Driftwood • 2020 • Fantasy novel by Marie Brennan

★★★★☆

When worlds are hit by an apocalypse and go into their final state before desintegrating, their remaining fragments enter the world of Driftwood through the Mists and go through several stages slowly fading away until they finally disappear in a zone called the Crush. People on neighboring worlds change borders like nothing, each fragment with its own weather, moons and suns, and inhabitants.

Does that sound strange and maybe confusing? Never mind, because it doesn’t have an astronomical explanation. It’s a fantasy world with an unexplained mythology and the reader simply has to accept the setting which is joyfully described but never explained.

Some people meet in an infamous bar, the “Spit in the Crush’s Eye” and tell wondrous stories about a man called Last. He is well known, and rumors go around that he is immortal, the last man of his world, the only one remembering it.

I don’t want you worshipping me; I just want you to stop this idiotic cult business of yours and let people get back to whatever lives they can manage in this cosmic joke we call Driftwood.

He works as a paid guide, but sometimes helps people for free. They are astonishing, curious and ever creative, and always entertaining. They don’t get old or similar and can be read back to back.

Lately, I’ve read a couple of story mosaics bound together as a novel with a framing story. The Hair Carpet Weavers or Trafalgar come to mind. This novel by Marie Brennan, the author of “A Natural History of Dragons”, doesn’t stand back against those classics and I highly recommend reading it.

Meta: isfdb. Published by Tachyon.