Book Tour Book Review: The Fall Is All There Is by C.M. Caplan

Today we're taking part in the book tour organized by Escapist Book Company for The Fall Is All There Is by C.M. Caplan! Continue reading for our review. If you want to listen to our podcast interview with Connor about his first book, The Sword in the Street, you can find that here, or you can find a q&a with him about The Fall Is All There Is here.

Full disclosure--Connor is a good friend of mine, and he and his fiancé lived with me for not quite six months in 2022. That said, this is as unbiased a review as I can make.

No one will ever accuse Connor Caplan of dry prose. He's said before that for him, words are emotional proofs in a formula when he writes. You plug in the words that evoke the emotion you want and put it in a way that sounds nice. To me, this is a novel way of writing that results in unique prose that is anything but formulaic. This unique approach is exemplified in his sophomore novel, The Fall Is All There Is.

From the moment the book opens with the statement, "I was six years old the first time Mom threatened to sew my mouth shut. She got the needles out and everything, I swear. In her defense, I was a chaotic little shit at that age" you as the reader know you're in for a wild ride.

Petre Mercy is the youngest of a set of quadruplets, and despite his best efforts, he's being brought into the struggle for power between his siblings after his father, the King, dies. With his constant asides to the reader and his breaking of the fourth wall, he makes for an incredibly engaging protagonist, even if sometimes as the reader you want to scream at the book "PETRE NO!!!!"

Caplan doesn't shy away from the messiness of human life in The Fall Is All There Is--we get messy characters, messy relationships, and even sometimes messy explosions (as when a cyborg horse explodes). The depth and humanity these characters exhibit helps ground them in a setting that could feel too fantastic and all over the place in a less adept author's hands. The world is an intriguing blend of fantasy and science fiction, where you can find cyborg horses and laser swords but also supernatural ghost fog.

This book won't be for everyone, but I for one find myself incredibly invested in Petre's story and can't wait to find out what happens next. (The fact that I convinced Connor to include robot security pugs doesn't hurt, I admit).

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Where to buy the book:

Universal Link: https://geni.us/tfiati

Universal Link (audio): https://geni.us/tfiatiaudio