To put all my biases out there, I tend to be wary of anything that might be described as a tome. I love short stories and novellas, and enjoy a novel that’s around 300 pages or less. I think a lot of contemporary 600+ page books are unnecessarily bloated. When I’ve ventured into tome territory, I’ve frequently been frustrated by a feeling of disorganization; that there was simply too much for the author to keep track of in a way that made the story feel unsatisfying. Plots dangle, characters disappear mid-way through, and side stories happen that feel like a narrative cul-de-sac in that they either don’t contribute to the larger plot, or to the themes of the narrative.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Cage of Souls (2019) is, however, the perfect version of a 600+ book. Not a single character, no matter how minor, is forgotten by the end. All side adventures and off handed-points of world-building circle back into the main story. For as thick as the book is, and for as many divergences the protagonist Stefan Advani takes the reader on, not a single word is is misplaced or feels superfluous.

The sun is dying, and only one city – Shadrapar – still stands on Earth, the sum total of what remains of humanity. That is, except for The Island – a prison built on a lake in a hostile and ever-growing jungle. Stefan, after trying to make Shadrapar a better place, finds himself shipped to the Island, for his crime of rabble-rousing. The book is written as if it was is an in-world account written by Stefan, who jumps in time to make sense of what he just explained, and occasionally discusses his omissions and edits, adding an additional element of intrigue to his attempts to simply survive the Island.

Another bias of mine: I am in many ways predisposed to give more leeway to huge books if they’re in the dying Earth genre. It’s not that I’m opposed to a story taking a small diversion from the main culminating plot to go elsewhere, it’s just when it feels like it doesn’t matter to either the themes, characters, or reader that I get a little feisty. But those kind of adventuresome side streets from the main story are almost necessary to the dying Earth genre – how else would the reader experience a long-dead civilization, if not for a short stop-off by the main characters whose own civilization is dying, and for whom the bones of the past are inscrutable and alien?

Cage of Souls does not disappoint in this regard. The future is filled with beam weapons that no one remember how to maintain, ruins that offer up treasure and despair, and an Earth throwing up new and dangerous forms of life at a break-neck evolutionary pace in a desperate attempt to breed some sort of life that will outlive the ruin humans have made of the landscape. The last biologist on Earth features as a character, amongst a populace who have forgotten most science and fallen into superstition. A time-displaced astronaut attempts to get home in the background, a mere curiosity to Stefan, who believes his stories are mere fables. Mad science and magic feature at every turn. There’s an immense narrative talent on display in the crafting of Cage of Souls, and it’s an utter delight to read.

What struck me most about the book was that it kept to a promise it gave early on. Stefan is describing, in brief, the dead sea, and the bodies of all sea life and even some human that are trapped and preserved in the chemical expanse that has become of the Earth’s oceans. Stefan says:

“The sea is death’s unchanging kingdom on Earth, and it has no part in this story. My story is, despite all that has happened, one of hope, and there is no hope for the oceans.” (136)

I was struck by the horror of what had become of the oceans, my mind instantly gnawing away at that bone of possibility. However, the import of this sentence was lost on me for most of the book. While I did not forget this sentence (I in fact, remembered almost exactly where it was in the book to within a few pages of 136), the promise of it did not fully sink in, so focused on I was the horror of the dying Earth, and of the deaths of character after character. How could we return to hope in this story? Surely it was only Stefan trying to soothe himself, as he wrote of yet another near-miss with death, that his story was one of hope. Surely it was not the actual point which the whole story turned on.

But no, we return to the sentiment of this one sentence, at the end of the book. Even with all the immense death, and the dying of the Earth marching ever forward, there is hope at the end, and comfort, an astounding promise kept. Beyond this single tonal promise, the whole book keeps its promises – everything fits neatly into place, no momentum is ever lost, and everything ties together into a neat and perfect end. The only mysteries that remain at the end are those that were truly intended to remain mysteries, a perfect balance of an intricately woven story, with a few bones of possibility left to chew on at the end, in the most satisfying manner.