I received a copy of this book for free from Tor in exchange for my honest review.

Oof, this book was tough to get through, and mainly because of the horrible, obnoxious antagonist. Though, I do also think it was a bit too long and the multiple timelines confused me for the first third of book. Once I wrapped my head around the timelines, it got easier and more compelling, but the struggle was there.

But the biggest issue is Gus, the antagonist, and how much I absolutely fucking hated him. He was so disgusting and annoying, yet also realistic (well, sorcery aside) - sometimes I need my fantasy to be more fantastic, to avoid the woes of real life. It's a story of obsession and people's ideas of love, with magic added in to make it all the more torturous.

I did like the ending, it was satisfying and bittersweet. I also thought the magic system was unique. It was just too much page time with a guy who was too real and too awful. I would definitely read more by Porter though. ( )

Once upon a time there was a rich boy who thought he owned a poor girl: this is the story of Gus and Catherine in the novel PROJECTIONS by S. E. Porter (Tor/Macmillan, February 13, 2024), Porter's first adult novel.

Gus obtains magical powers, which make his Dark Triad See https://www.britannica.com/science/dark-triad of personality traits even worse. Murdering Catherine for having a will of her own does not end Gus's obsession with finding Catherine's equal–whom he can subdue (and subsume) instead–or simply leave a trail of corpses when the girls say no. Gus can't get his hands dirty himself, so he creates versions of himself called "beamers" to look for a new Catherine.

Murder victim Catherine becomes an endlessly-screaming ghost hovering over Gus's head. She wants to save the female victims of his magical projections, stand-ins for himself. The pair, sorcerer and ghost, mostly hang out in the sorcerers-only world of Nautilus, while Catherine longs for the real world (the "unworld" in Nautilus parlance). She feels helpless, doomed to shriek and rage in a disembodied state forever. However, being a genius even in wraith form, Catherine may just find a means of revenge on Gus, one of these centuries.

This novel has sparks of real genius and originality but is quite a slog, asking a great deal from the reader with the perspective/world/time switches without so much as a chapter heading to indicate who/where/when. It took me ages to read the novel (it's just shy of 500 pages) and I almost gave up several times. I was 80% of the way through the ARC when the book finally got interesting.

Porter will write incredible doorstop-sized novels of speculative fiction; of that I am absolutely certain. She just isn't quite there yet. ( )