Book: Palingenesis by Rae Stone
Reviewed by ErikaWasReading
Rating: 3/5
It’s been a few days since I finished Palingenesis , and the best I can say is that I feel the same way I did the first time I ate a Crumbl cookie. Like, all the ingredients are there, and I like the flavors, but a large part still feels underbaked.
I found the novel interesting, and I thought Rae did an excellent job creating an environment where the reader feels unsettled and unsure, the same way Shannon does. It makes for an atmospheric read where you are questioning everything. But I feel like something was missing to anchor us back in reality and keep the ending from feeling rushed and unearned.
I am all for books that don’t explain everything in excruciating detail, but there were places where filling the audience in would have given us key points of connection to the story. One way to do that would be to give us more of The Legend/Ilios’s mythology and backstory. While we do get small bits, what we are given doesn’t line up with the information in the second epilogue.
Again, I thought this was interesting, and since it was the first book by Rae Stone I’ve read, I am curious to try another one. But I do think Palingenesis needed a bit more.