"Jama-Everett's book consistently resists easy categorization. Chabi's mixed racial background offers a potentially nuanced look from a perspective that seems underserved. And by setting the book in a weird, if recognizable, Bay Area, -Jama-Everett captures something about the way it feels to live so close to so much money and yet so far; he traces the differences between postindustrial East Bay towns, the gray melancholy of an older city, the particular feeling of struggling while surrounded by otherworldly wealth. If the book veers among different approaches - now a philosophical kung fu master story, now a seduction into a rarefied subculture, now an esoteric universe made from liner notes and the journal entries of a brilliantly imaginative teenager - there's nevertheless a vitality to the voice and a weirdness that, while not always controlled or intentional, is highly appealing for just that reason."
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New York Times Book Review "Ayize Jama-Everett's Liminal People novels feel not simply refreshing, but necessary. It's not just that Jama-Everett's superheroes-or, as he dubs them, liminals-are overwhelmingly people of color, from all over the world and drawing on many different cultural traditions and historical backgrounds....What feels almost revolutionary about Jama-Everett's books is that they imagine a world in flux, one that is about to change, and in which that change is intimately linked to racial justice. The central question of these books is what kind of world we will all end up living in, one that embraces nihilism, or one that is driven by creativity-where the latter is inextricably linked to racial, global, and cultural diversity."
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Strange Horizons "Rooted in Chabi's voice, the story is spare, fierce, and rich, and readers will care just as much about the delicate, damaged relationship between Chabi and her mother as the threat of world destruction."
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Publishers Weekly (starred review)
". . . a novel of initiation, another tale of a novice trained physically and spiritually in awesome mysteries. Think the Wachowski siblings'
Matrix movies. Think Grant Morrison's
The Invisibles comic book series.
"When we meet Chabi, she is a teenage girl living on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, and taking martial arts lessons from a mysterious Indian man named Narayana Raj. Disconnected from her alcoholic mother, she is able to speak without opening her mouth (and without, apparently, having anyone remark on that peculiarity). She's also a fearsome adolescent warrior, able to run incredible distances at blazing speed and capable of fighting and killing fearsome opponents, human and otherwise. When her teacher abandons her, she must decide whether she wants to use her skills in the service of the rich and powerful.
"Chabi is . . . in over her head, but she doesn't quite know it. Her inability to see the big picture gives
The Entropy of Bones a poignancy that is not often found in a genre where the good guys are always expected to win."
- Michael Berry,
LA Review of Books "If
The Entropy of Bones was a sandwich, it would chip your tooth. If it was a drink, it would make you blind for a few panicked seconds before the world returned. The ending is relentless, breathless, and tragic."
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Nerds of a Feather "Chabi would never be like other teens in the Bay Area. Her black-Mongolian heritage, her lack of a father, her mother's alcoholism–those make her unusual but what really sets her apart is that she is liminal, able to do things that normal humans simply can't. Although mute from birth Chabi can push her thoughts into the minds of others. Trained from a young age to be an unstoppable killer by a man with shady motives, Chabi falls into a dangerous crowd led by the charismatic Rice after her mentor disappears. Before she can fall completely under Rice's sway,
