🪦 DROPPED 🪦
Bats of the Republic features original artwork and an immaculate design to create a unique novel of adventure and science fiction, of political intrigue and future dystopian struggles, and, at its riveting core, of love.
In 1843 Chicago, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas falls in love with the high society daughter of Joseph Gray, a prominent ornithologist. Mr. Gray sets an impossible condition for their marriage—Zadock must deliver a sealed and highly secretive letter to General Irion, fighting one thousand miles southwest, deep within the embattled and newly independent Republic of Texas. The fate of the Union lies within the mysterious contents of that sealed letter, but that is only the beginning . . .
Three hundred years later, in the dystopian city-state of the Texas Republic, Zeke Thomas has just received news of the death of his grandfather, an esteemed Chicago senator. The world has crumbled. Paper documents are banned, citizens are watched, and dissenters are thrown over the walls into “the rot.” When Zeke inherits—and then loses—a very old, sealed letter from his grandfather, Zeke finds himself and the women he loves at the heart of a conspiracy whose secrets he must unravel, if it doesn’t destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.
The two propulsive narratives converge through a wildly creative assortment of documents, books within books, maps, notes, illustrations, and more. Zach Dodson has created a gorgeous work of art and an eye-popping commercial adventure for the 21st century.
I borrowed it because I was enchanted by the typography and layouts. It’s a fucking gorgeous book… but not my jam. It’s a speculative future fiction book in a dystopian world, so you’d think I’d like it, but perhaps because it jumps in perspective so much and the writing in the modern (?) (for the book) era feels arrested and stilted that I can’t quite get into it. I love how it looks and I would probably love to own it as an example of a beautiful illuminated novel, but… it would take me a lot more effort to read beyond the 50 pages I did read.
I didn’t really feel like I penetrated the story at all in 50 pages. It was nothing. The downside of having an illuminated script is that it balloons the work by quite a bit, making 50 pages into almost nothing, and yet it felt like a slog to get there.
I want to read it and I know that it has quite a lot to say but it is just not kind to me, this style of writing, and so I must put it down.
