Another book from my Hugo Nominee reading list and while I made it through this book, I'm still not entirely sure what I read.
On the surface, Pell (who becomes the abbess, Yarrow) and Kew (who becomes the guardian Hawthorne and changes from boy to woman) are teens thrust into roles with responsibilities they aren't quite prepared to handle. They both go off on quests to help save their home and we follow their adventures through Red, Yellow, Blue and Black tower controlled regions. The Beast is awakening and winter has come too early and the other sisters / Lady creatures have to be "warned." What will they do? Will they help or is this just part of the cycle that they expect?
The premise, once you start looking for it, is actually pretty dark. The West Passage is basically a closed system where people are manufactured through ritual consumption. There are these giant beings called the Ladies, and they're not really rulers; they're products. Made from honey that's derived from processed human remains (mellified man, which is apparently a delicacy that cures illness). Ravens in Grey Tower tear the bodies down and fly off - though we don't have visibility into this process, I suspect that the flesh goes into special honey. There are even more special types of honey (like thistle) that create or pacify the Lady creatures. Some people are "simple skin" people - but a lot of people are chimerical with rabbit ears, trout heads, tree branches for hair, or very owl-like and laying eggs. Everyone enjoys honey and mead as a regular part of their diet - but specific "vintages" or types of honey are reserved for the Lady creatures. At least one Lady creature has a poisonous bite and will eat other Lady creatures.
The Beast everyone's afraid of? It's the 6th Lady, the source of the whole system, been sleeping/imprisoned under Grey Tower the whole time. When the system starts failing and she wakes up, the "victory" is basically: accept what you are. Hawthorne (who is Kew transformed) goes inside a giant tree. Yarrow goes back to Grey Tower to continue her role as Mother/abbess of the birth/death doulas. Does the cycle keep going? Does something else happen? That's a genuinely interesting premise.
For me, the problem is that even with the medieval art style illustrations, I can't really picture what these creatures look like.The illustrations help, but you're reading 500 pages where you're asked to hold incomprehensible morphologies in your head while the narrative moves through dream logic. There's no conventional plot. Characters have no interiority — and I realize now that's kind of the point (they're products of a system, not people), but it doesn't make them engaging to read about.
The ending is resignation, not resolution. Yarrow knows now. She goes back anyway. That's bleak, but it's also just... static.
Compared to Perdido Street Station, which I gave Perdido 3 stars partly because Miéville does similar territory — massive city built in/on a dead creature, systemic oppression, strange biology — but he makes it inhabitable. You can see those ribs on the horizon. Isaac and Lin have interiority and actually choose things that matter. The weirdness is immersive, not obscuring.
The West Passage uses obscurity as its central feature. The dream logic, the baroque description, the resistance to conventional narrative — that's intentional. Some people will find that captivating. I found it exhausting.
The book has an audacious premise underneath, but it's buried under 500 pages that could've been half that length. Pechaček prioritized concept over character, atmosphere over clarity. I don't find myself invested enough in what happens next to pick up a sequel, if there is one. "The West Passage" was built to be analyzed and argued over - more than enjoyed. With that in mind, I'm sure this will be an excellent book for discussion in a book club or in a college lit course.
REVIEW: The West Passage by Jared Pechaček
RATING: 2.5 stars
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