualize things/understand how things work and the twist with Raya was hard for me to understand because it was poorly explained. I still enjoyed the book and I really like the concept of a train made out of thoughts, but she definitely should have cooled it with some of the ideas and the concept of getting into the train was way just flat out confusing/nonsensical. More on the characters, they basically get pushed to the side and the story was more focused on show more the train's wackiness rather than Raya or Q which is incredibly unfortunate because I found their backstories very interesting show less