The Book of Love by Kelly Link

 I've been a fan of Kelly Link's weird, speculative short stories for a very long time, so I was thrilled to hear she published her first novel. The Book of Love is about three teenagers (and something else) who come back after being dead for a year, only everyone now thinks they were studying abroad. They are told by two mysterious men to complete certain tasks if they want to stay alive, while dealing with false memories, magical rivalries, a dangerous goddess, rock bands, horniness, and what to do with the rest of their lives.

There was a lot to like about the story, but it never quite gelled for me. Much of the plot dealt with preventing the goddess from finding the key that would allow her to restore her faded power, and several of the magical people serving her were looking for escape, but the stakes as presented swung from preventing great evil (she feeds on dead souls and treats living people as marionettes) to simply obtaining one's freedom regardless of the consequences to everyone else. Teenagers can be notoriously self-centered, and Link particularly excels at capturing their wild swings in maturity and thoughtfulness, but the narrative itself did not seem too concerned with the broader consequences of the characters' actions for large chunks of the book. In fact, until the climax (which was tightly written and compelling), I feared that Link would, like Grossman, come to an amoral conclusion. Which isn't to say that the book ends on a simplistic note; it's quite messy in some ways, but it is clear that at least some of the characters are thinking about the right things.

The best parts of the novel were smaller elements: Mo's grief and loneliness, Susannah's struggles with other people's expectations, Carousel, the critiques of the romance industry, not to mention the weird imagery and absurd fragments (more akin to magical realism than straight fantasy) that Link is known for. I continue to be her fangirl, and I look forward to more of her writing.