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booknookTitle: The Switchboard
Author: Christina C. Glover
Genre: Fantasy Adventure with some M/M romance elements
The Switchboard is a fantasy adventure novel centered around a sweet M/M pairing. While there's a certain degree of violence and terror, the tone of the story remains bright and centered on the trust the two main characters have in each other.
The plot closely follows the adventures of Henley Yu, a mage of the Actuality (i.e. our world) and Kittinger, Chief Operator of the Switchboard in the Between, which is a fantastical land that discards many basic rules, like gravity. Henley is a talented mage who has opted into a career as a graphic designer, much to the chagrin of his family. In this world, mages acquire power by offering up memories. The stronger and more important the memory, the more powerful the magical effects they can create. Their offering gets sent into another plane, called the Between, where switchboard operators like Kit connect the offers via literal switchboard to Ethereals, who have all the magic and are looking to trade for memory. One day, some shady people show up at the switchboard, Kit has to take drastic measures, brings down the whole system, and then escapes through the magical pathways to get dumped into Henley's kitchen. The rest of the book is dedicated to the two of them trying to make their way back into the Between so they can find a way to fix the switchboard and keep the baddies away from their goals.
As an adventure story, I'd say this book is firmly middling. The worldbuilding is a little confusing, and breaks Sanderson's first rule of magic ("An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic"). While I don't ever apply rules preemptively because they are made to be broken, they can sometimes explain why a story doesn't quite land. In this case a lot of the plot revolves around how the Between works, and the solution to the plot involves engaging with that system. But the rules are not really all that clear, and so the solution also I didn't really understand. The motivations and methods of the baddies, who are kind of like stormtroopers in both how trigger happy and poor at aiming they are, made no sense to me at all, because the system they were trying to manipulate did not really manage to crystallize in my mind.
The third law of magic also gets broken a whole lot ("Expand what you already have before you add something new"). This is typically ok for a softer magic system, because that tends to rely much more on vibes and rule of cool. It wasn't too bad to suddenly be introduced to brand new worldbuilding concepts, but every time it happened I was like, "where the fuck did this come from?" because there's no foreshadowing of these elements at all. This led to something of a disjointed narrative, and I couldn't anticipate the stakes or the possible outcomes of a decision because the story is always about to pull something new out of its ass that was never even implied in any of the previous scenes. Nor could I even understand why characters chose to do the things they did. I had to just lean back and go along for the ride, hoping things would make sense eventually.
However! I liked this book a lot entirely on the backs of the main pairing, who are both earnest, kind, principled people who still have relatable misgivings and fears and by the end of the story are driven by a desire to protect each other. Kit especially is a gentle soul who loves his job but suffers from a terrible loneliness borne from his nature as a magical being, and I wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and give him a hug.
Some of the higher concepts in the book, such as the value of memory, get a little bit of exploration, enough to add a conceptual depth to what is otherwise an uncomplicated premise. If you aren't the sort that gets distracted by worldbuilding messiness, the setting is actually attractively whimsical and interesting. There are not many supporting characters. The book tries to make the bad guys sympathetic but fails imo because their behavior was nonsensical to me. But the three major allies were interesting enough people who I'd like to see fleshed out in later books.
The way Henley and Kit slowly came to trust and grow fond each other was well done, and I could really feel the slow burn heating up as I read. So imagine my annoyance when the first book ends while Henley and Kit are apart from each other, and haven't expressed anything close to romantic feelings for each other yet! While the idea is placed in Henley's head that he might find Kit attractive, this entire novel is set in a sort of pre-slash mode, and remains strictly gen. The outcome of the main problem in the book is also not solved in a completely satisfying way, which compounded the disappointment. I suppose saying as much is a spoiler, technically, but it's info I think belongs in a review of a book.
I honestly don't know if I liked The Switchboard or not because its piles of pros and cons felt kind of even, but I can at least say that I liked the pairing enough that I crave stronger closure concerning their relationship, and will probably see if I can borrow the next book from the library when it comes out in December.
Author: Christina C. Glover
Genre: Fantasy Adventure with some M/M romance elements
The Switchboard is a fantasy adventure novel centered around a sweet M/M pairing. While there's a certain degree of violence and terror, the tone of the story remains bright and centered on the trust the two main characters have in each other.
The plot closely follows the adventures of Henley Yu, a mage of the Actuality (i.e. our world) and Kittinger, Chief Operator of the Switchboard in the Between, which is a fantastical land that discards many basic rules, like gravity. Henley is a talented mage who has opted into a career as a graphic designer, much to the chagrin of his family. In this world, mages acquire power by offering up memories. The stronger and more important the memory, the more powerful the magical effects they can create. Their offering gets sent into another plane, called the Between, where switchboard operators like Kit connect the offers via literal switchboard to Ethereals, who have all the magic and are looking to trade for memory. One day, some shady people show up at the switchboard, Kit has to take drastic measures, brings down the whole system, and then escapes through the magical pathways to get dumped into Henley's kitchen. The rest of the book is dedicated to the two of them trying to make their way back into the Between so they can find a way to fix the switchboard and keep the baddies away from their goals.
As an adventure story, I'd say this book is firmly middling. The worldbuilding is a little confusing, and breaks Sanderson's first rule of magic ("An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic"). While I don't ever apply rules preemptively because they are made to be broken, they can sometimes explain why a story doesn't quite land. In this case a lot of the plot revolves around how the Between works, and the solution to the plot involves engaging with that system. But the rules are not really all that clear, and so the solution also I didn't really understand. The motivations and methods of the baddies, who are kind of like stormtroopers in both how trigger happy and poor at aiming they are, made no sense to me at all, because the system they were trying to manipulate did not really manage to crystallize in my mind.
The third law of magic also gets broken a whole lot ("Expand what you already have before you add something new"). This is typically ok for a softer magic system, because that tends to rely much more on vibes and rule of cool. It wasn't too bad to suddenly be introduced to brand new worldbuilding concepts, but every time it happened I was like, "where the fuck did this come from?" because there's no foreshadowing of these elements at all. This led to something of a disjointed narrative, and I couldn't anticipate the stakes or the possible outcomes of a decision because the story is always about to pull something new out of its ass that was never even implied in any of the previous scenes. Nor could I even understand why characters chose to do the things they did. I had to just lean back and go along for the ride, hoping things would make sense eventually.
However! I liked this book a lot entirely on the backs of the main pairing, who are both earnest, kind, principled people who still have relatable misgivings and fears and by the end of the story are driven by a desire to protect each other. Kit especially is a gentle soul who loves his job but suffers from a terrible loneliness borne from his nature as a magical being, and I wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and give him a hug.
Some of the higher concepts in the book, such as the value of memory, get a little bit of exploration, enough to add a conceptual depth to what is otherwise an uncomplicated premise. If you aren't the sort that gets distracted by worldbuilding messiness, the setting is actually attractively whimsical and interesting. There are not many supporting characters. The book tries to make the bad guys sympathetic but fails imo because their behavior was nonsensical to me. But the three major allies were interesting enough people who I'd like to see fleshed out in later books.
The way Henley and Kit slowly came to trust and grow fond each other was well done, and I could really feel the slow burn heating up as I read. So imagine my annoyance when the first book ends while Henley and Kit are apart from each other, and haven't expressed anything close to romantic feelings for each other yet! While the idea is placed in Henley's head that he might find Kit attractive, this entire novel is set in a sort of pre-slash mode, and remains strictly gen. The outcome of the main problem in the book is also not solved in a completely satisfying way, which compounded the disappointment. I suppose saying as much is a spoiler, technically, but it's info I think belongs in a review of a book.
I honestly don't know if I liked The Switchboard or not because its piles of pros and cons felt kind of even, but I can at least say that I liked the pairing enough that I crave stronger closure concerning their relationship, and will probably see if I can borrow the next book from the library when it comes out in December.