Review—Electric State

Author – Simon Stalenhag

I’ll start with the bottom line first. I thought Electric State was an excellent book.

But, not for everyone.

Let’s start with the most salient oddity—it’s not quite a graphic novel, and it’s not quite a novella. It’s a book that decided to be something in between. It’s a story written around a series of stunningly beautiful apocalyptic art pieces. They create a vision of a world that words would fall short in describing. I totally loved the artwork, and I’d say, if you like the book cover, give it a try, if only to peruse the images from time to time. If you don’t dig the cover art, then don’t waste your cash on a purchase. You won’t like what’s to come, and the word count alone is insufficient to justify the cost. I paid $16.99 on Amazon for an eBook.

I should probably say something else about this. I own a spiffy little kindle that fits into the pocket of my cargo shorts, but I do most of my eBook reading on an iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch full-color screen. If you’ve got a small and/or black & white display, I wouldn’t recommend buying Electric State in eBook format. Spend a few bucks more and purchase the hardback, otherwise, you won’t get the full effect of the artwork.

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Next, the storytelling style—not for everybody. 

It has a very raw, ambiguous, dark feel. As a reader, I spent a good deal of the time unsure about what was happening in the present-day story of the narrative and what was the retelling of a memory. Characters from the recollected past seemed to come into the story, so suddenly that I spent many paragraphs feeling like I’d missed something. It took some time for me to put together who those people were and how they related to the main character. Having said all that, the entire story was a set of nested questions leading me toward a resolution that tied the story up very nicely.

I know reviewers like to talk about story details and how the plot developed and whether this scene or that scene worked, but I think to do that with this book would be an injustice. It’s a quick trip through a weird SciFi-apocalyptic world, and I thought the unmoored feeling I experienced was what the author intended—a feature, not a bug.

Check out the sample at your favorite eBook retailer. The artwork in the sample is worth at least a glance.

Bobby Adair

* If you feel like I’ve been unnecessarily harsh on a masterpiece, or too easy on a terrible POS, please read my Disclaimers, Caveats, and Excuses page before you flame me.

Bobby Adair is a former programmer, with a long-lived passion - and only recently fulfilled desire - for writing.  He is the author of the Freedom Fire series, the Slow Burn series and the Ebola K series.

One of Bobby's favorite quotes:

“It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us...Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.”
- Peter Gibbons, Office Space