Hey all. I got the Kirkus review for The Work of Restless Nights, and believe it or not there was nary a negative comment to be found! This one had me nervous, I’ll admit. The whole setup for self-published authors, any author really, is primed for inducing anxiety. You pay Kirkus a not so insubstantial amount of money and wait for a month or two to see what kind of review will emerge. Once available, you are given opportunity to read through the review and decide whether it will be shown the light of day or forever relegated to some forgotten server. If it had been the latter, I could only hope it would’ve been lucky enough to be stored next to the mothballed likes of Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme. Thankfully, it has been released to the wild. It can be found here in its entirety: Kirkus Review. If you’re not wanting to read the whole thing, some highlights are below.
“The impressive debut of author Weald … The robot-uprising SF plotline is, literally, as old as robots in literature. The concept of a tech-soaked urban sprawl with overlay environments of virtual- and augmented-reality enjoyed by citizens wired directly into the digital mesh is cyberpunk 101. Weald does not radically reinvent such concepts, but thinks their aspects through with a seriousness of purpose and nuanced characterizations. Throughout, one finds the efforts of a serious literary novelist lavished on material that otherwise would fuel scores of sci-fi potboiler paperbacks and Japanese anime … Lengthy, immersive cyber-SF that puts fresh life into a familiar operating system.” – Kirkus Reviews
Definitely stoked! The full review shows that the reviewer really got my novel, really understood what I was trying to do, and I’m beyond grateful for that. I wanted to take familiar concepts, sci-fi/cyberpunk staples, and make them my own, think them through. Certainly the first time I’ve ever been associated with the term “serious literary novelist”. I’ll admit to myriad feelings arising from the “literary” connotation. I enjoy writing and consuming stories more often than not of what I would call the genre variety, a variety that has, at times, been maligned by certain holier than thou literary types. I got a minor in creative writing in undergrad, and one of my professors had a smidge of that prejudice, often wondering aloud why myself and another genre inclined hopeful needed, or even wanted, such fantastical elements to our stories. I think there was even a class whose discussion had turned to asking whether Stephen King could be allowed into the hallowed halls of the “literary” classification, whether academia could deign to bless him so, a discussion I find to be rather asinine. What is defined as “literary” changes over time given historical context and impact, along with the whims of the powers that be. Things that were considered populist at the time of release become literary years later, just look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Restricting high art or value to that of the literary world at any given moment is bound to make one look foolish in the end. I’m thinking of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy as another prime example of incredible genre fiction that should be included as literary if anything should. Suffice to say, problems arise when confusing value with subjective taste when it comes to stories. Stories are incredible in all their myriad forms, literary or genre or anything else. See my blog post In Defense of Genre (And Everything Else) for my thoughts there.
Anyway, if it wasn’t obvious, I’ve had a bit of a chip on my shoulder ever since that professor thought of my writing as lesser simply because it included fantastical elements. This review gave me that warm fuzzy feeling as a result. It was a much needed drink of water in my writing journey, a journey that often feels like wandering through a desert alone. Even so, I’ll also admit to it making me wonder about the value of the literary classification in its modern incarnation. If it is to denote a certain style, deep characterization or playful prose or a tackling of broader questions of humanity, fantastic. But if it is to assign value, I can do without. And it’s not like any of those descriptors are unique to the literary world anyway.
All that to be said, I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have gotten this review.
All the best,
M. Weald
M. Weald 