Sarah O'Connor

I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.

“air escapes lungs / death punctuates / the body, this isn’t the scary part. / loving is. losing someone she loves is,” (panic wrap III, French 162).

O and Z find each other during an acid rain storm becoming travelling companions and lovers in a world fragmented into new cultures after the Memory War has ended. But despite their love O and Z are drawn to different ways of life: descended from space pirates, O yearns for the sky while Z, a forager, wishes to remain earthbound. The two must make the difficult decision of choosing their ideals over each other.

I didn’t fully understand what was happening in Syncopation when I started it, even when finishing I am still confused by some parts, but the novel is so different from anything I’ve ever read. Being a high science-fiction, set in Canada, written in verse, there are very few read-a-likes that come to mind with a book like Syncopation. It is a wholly unique reading experience and one that slowly pulls you into it’s world in a beautiful way.

I don’t read many novels in verse and feel like that’s where most of my confusion with some of the plot-elements comes from. The verse adds an element of poetry and lyricism to the novel that isn’t typical seen in the sci-fi genre. I enjoyed how the words flowed and the images French created through her verse and felt that it added a dreamy layer to the story.

While understanding the timelines and history of this story was difficult at times, the writing is gorgeous and helped me understand the novel more fully by just immersing myself in how good the verses were. A novel you can’t pin down, Syncopation was such a wonderful story that reminds me of the ways in which we can experiment with genre in memorable ways when storytelling.

Publication: November 4 2025
Publisher: Buckrider Books
Pages: 300 pages (Paperback)
Source: River Street Writing
Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Verse, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5
Summary:

In the aftermath of a Memory War, society is fragmented into strange new cultures, castes and coalitions. Set against a backdrop of retrofitted food garages, microchip-sorting factories and hyperloop terminals, Whitney French brings us a dazzling novel-in-verse where memory is the highest currency and love, like all revolutions, is dangerous, unruly and singed with hope.
O and Z are two young women searching for purpose in a world where a decades-long earthquake reverberates through the Earth’s crust, and the population scrambles to hide from deadly acid rain. Descended from space pirates, O is drawn to the sky, while Z is earthbound, a skilled forager with connections to the black market. The two become travel companions and lovers until, torn between choosing their values or each other, a fateful decision must be made at the el Corazón space station.