Section 1: Urban Fantasy Books Similar to The Absolute Book
Section 2: Most Powerful Themes Represented in The Absolute Book
The main character, Terran, first loses her sister to a grisly murder, and from there, she loses pieces of herself as she rides the road of vengeance. One of the other characters, Shift, a half-Fae and half-other being, is cursed to age in reverse and lose all bits of his memory — his essence — every several hundred years. Jacob, a human law enforcement agent, loses himself when he cannot make sense of an unlawful world he desperately seeks to change.
To combat being lost, the book highlights that each character must first be found and their trauma seen. The characters finding one another, despite great odds, gives each of them permission and the ability to, in turn, find themselves and claim what is within their hearts and minds.
Section 3: What I Did Not like about The Absolute Book
In The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox, one of the few things I didn't like was the ending. There were hints in the book about human wastefulness, and I admit there was a significant focus on how humans don’t preserve either resources or knowledge. As a foil to human behavior, Knox shows how the Fae creatures go out of their way to replenish all before it could be lost. I get that contrast, and it’s not new. That said, how we go from this human/Other contrast to “Let’s give the Fae creatures authority to remake the Earth” felt like it came out of left field.
The ending of tying up the legal issues of the human world and the consequences of Terran and Jacob’s actions made sense and gave closure. That ending played parallel to Fae creatures rebuilding the Earth seemed awkward, eco-preachy, and not necessary to the conclusion.
Section 4: Who Will Love and Hate The Absolute Book
Section 5: L. Rigdon’s Star Rating of The Absolute Book
[Spoiler Alert!]
I think what kept this book from five stars has to do with the ending. Knox did a masterful job of building her concept and explaining it piece by piece through a nonlinear sharing of mutual histories. As those histories ended, you expected a particular ending to resolve the situation.
That said, Knox doesn’t fully address all those loose ends. Instead, the story goes into some eco-terrorism/eco-feminism direction. Doing so completely ignores the fact that the main characters give a massive weapon to the enemy of their enemy under the thin agreement that the weapon will not be used against them. Their actions feel too convenient and will no doubt cause a power vacuum that no one wants to discuss. I found this jarring, and using the explanation of “words in the bond have power” does not fully satisfy my curious mind.