Vanessa's Reads

I read this three times.I read it, then i dragged my finger across the screen along the bottom, taking me to the beginning to read it again. The last time i remember re-reading anything so immediately, I was twelve years old and had just finished Marion Zimmer Bradley's the Firebrand, a book which has been a favorite for decades.After reading it the second time, I needed to think about what I was going to say about it, because i had all these mind-jumbles going on. Then i felt like i'd waited too long to review it, so I read it again.So lets go with the obvious--this story is told in a letter from one man to another. It's told in a quiet, confessional voice, first person to second. It's almost like Antho was writing a diary to someone else, in the form of a love letter. It's also a goodbye. I loved that Julio chose to tell the story this way. It feels intimate, and it feels a little voyeuristic, like maybe we found this letter and are reading someone else's secrets. It sets the mood perfectly.The worldbuilding--anyone who has ever slaved away, unappreciated, in a cubicle probably pictures what i did: stretches of monotone walls, bleak, depressing, unforgiving, unrelenting. And the orbs? Creepy! So once I have this corporate tower nobody image, it's so easy to see why the assassin moves Antho: he's different. He has purpose. He's new, and Antho is the guy who doesn't get to have new, different, purposeful. The assassin is a bit of violent poetry in a bland-prose world.The relationship: Antho takes care of the assassin because he's fascinated, because he's lonely, amd because it gives him purpose and meaning in a desperately lonely life.Beautiful, and haunting, and a reminder to find beauty where we can in those moments when we aren't alone.