3.75/5 ( )

Check out my review for Rain Taxi here: http://www.raintaxi.com/metamorphica/. ( )

Metamorphica sings the same song as The Lost Books of the Odyssey, but in a different key. Lightning doesn't really strike twice for Zachary Mason in this, his second book of short stories (again, bizarrely marketed as a novel) which seek to retell, subvert and recontextualise the stories of Greek mythology. But while there's none of Lost Books' lightning, there are still plenty of sparks.

The non-intuitive 'star map' that starts Metamorphica is thankfully not essential; it's just a creative way of writing a contents page, I guess. But it does hint at Mason's tendency to be clever and overthink things. While this was charming in The Lost Books of the Odyssey, with its laconic Borgesian style, it becomes rather sprawling in Metamorphica. This second book has some odd sentence constructions that lose the thread, and it doesn't limit itself to the Odyssey, instead restlessly flitting to and fro across all of Greek mythology.

The book, while always interesting, lacks some of the judiciousness of its predecessor. The story mechanics are sometimes so subtle or niche that the reader can't understand them; some make sense only with the introductory and end notes. It's an imperfect approach, but perhaps the only way the unique perspective of this writer could be birthed, and all in all I was happy to put in the work needed to experience it. ( )

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6557669 ( )