local heavens by k.m. fajardo
I don't even know how to start this review, which I feel like doesn't happen very often—especially not one I loved as much as this. Yet here we are. I'm at a complete loss of words even though I meant to read and review this book months ago. I guess I'll start simple. It's a Gatsby retelling. It's queer. It's cyberpunk. I loved everything about it. I still love everything about it, and I'm absolutely heartbroken. I listened to Nghi Vo's own queer Gatsby retelling last year and was absolutely enthralled with it. Local Heavens managed to raise the bar.
In this particular Gatsby retelling, the reader is following the character of Nick Carraway. The story takes place in a not so distant future where the world has been ravaged by climate change, corporations rule the world, and a probe that was sent into the universe in search of life 50 years prior has been sent back. Body mods are also common. Nick, an Filipino-American man, is working in Manila as a contract diver—sometime who enters cyberspace to manage data or hack or do whatever needs to be done in there. He's then sent to West Egg, where his task is to figure out a way for a business deal between two large corporations go through. One of these businesses is owned by Gatsby and the other is owned by the family of Daisy Fay, his cousin. It is through this job that he meets Gatsby and an array of absurdly wealthy people.
Since it's a retelling, the key story beats largely follow the same path as the original. However, something that really struck me about K.M. Fajardo's work on this retelling is how much more raw it felt to me than The Great Gatsby or Nghi Vo's retelling, The Chosen and the Beautiful. The easily imagined future makes it easy to step into that life and grasp its intricacies, and perhaps most importantly, we see a side of Gatsby that I'm not sure was really apparent in other futures I've read. It was wonderful, and it shattered my heart into tiny little pieces.
I love how fluidly all the characters make their way through the world, how present the author made the poverty in contrast to Gatsby's (and others') absolutely gross wealth. There are so many people just trying to live their lives and being screwed over by the system. Having that view alongside the decadence really made Local Heavens something truly special. The careful and dreadfully thin threads that hold communities and relationships together are laid bare, and people have to make hard choices that maybe they themselves don't even understand. The whiplash of moving between different social circles and levels of society was wonderfully balanced and the occasional jumps into the future via recordings that suggest the future to come only make it better.
If you've read The Great Gatsby before, the beats may not be new, but they feel as fresh as reading anything for the first time. I've read the original and another retelling and I still found myself so completely drawn in and sitting the edge of my bed, full of nerves wondering what was actually going to play out here. It's the Roaring 20s, but cyberpunk. I don't know how anyone who loves the idea of the original (or even the original itself) and SFF couldn't fall head over heels for this novel. I certainly did.
My heart aches and I remain upset hours later, and I can't think of a bigger compliment I could give to Local Heavens. My nerves are raw and feel burned, and I can't help but think of the inequality and inequity in our social systems. This is a book to make you feel, and I can't think of any way better to feel than this.
Updated 1 month, 3 weeks ago