The Sweetest Review Of The Sol Majestic

I promise that after my contest ends, I will not breathe another word about my book until 2019. But yesterday, my sweetie Fox wrote the most gorgeous review of my upcoming book The Sol Majestic on Facebook, and I wanted to commit it to my blog before it hit the endless Zuckerbergs and sank to the bottom of the ocean.

(For despite their attempts to revive old posts, Facebook is where history goes to die.)

So anyway. They wrote this. I thought it was proof I checked all the boxes in writing The Sol Majestic.

So, it should be no surprise to anyone around here that I’m a little biased when it comes to Ferrett.

Back in 2016, when we were dealing with the Visa Clusterfuck, we had to leave the US at no notice and with no guarantee that we’d be able to return. Ferrett sent me an early draft of this book – nominally to beta-read, but also that I might take something of him with me. He’d read sections to me before, and we’d talked concepts that were coming up in the process of writing it, but I got to read the whole thing in that fledgling version.

It was amazing. Even with my aforementioned bias, I could tell that.

Before long I’d decided that I was going to pace myself through it, because otherwise I would have devoured it all in one long session despite my difficulties reading through the BrainFog. Instead, I savoured it a chapter or three at a time.

It sparked conversations with almost everyone I saw during that time about food and identity, about the culinary landscapes we think of as home and the concept of “home” itself, about the cultural factors and biases that see some culinary traditions elevated to the level of ‘cuisine’ and others humbled despite their histories and complexities, about what it is to feel the echoes of one’s ethnic heritage across the span of distance, about philosophy and morality and mortality and the ephemerality of experience and more.

It made me laugh aloud, and it made me cry, and it made me think. It made me actually physically shiver, made me stop to just hug my phone to my chest as I read on it, and it made Daniel and Anne ask time and again what I was reacting so audibly to this time. It made me send texts across the planet like “AAAAAAAAAAAH YOU JUST HAD TO DO THAT DIDN’T YOU OF COURSE YOU HAD TO FUCKING HELL FERRETT” until Autocomplete on my phone knew that those last three words went together – but only if I started the phrase in all-caps.

It was a dégustation menu and a comfort food all at once.

I am so very glad that it found its home with a publisher – with Tor, no less – and that it’s getting released to the world.

I can’t wait to read it in its final form, now honed and edited and polished, and I will champion it to anyone I can.

Read this book, my friends.

Plus, if you pre-order it there are fabulous perks (including special drink recipes) – and a 5% chance to win an ARC if you pre-order by Thursday at midnight EST (GMT -5) and email Ferrett to tell him.

Do the thing!

Anyway. In writing The Sol Majestic, I was very inspired by my friend Sarah’s concept of “The sacred book” – those books that distinctly aren’t for everybody, but those who get the book clasp it close to their heart because it expresses a part of them. It’s not just a book, it’s something that expands and elucidates a part of their personality.

So knowing the Majestic hit at least one person the way I wanted – and someone I love – helps me feel like I already accomplished what I set out to do, even if the book bombs.

Anyway. If you pre-order the book before midnight tonight (it’s Thursday) and email me your address, I’ll enter you into a raffle to (hopefully) get an ARC of the book in time for Christmas. (Click for more details, obviously.) And then I’ll announce who won, and I promise I’ll shut up about this damn thing for a week or two.

Message ends.