Crepuscular Angles by Prae Obscura is a dystopia paranormal romance about a guy and an escaped experiment bonding over how society fucked them over. It's also a book I have a lot of conflicting feelings about. And that's what I want to talk about. Not the book specifically, but how it made me feel
Crepuscular Angles is, by its own admission, a book that deals with a lot of themes such as anarchy, capitalism, psychosis, and the likes. As you can imagine these themes can be kind of controversial, and lo and behold! I am controversing. This book (specifically the ending) sparked so many emotions inside of me, positive and negative, because once the last chapter is finished and the themes of the books are laid bare it's hard not to go over them and then think ok, I agree with that bit. No, I think this other bit was stupid. Actually, what the fuck was that specific thing?
But it's not that simple as "some things were great and I agree with the book and some things I disagree with so I think this book is garbage and problematic (tm)". While that was my gut reaction, I spent weeks afterwards thinking about this book and this ending over and over- yes, I disagreed with this bit, but didn't the book have a point? Yes, the book presented me xyz situation, but didn't it seem a bit oversimplified? I read it months ago, and I still regularly think about it again (and my opinion has changed a lot ever since.)
Objectively speaking, this book is extremely well-made- the prose is delightful, and the non-linear narration is masterfully handled. If you ask for my personal opinions, I would tell you I enjoyed it greatly, and despite my complicated feelings on the matter I think I liked it more than I disliked it. And the more I think about it, the more I think that none of these matter.
It doesn't matter if the book is good or not (though it is.) It doesn't matter if I liked it or not (though I mostly did.) This book made me think. This book forced me to consider new perspectives, new variables I had never considered before, and therefore made me broaden my perception of the world (be it "ok I didn't think of that I'm changing my mind" or "I stick to what I believed before but for more researched reasons rather than just because that's what I was taught.") And to me, that's what makes a successful piece of art. Not successful as in financial success, I mean successful as in it did what it wanted to do; shake and stir your worldview. Which is an incredibly powerful thing to do.
Anyways. It's a good book. You guys should check it out. Even if you don't end up finding it enjoyable, I assure you you will think about it for quite a while.