His disapproval wound out behind him like a thread that wrapped around Noam, around Dara, tight and digging into flesh. Lee’s writing is evocative, at least, though one of the character twists was telegraphed a little more strongly than I think she intended early on (TW for the book, BTW: child abuse, rape, mental coercion). In addition to a Hispanic Jewish child of (Atlanta, Georgia) undocumented immigrant (to Carolina) parents, Noam is also outed as bisexual to the reader at the same time we learn his father is in a catatonic state after the suicide of his mother.
He’d given up on cooking anything edible, on keeping a kosher kitchen, on speaking Spanish. Noam tried to live up to her standard, but he never could. Noam’s mother had made the most amazing food.
And also that there is A LOT of extremely heavy-handed metaphor throughout the book (and, I mean, this is stuff I mostly agree with about humanitarian action and immigrant aid and totalitarian regimes and sexuality, etc.) Which I kind of knew going in from the author’s statement but it was still just a lot. I think part of the problem is that Noam is very much a sixteen-year-old boy. Not that being extra Jewish would bring her back to life. Noam touched the mezuzah on the doorframe as he went in, a habit he hadn’t picked up till after his mother died but felt right somehow. I’m much more interested in what happens to his love interest, which is a shame, because Noam is very much meant to be the more interesting character.
I can give it the praise that I wouldn’t have minded paying for it, but in the end I didn’t like Noam enough to really care what happens to him after the events of The Fever King. I picked this for “own voices” because it was one of the Kindle Early Release program, which meant I didn’t have to pay for it. Unlike most of the population, however, Noam survives - and wakes up a technomancer, with the ability to talk to computer systems and all manner of technology. The US has been ravaged by war and disease (and war over disease) and Noam Álvaro is sixteen and the child of Atlantean (Georgia, that is, not Atlantis) illegal immigrants to Carolina who is involved in the Atlantean Rights movement - until he, too, falls sick with the Fever.
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