April Book Review: .dot/slash(magic) by Liz Shipton - bookish

April was crazy busy for me. CRAZY busy. However, I refuse to go a whole dang month without reading, and I managed to squeeze in a book. That’s right, I, your voracious-reader-host, only read one book this month. I think this marks the first time since my first summer training when I arrived at West Point, during which I was literally forbidden to have any books in my room (or any down time, for that matter), that I went a month without reading at least three. Even when I was in command and deployed I drank down books more often than I drank actual water.

...I drank a LOT of coffee when I was in the Army.

Anyway, so April was busy, and I only managed to read one book. Thus, this month’s Reading Roundup is also this months’ Book Review.

I’ve been wanting to read .dot/slash(magic) since it first came out, but my TBR is—like pretty much everyone’s, at this point—miles long. So I’m just now getting around to it.

I already read Liz Shipton’s Thalassic series (the main 6 books; I haven’t read any of the standalone prequels) ages ago and enjoyed it immensely. Especially the first three, but that’s because I prefer reading from a female POV versus a male POV, and that is a 100% me thing. The quality of writing and epicness of the story was no different in the second half once we switched heads, and may have even better. That series, I believe, was independently published, and I first discovered those books because of the author’s hilarious social media posts poking gentle fun at popular tropes. If you can take your favorite tropes and shadow daddies and plucky FMCs being mercilessly mocked, highly recommend you follow her.

So when she announced she had a trad-pubbed book coming out, I knew I would snatch it up. Plus the premise alone of this one? Amazing. In a world where everyone has magic, but not everyone knows about it, a directionless coder builds an AI program to access her own innate power. Things go haywire from there.

One of the things I love most about Shipton’s work is how seamlessly, how organically, she weaves real-world politics and subjects like climate change, technology, mental-health, queer representation, and neurodivergence (among others; those are just the ones that pop out at me right now) into her speculative world-building and plots without any of the heavy-handedness or “virtue-signaling” that sometimes accompanies intentional representation. She does it so well that even though her presentation of those topics is front and center, they don’t feel forced; they feel natural, and that naturalness allows the readers to engage with a deeper level. In my opinion. I’m just one reader though, so what do I know?

Anyway, .dot/slash(magic) is a wild ride from start to finish. It’s easily digestible while still exploring complex technology. It’s spicy while still being sweet. It’s complicated while still being fun. The writing itself is fun and fresh and original while still containing gems of beautiful prose. The characters all jump off the page, and that ending twist? I did not at all see that one coming. I love it when a book surprises me, and this book surprised me. A lot.

There’s also a ton of references to Nirvana throughout, which as a former 90s grunge girl who absolutely had a belated crush on Kurt Cobain and whose first forays into music involved learning how to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the guitar—which, to this day, I occasionally jam to—I definitely appreciate.

I hated the book’s ending. HATED it. Why? Because it ended. I desperately hope Shipton releases the sequel because I am absolutely dying to know what comes next for Seven and her friends.

In conclusion: I loved this book. I want to talk about it. So go read it. Support the author. Just know going into it that, like all of Shipton’s work, this book is weird in the best way possible.