The angry, queer, gender bendy cyberpunk space opera you didn’t know you needed
—Amanda Khong, Bookish Brews
Bookish Brews Snapshot
The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw
A group of ragtag ex-con cyborgs gets back together for their last heist, back to the same planet of their last mission that broke their group apart and caused them to lose their friend.
🤖 Cyborgs 💥 Dramatic Ending 💪 Feminist 🛸 Sci-Fi/Fantasy
- Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction
Bonus: Check out 15 Best Diverse Cyberpunk Books & a Discussion on the Genre
Book Review
Stunning, expansive, punk, angry, imaginative, dense, ornate, turbulent, brilliant
The All-Consuming World was a book that I was really anticipating coming out. When Erewhon sent me a copy in the mail I was absolutely overjoyed! Erewhon books is one of my favorite publishers, and Cassandra Khaw has other incredible works out. Honestly, opening this book at first was a bit of a challenge. The world-building is dense but flowery all at once and unique to any similar books that I’ve read before, so I wasn’t able to stay grounded in any kind of assumptions of the world. The group of misfit ex-criminals is full of rage and bitterness so they swear a lot, which is jarringly juxtaposed by the writing style that was both precise in some parts and ornate in others. This book breaks your assumptions and shatters your beliefs in what a book needs to be.
Though the text took a while to start understanding, once I made it halfway through I started to see how clever Khaw’s writing actually is. They confused me to challenge me. The dense world helped me explore my imagination and push the boundaries of my thoughts. The prose is constantly changing and matches each character’s perspective perfectly. The ornate writing trains you to detach from what you know about humanity, technology, life, and consciousness in order to reach the climax that really turns everything on its head once again. All of this makes for a turbulent reading experience, but one that completely paid off for me in the end.
The All-Consuming World follows a group of angry misfit ex-cons coming back together to relive their last mission that ended in tragedy. Broken and traumatized from the last mission that cost them their friends, the group begrudgingly agrees to go back to the planet that ruined it all in the hope that one of their dead friends isn’t dead after all.
Khaw does not let up in this story. Throwing this group of ex-con cyborgs in a post-apocalyptic world, they wonderfully portray the decay of culture and history into consumerism, a trend that we can see happening today and a very characteristic idea in cyberpunk (see more about cyberpunk here). Multiple nonbinary characters and AI characters allow readers to defy expectations on gender, there is even a character that uses “he” and “she” pronouns interchangeably and Khaw uses both in a single sentence unapologetically. The world built here has progressed past arbitrary ideas of what counts as being alive and begs us to question what the limits of humanity and consciousness are. I’m so glad that I stuck it out until the end of this book because once I grounded myself in the world, everything became simply stunning.
The All-Consuming World defies expectations and turns our ideas of the world on their heads. This book is a stunningly turbulent read that will catch you off guard and stretch the boundaries of your mind. Though it was difficult to get into at first, sticking through was so worth it.
