Page 45 Review by Stephen
"When I was single-parenting, I longed for the time to make to-do lists. I just kept the plates spinning, reassuring myself anytime I felt I was doing a crappy job, with the mantra 'Everyone fed, nobody dead'."
Bloody hell. Rarely have I felt so keenly the excruciating weight of dramatic irony induced specifically by my knowledge of a book's length - of how many more pages remain - while its disadvantaged narrator forges on, in the dark.
Not only that, but I'm stunned to report that against all reasonable expectations this fresh new series is even more enveloping than the already impressive original, not least because I am given to care so very much more for this hapless cast than I did for their predecessors, particularly its oh so impressive narrator: stoicism in the wake of adversity. Same goes for Matt and his family. Gillen's empathic ability to walk several miles in each of his protagonists' projected shoes is astonishing.
Previously on DIE: six teenagers gathered together to play a role playing game one of them had created. They each chose their own roles, including the dungeon master. Two years later they reappear on a roadside, one of them minus an arm, all of them minus the dungeon master. And after 25 years of trying to reconstruct their lives - some more successfully than others - they're pulled back again to face to repercussions of their first... game... and negotiate/fight their way out. Once more, not all of them make it back.
This is most emphatically about what happens next, but because of who its new hapless victims are (teasingly revealed, chapter by chapter), it's also about the impact of the previous protagonists' absence during the two times they faced the unforgivingly consequential realms of Die.
As well as being meditations on fantasy, gaming, and their creation, both outings are about actions and consequences, and how so many of us treat each other. Clue: callously. And now: even worse.
"So... everyone fed, nobody dead."
You will not believe the cliff-hanger.
